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necrotic-nephilim · 2 months ago

Note

for the recent ask game, i’m really curious about your take on 7 + 8 :P

for the choose violence ask game!

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how the fandom acts about them?

i'll be so honest: Jason Todd. i know there's a lot of argument of "who has the worst fans" and i think that question is flawed and impossible to answer, but i will say Jason fans irked me so deeply. because i read mostly 90s era Batfam, i admittedly didn't have a lot of exposure to Jason for a while, expect for his New-52 runs i'd read years ago. and since i never liked him based on those runs, i could not understand *what* his fans liked about him, or where they got some of their headcanons/ideas from. i've never been more baffled. it ranges from "oh i don't agree but you do you, i guess?" to "what character are you talking about i am BAFFLED". and it soured me on Jason for so long that i actually hate read *most* of his pre-Flashpoint appearances just to understand what on earth people liked about him. and now i can say, i love him dearly, but i can also say, i still don't know what character his fans are talking about sometimes. and i hate the fanon version of Jason who feels almost, Deadpool-ified? with this self-aware slapstick humor but a sad soft interior but also sassy and will kill a man it's just. it feels very hollow to me and it has made me almost tempted to block his character tag more than once over the years bc sometimes certain takes make it difficult to even like him. i just have to tune it out or yell about it for hours.

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

i'm going to get particularly saucy with this one: that Dick Grayson has Eldest Daughter Syndrome. or more generally, that he was parentified. not a single ounce of Dick's backstory indicates him as being parentified. to be parentified you have to be a child taking care of other children either emotionally or physically because your parents are not fulfilling that role. and Dick was *never* a child at the time that another child was under Bruce's care. he has been an adult for the entirety he has known every other Batkid. and even then, the *only* one he was something you could akin to being a parent figure to was Damian, and Dick *chose* that. Dick was a grown-ass man in his late 20s who had the facilities and capacity to make the decision to be Damian's primary caretaker. he's never been parental toward any of the other Batkids, nor has Bruce ever forced upon him the role of having to raise them. did Bruce do a sort of questionable job with Dick? yeah. but i would argue Bruce did the best job with Dick of all the Batkids, and even if he was shitty with Dick, he couldn't parentify Dick bc there was no one for Dick to be parenting. and Dick wasn't parenting Bruce either. they just had a normal relationship of loving and caring for each other.

as for Eldest Daughter Syndrome i just.. i Do Not Like calling any male character "female coded" or "female rage coded" or "eldest daughter coded" because they're *not*. especially not in *this* medium. these are male characters, created by men, written by men 90% of the time, and written to be *male power fantasies*. nothing about Dick or Jason or any Batboy is female-coded bc they exist to be badass men. just because they show emotion and have complex relationships with Bruce doesn't make them suddenly women. Dick shows his anger in a very destructive, stereotypically "masculine" way. even if we strip it of gender, Dick doesn't exhibit most traits of Eldest Daughter Syndrome. he easily makes relationships with people his age, he has no issues telling Bruce no, he did not have caretaking responsibilities forced onto him by Bruce, he's not even really hyperindependent. Dick has a support system outside of the Bats, the fandom just ignores it. does Dick force caretaking responsibilities onto himself sometimes? can he be an overachiever? absolutely. but these are internal complexes that just come with making a character a superhero, it's a complex they all have. if i have to hear one more fan call him Eldest Daughter Syndrome-core or say he's a victim of parentification, i think I'll explode a little bit.

#necrotic answerings #ask game #this is regarding canon specifically #if you write fanfic where the batkids are taken in younger #and thus dick is parentified that's valid to explore #but that doesn't make it canon #also here's a take i'll hide in the tags:#if someone has a pfp of wfa jason i. tend not to trust their opinion on jason todd.#i'm so sorry i just can't do it.#you can like wfa and enjoy it for what it is do not get me wrong #but using it as your basis for jason is going to make you wildly off the mark #of everyone i think wfa butchers jason the most #who is that man.#why is he there.#metas about jason from wfa perspectives are always missing the mark for me.#that's just my opnion so no one take it *too* seriously but like #man. i've got feelings #also i'm super passionate about the “female coded” thing #like there are women in comics. yk you can read about them. right-#still never getting over the post where someone was like “who do you think is more female rage coded jason or dick i can't decide omg”#and the notes were just people recommending comics with women in them. bout peed myself laughing.#i do think jason is interesting to view through a female lense and same with dick #but you have to understand that will always be fanon. not canon.

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thetomorrowshow · 2 months ago

Text

Whumptober 4 - Hallucinations

title: marked

fandom: empires smp

this is an alt pov of my fic hubris killed the god! i recommend reading it first

cw: blood, hallucinations, implied/referenced character death

Jimmy doesn't say a word when he feels something almost fuzzy brush against his wrist.

He just finishes drawing his chalk arrow and keeps going.

Pix isn't here. He's still clinging to a little shred of hope, the only thing that's stopping him from pulling the entire group out right now, the only thing keeping him from telling them he was touched.

If Pix was here, it all would have been worth it.

But Pix isn't here.

And the further they get, the clearer it is.

But there are plenty of those varmints around, and one of them appears out of nowhere to scare them, so Jimmy turns and makes a break for it, calling for them all to follow him.

He can't bear to let another one of them fall.

But he's too late.

When Shelby climbs onto the airship, the first thing she does is run to the staircase that leads to the stern, wedging herself in the little corner between the stairs and the captain’s cabin.

"I'm dying," she sobs, when Jimmy approaches her, hands out. "I'm going to die!"

"I know," he calls back, over the sound of the ship.

He doesn't know what else to say.

"I don't want to die," Shelby cries. Her hands tear at her face, at the place where a little red mark is already forming on her cheek.

Gently, Jimmy pulls her hands down, holding them in his own. She shakes, bends over just a bit, as if her body is trying to curl up without her input.

"We're here," he shouts, the wind whipping away his words. "We're not gonna leave. It's okay, we're right here with you."

"I didn't do anything wrong," she chokes out, tears running down her blotchy face.

Jimmy's heart twists.

She didn't. She only tried to survive.

He pulls her into a hug, sets his chin on her shoulder. He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know what to do.

He just lets Shelby cry into his chest and stares at the wooden deck behind her.

Jimmy hugs all of them.

Quickly. Just a pat on the back, really.

But he hugs them. He hugs Shelby again, then Scott (Scott is close to tears, standing on his own by the railing), then Katherine (who stops in her pacing to acquiesce to an embrace). He takes the five steps up to the stern two at a time, hugs False briefly (she leans just slightly toward him), then heads belowdecks, to the little makeshift bed of False's.

That's when he checks for critters.

There aren't any. Of course there aren't.

But on his wrist is a tiny pink mark, an innocuous sign of the end. If he looks at it for long enough, it could just be a mark from pinching himself, a bruise about to form from bumping against a door jamb.

It isn’t that, though.

Jimmy has known for weeks that he's been living on borrowed time.

He started this. There was never any real hope that he would survive.

He's felt marked, almost.

Marked, ever since he stood over Joel's body, hands shaking and legs weak, covered from head to toe in the blood of a god.

He pushed his bloodsoaked hair out of his eyes, unable to look away from the tear down the god’s body from the enchanted axe that Jimmy had dragged from his collarbone to his waist.

Blood leaked from the bullet hole between Joel's eyes.

That had been the wound to take him out. He could have survived just the cleaving.

He was a god, after all.

Jimmy stared, even as dark clouds rolled in.

Even as the blood dried on his body.

Even as bile rose to his throat.

He stared, and with the first drops of rain, Joel's body began to go fuzzy around the edges of the wounds. Fuzzy and black, and Jimmy thought for a moment of mold before falling to his knees and vomiting.

And there he kneeled, trembling and ill, stained with blood and vomit, and screamed.

He screamed his apologies.

He begged the rumbling sky for restitution.

He buried his fists into the dry grass of the savannah, as his words dwindled hoarsely into nothing, and sobbed.

When nothing came, nothing but thunder and pouring rain, Jimmy hefted the crown off Joel's unmoving head and dragged it home.

Then he scrubbed the gore off his body, changed clothes, and replaced his hat on his head.

Despite the terrible storm, despite his people, Jimmy strapped the crown onto Bullseye and headed for Dawn.

Maybe Gem's god would pardon him.

But there had never been any pardon, had there?

It had all been a waiting game. It always had been.

Joel's blood marked him the first day.

And now, just like then, Jimmy can only stare.

He deserves this.

He deserves this, and he relishes in that.

He isn't stuck in that awful waiting phase, death looming over him like a dust storm over the horizon.

This can finally be over.

He can finally just be gone.

If there was anyone left to rescue, Jimmy would go do it now.

He's as invulnerable as he ever will be. It doesn't matter if they touch him. He could be in and out quicker than ever, able to defend without needing to worry about the vermin touching him.

But the only person to rescue is Shelby, and there's nothing he can do to help her.

All Jimmy knows to do is patrol. There isn’t anything else he can do, and everyone else is so busy with Shelby that they haven't been able to pick up their patrol shifts.

So Jimmy patrols, making sure nobody steps outside of the steadily shrinking border, keeping an eye on where the mites are piling up as a better reference point than their stakes in the ground.

He sees Scott, sometimes. Scott paces the border, marks precisely where it's changed, sometimes staring a long time out over the land beyond Sanctuary, as if he longs to leave from this place, as if he can see it as something of its former glory.

Jimmy does the same. He often finds himself wandering to his favorite place in all of Sanctuary, the flat boulder in the woods that looks out over the plains that remind him so much of the land where he grew up, before he was ever a sheriff in the beautiful mesa.

He can pretend that everything is normal, looking out there.

Sometimes, he can't see the darkness that runs through the grass.

Sometimes, he can see other things.

It's two days after the trip to the catacombs that Jimmy's forced to admit that the hallucinations are in full force.

He'd wondered morbidly, for some time now, what it was like. How long would it take to succumb to the illness? How gradual is the appearance of the hallucinations? How long until the fever starts?

He knows, now, that the hallucinations aren't gradual. He'd simply woken up by the campfire to find Lizzie standing before him.

"I can't believe you," she says disgustedly, arms crossed. "Sleeping on the job?"

"I'm dying, I think I deserve a bit of slack," he mutters. She scoffs.

"Why would you deserve slack? You caused this. You killed all those thousands of people."

Jimmy goes to say something—he isn't sure what—but Lizzie is gone.

After that, the hallucinations are frequent. He sees long-gone friends—Lizzie, Norman, Pix—and abandoned buildings, forgotten memories and lost messages, and . . . dark creatures of shadow.

It’s unsettling and deeply disturbing, but not even the most bone-chilling hallucinations can keep him from sleeping.

He's so tired. He's been digging himself deeper and deeper into sleep debt every night for weeks, and now he can't find the strength to push through it.

Jimmy sleeps. All the time, everywhere. By the campfire, slumped in a chair in the inn, at the table in the planning room of the church.

So often he wakes up on that boulder overlooking the plains, the rock warm under his back and the sun pleasantly shining through the leaves of the tree behind him.

His body starts to ache.

His bones start to weigh down with exhaustion.

His hands start to shake.

His body is fighting, he can tell. Trying to put off being sick as long as possible. Trying to conserve his strength for healing.

There isn't any healing to come.

The others are going into the Rift.

Well, Jimmy's meant to be going, too.

He'd proposed himself going (he had spoken to them, laid out the plan in exactly the way he thinks he would have, but it's hard to remember how to act like himself when there's gaping black maws where everyone's eyes should be), even though he isn't planning on it at all.

Scott is going.

He doesn't know it yet, but he's going through the Rift. The spark in his eyes hasn’t died yet, and despite every doubt he has and the mistakes he’s made, Jimmy knows that the others look up to him. They’ll follow him, more willingly than they had ever followed Jimmy.

Jimmy isn't sure how to change the plans right after he presents them, though, so he just leaves, back to lie on his boulder to watch the wind ruffle the grass.

The sun is gently warm on his face.

His hat slips back, flopping off his head.

He closes his eyes, just for a moment. It isn't sleeping.

His body's just so tired.

Time passes.

It must pass.

Because the next thing Jimmy knows, the sun is not on his face and there's a scratching noise from beside him.

He blinks his eyes open, casts his gaze around.

fWhip is sitting beside him, writing in a journal of some sort. That's the source of the scratching noise—his tiny pencil going back and forth on the page, scurrying like a little mouse.

"Sorry," Jimmy mumbles, biting back a groan as he sits up.

It's so hard just to sit up.

fWhip chuckles a little. "It's cool. Just glad you're getting some sleep."

Jimmy doesn't respond to that.

"You know, you've been running yourself into the ground. You deserve a second to rest."

Definitely not a hallucination, then. Seeing as his hallucinations tend to hate him.

"What are you writing?" Jimmy asks, in lieu of arguing about his sleep habits.

fWhip shrugs self-consciously. "Nothing much. Just journaling." He gestures around at the plains. "Describing Sanctuary, us, the things we're doing. Just in case."

"In case of what?"

"In case . . . well, I dunno," fWhip says. "I keep imagining this scenario where we go through the Rift, and we end up in a different world, and we forget all of our history just two or three generations down. So I'm writing down all of this."

"Don't forget to mention Tumble Town," Jimmy says. "The most . . . uh, the best land for miles around."

fWhip shoots him a toothy smile. "Want to write something? I have pages for everyone."

Jimmy stares at his proffered pencil, then carefully takes it in his left hand, before transferring it to his right. He doesn't want his cuff to pull up even the slightest bit, revealing the mark on his wrist.

fWhip flips through his journal—a repurposed sketchbook, actually—until he finds the blank page he's looking for. He sets it in Jimmy's left hand.

"Just write anything. I'm planning on filling it in later with a bunch of biography type-stuff, but I can work around whatever you want to put."

Jimmy sets the pencil to the paper, willing his hand not to shake.

The Sheriff, he writes, in his quick, sharp cursive. Then, just below:

Jimmy.

It's not his best. It definitely doesn't look quite like it normally does, when he signs warrants of arrest or bank notes. Not as careful, the lines not as straight.

The J has a little divot in the line. The second h falters just the slightest bit.

He doesn't want to write anymore.

Or, rather, he doesn't have any more that he wants to write.

He slides the book back into fWhip's lap. "There," he says. "Now you can sell it for lots of money, it has my signature."

He can tell that fWhip's laugh is more to humor him than anything else.

"If I ever get Katherine's hands on this, absolutely," fWhip says. "I want her to draw everyone—have you seen her sketches? Like, in her workshop?"

Jimmy shrugs.

"She's actually really good. Scott, too. I just . . . don't know if I'll see Scott again, so. . . ."

He trails off with a bit of a cough.

Jimmy looks back over the fields.

He can't stay here.

He can't stay here, sleeping and aching and hiding until he dies.

He can't convince them to let him stay here. fWhip, at least, would insist on staying with him, and if Jimmy’s learned anything, it's that he wants his friends to survive.

He's going to have to leave.

"Actually, Katherine is what I came here for, I totally forgot!" fWhip snaps his journal shut. "She was wanting to talk to you. Do you wanna come back with me?"

"I'm sorry," Katherine says after a long moment.

Jimmy blinks. "Sorry? About what?"

She shrugs. "Pushing us to go look for Pix. If we hadn't gone for him. . . ."

For a foolish, hopeful second, Jimmy thinks she's referring to the death mark on his wrist.

Then he remembers that she doesn't know it exists.

She's talking about Shelby's condition.

"Don't worry about it," he tells her. "It was my fault."

"No—you didn't want to go, you—"

"But I let it happen," Jimmy cuts her off. "It was my fault, okay?"

He can take the blame.

What's another sin on top of ending the world?

Katherine frowns. "Are you sure? Because I know Scott's beating himself up over this, too. And if you really thought that it was your fault over his, you would go tell him."

Her face has gone from open, apologetic, to practically glaring at him.

And, really?

Jimmy absolutely deserves it.

"Sure," he says, trying not to let show the exhaustion dragging on his bones. "I'll talk to him."

Katherine nods.

She looks like she's sparkling.

She looks like she has wings.

It's long past midnight when Jimmy slips into the chapel.

Scott is there, he notices immediately—curled up and asleep on a pew near the entrance. Scott hasn't ever slept in his own bedroom, as far as Jimmy's aware. Every night when Jimmy checks on everyone, he finds Scott here, wrapped up in a blanket.

He ought to tell Scott that he's leaving. That he wants Scott to be in charge. That it was his fault.

But he can't bring himself to wake him.

The candlelight is low, and at the front of the chapel, muttering under his breath and holding his hands to a sleeping Shelby's head, is Sausage.

Even from afar, he looks exhausted. His hair falls limply into his face, his shoulders are slumped and his clothing is rumpled. He doesn't even look up until Jimmy is right beside him, spurs clicking all the way down the long aisle.

"You should rest."

"So should you."

"I'll wake Shelby, all right? She can hold down the fort for an hour or so."

"I feel close."

"You feel tired."

"And you don't?"

"This ain't about me."

"I can't. I can't go to sleep. I can't fail them."

"I reckon I understand. But this won't get fixed lest you take a rest. Just an hour."

". . . Okay. Pero, necesitas dormir también, okay?"

"I don't speak whatever that was."

"Stay here and rest a little. Just pretend like I'm giving a sermon, then it'll be easy to fall asleep!"

"Right. I'll wake Shelby."

fWhip never locks his room.

So it isn't hard for Jimmy to sneak in and tuck the Deputy Norman badge into his packed backpack.

Dawn breaks early the next morning, and Jimmy feels surprisingly lucid.

He feels like—no, he knows, somewhere deep within—his body is giving him a brief respite before it starts fighting the next stage of the illness.

Jimmy lingers outside the chapel, absently twisting his hat between his hands.

The others still have a day to prepare.

But Jimmy had packed his satchel with a bit of food, his waterskin, and a couple of papers with a pencil.

He's ready to leave.

He just has one person left to speak to.

As expected, Scott heads out from the inn to the church soon after dawn, likely having grabbed something quick to eat before returning to his self-imposed work of watching Sausage and Shelby.

Jimmy catches him by the shoulder.

His sleeve rides up just slightly. He hopes Scott doesn't notice the pink mark.

"Could you walk with me?" he asks quietly.

Scott glances uncertainly toward the church.

Then he nods.

Jimmy leads the way, and perhaps he can sense how unwell he truly is by the way his boots land a bit heavily against the dirt path and his legs feel almost too tired to pick his feet back up.

He probably has . . . a week, at most. Maybe a bit longer, if he takes it easy.

Right. Take it easy.

He doesn't want to leave.

He can't stay.

"Nice out," Scott comments, and Jimmy jumps.

He'd forgotten that Scott was there, or maybe assumed that he'd imagined him.

"Yeah, I guess," he says, looking around. "Bit warm for this early, but I ain't complaining."

It is a bit warm.

Sanctuary has had fairly warm temperatures the whole time they've been here, but the morning is usually more moderate.

Maybe there's a heatwave building up—one last hurrah of summer, before autumn properly takes over.

Sanctuary has been looking rather fall-like of late. Orange and yellow leaves making up the majority of the trees. It's quite pretty, really. Jimmy's never been to Sanctuary in the fall.

They pass under the trees, down the winding dirt footpath that Jimmy's trodden into the ground almost on his own (although there were remnants of it that he followed those first times), so many days and nights out patrolling the same line. He goes just beyond the trees, right to his favorite spot.

The boulder is almost wavering in the weak morning light.

Jimmy pauses beside it, looks out over the plains.

His view is framed by red leaves, and out beyond is rolling green-and-yellow grass, long and waving, the sky still such a young blue behind it. It looks like it hasn’t been devastated by the apocalypse. It looks calm, welcoming, lovely.

It looks so much like home.

"This is the most beautiful part of Sanctuary, I think," he murmurs.

Scott shifts beside him.

Right.

Time to delegate.

That's all he's doing. Delegating. Adjusting a former command.

Jimmy takes in a deep breath, then turns, looks Scott in his mismatched eyes. "I want you to go through the Rift," he says, willing his voice not to falter.

Scott blinks. "Sorry, what?"

Jimmy sighs, then sits on his boulder, tugging one knee up to his chest. How can he present this? "I'm not going," he says, and prays that Scott won't ask why. "I want you to take my place."

"Wh-why?"

Shoot.

Jimmy doesn't want to speak.

So he doesn't.

He looks out over the plains.

It isn't just his childhood that he misses, he supposes.

He's a cowboy. A traveler. He isn't meant to stay in one place for too long.

He's meant to feel the grass underfoot, and the wind through his hair, the dirt on his face and the sun on his back, fresh air in his lungs and a horse at his side.

Jimmy has a chronic case of wanderlust, and Sanctuary only grows smaller by the day.

"I can't do that," Scott says suddenly. "I—you're the leader, I can't—I don't—"

"Scott," says Jimmy, and it comes out smaller, softer than intended.

Jimmy can see, out of the corner of his eye, that Scott freezes.

"I'm not going. And they'll follow you. Even False will follow you, if you can convince her." False doesn't trust easily, if at all.

Jimmy doesn't think he ever really got her trust. Just her approval.

"But I can't go through the Rift."

"Why not?" Scott asks, nothing stubborn in his tone, nothing angry.

Jimmy can say he wants to find a way to protect everyone left.

He can say that he's going to go looking for Pix.

He can say that he left something important in Tumble Town, and he needs to go get it.

But Scott is a lover of truth. He’ll see through any lie that Jimmy tries to give him, so distrusting after everything he’s already put him through.

And honestly, he deserves the truth.

It's not going to be easy to say.

But Jimmy fixes his eyes determinedly on the horizon, and twists the loose button on his vest, and makes his choice.

"It was in the catacombs," he says, and he can't make his voice any louder than a near-whisper for some reason. "I was marking our path with chalk. And. . . ."

He can't say it.

Luckily, he doesn't need to.

Jimmy shakes back his right sleeve, just enough that death's mark shows.

Scott stares.

"I didn't know what to say," Jimmy says simply.

That's the most truthful of it all, isn't it?

"Not when we couldn't stop moving while we were down there. Not when Shelby needed comfort. Not when we needed to focus everything on her."

Jimmy supposes he ought to feel something about that—sadness that this is the end, that he'll never see his friends again. Or relief, that he can finally stop running. Or maybe even despair, knowing that there is nothing he can do to protect his friends anymore.

He doesn't feel any of that, though.

He mostly feels tired.

"We might be able to heal you," Scott suggests, and he sounds as tired as Jimmy feels. "If it works with Shelby, we can do it with you, right? We can just put off the Rift thing until you're both better."

Jimmy isn't going to get better.

He isn't going to give himself that chance.

"And if Shelby doesn't get better?" he asks.

Scott looks away.

He's about to say something placating. Something kind and fluffy, to make Scott feel better about not trying.

The truth. Jimmy needs to tell the truth, not soften the blows.

"I want to stay," admits Jimmy. The words tear from deep within, yet pull free almost easily—like tugging a barely-formed scab off a wound. "I do. But I can't. And maybe it's selfish, Scott, but I don't want them to know that . . . that I've been hiding this from them."

He doesn't want to face their anger, possibly their grief. He doesn't want them to force him to stay.

Because if they find out, and he's already gone, he'll be just another rescue mission.

Someone else could die.

And . . . he's kind of been lying to them this whole time.

People don't like being lied to.

"Like you hid the stuff about Joel from me," Scott's saying, and Jimmy grimaces.

"Yeah. I'm not really good with confrontations like that. You saw what happened. But I couldn't just leave without telling someone, you know?"

"So . . . you're leaving."

He is.

He has to.

"To—what, become like Oli? Instead of staying here, where we can help you . . . go peacefully, I guess?"

Jimmy shakes his head practically before Scott's done speaking. "I don't care much for the idea of staying in bed, all still and sick 'til it's over. I figure I'll just head out quietly, yeah? I already packed my bag. Just wanted to make sure someone could be in charge."

"I'm not a leader," Scott says, sounding a little bit panicked. "What about fWhip?"

Jimmy almost laughs. "fWhip's a follower. He gets too stressed to actually lead."

"Katherine?"

"I don't think she'll want to go through the Rift," Jimmy says thoughtfully. She'll want to stay with Shelby, he's sure of it. "She said she'd come, but I bet my bootstraps she'll back out last minute."

Scott opens his mouth, clearly about to suggest the next person in line.

"And not Gem, either," Jimmy cuts him off. "Scott, I chose you because you're the one who fought back when you thought I'd made a wrong choice. You spoke up. And not just then—you suggest your own plans all the time. You're a leader, even if you don't know it."

Scott doesn't respond to that.

Jimmy looks out over the plains. He can imagine that Scott is biting his lip, trying to think up some argument.

He can imagine that Scott has a lot of things he wants to say.

Somehow, Scott rarely ends up saying them.

After a moment, with a scraping of fabric against stone, Scott sits down beside him, quite gently leaning against him.

It's an invitation.

And he's so tired.

After a long moment, Jimmy lets his head fall onto Scott's shoulder.

It's peaceful, all quiet-like this early in the morning. The world feels almost sleepy, the sun rising but not blinding.

Gem worships the sun, to some extent. Her kingdom of Dawn revered its rising, held festivals and services in its honor. Jimmy understands why every time he watches it rise, every time he sees the orange glow that slowly spills across the darkened world, softly letting more and more light into the day to gradually pull the lands into consciousness.

The sun isn't going to be able to pull him with it.

He's going to die.

He's going to die before he ever feels fully awake again.

He's never going to be entirely conscious before he sleeps forever.

“You should go.”

The voice belongs to Lizzie, he thinks. Or Pix. Or Oli.

“It’s time to go.”

That one belongs to Joel.

Jimmy swallows, gathers every bit of consciousness and strength that he can find, then pulls away from Scott, stretching.

“I should probably head out before the town wakes up,” he tells Scott, and he can see his eyes, mismatched and conflicted, through the shadow that tries to darken them. “Get away before anyone can stop me.”

“Sure. What do you want me to tell them?”

He wants Scott to tell them goodbye. He wants them to know that he loves them, that if he deserved any better he would stay.

But he won’t put that on them.

He tells Scott to convince them that he deserted them. He tells Scott he’s leaving without any sense of direction, that he’s going to go out there and hope for the best.

He doesn’t tell Scott goodbye, either.

He deserves better than that.

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rearranging-deck-chairs · 1 year ago

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yaz voice: i keep thinking,,, i keep thinking abt the.....future affecting the past of it all. the "if he runs out of time the hostile action would end and a time machine would know", "im fine because you fixed yourself", and "because it's not a grave"

like if it were me. if it were me. i still would have gone with the villa diodati conundrum. "save the poet, save the universe" what do we do when the poet IS the universe. "watch people burn now or tomorrow" like the distinction exists? like tomorrow isnt yesterday?

so we make them face the child. the doctor loses this one, right? too beholden to their rules. lost with shelley, will lose with the child. because there is no way to win it. not with the rules of the universe theyve clung to up to this point. not without play

so theres a child that needs to be saved but the doctor cant do it because it will take the foundation out from under the universe. she Can Not interfere. she fails to be the doctor when it comes to herself. but yaz is there. doctor's doctor. wont accept this. saves the child

the universe crumbles, but this or tecteun's revenge the outcome is similar except. the universe that crumbles if you save the child is the timelords' universe, their imposed histories, their laws, their logic. nothing makes sense anymore. it's terrifying. gotta let go gotta let go gotta let go. you HAVE to play. play or perish. please it's not that serious. it's just identity! funniest game there is. listen to the master; tag, youre it

#i admit theres a lot of details to work out #a lot of details ive forgotten about also #but give me a minute and a rewatch of every episode since 2019 and i'll be good to go #hdfkjhgj #i Would like to write my own version of idk everything since halfway s12 i guess #but it'd be so much work man #and for who #well me i suppose #maybe one day #also now that ive written it out loud a 'future affecting the past' theme seems inevitable if youve got a writer #responding to his own old work #but i really do need to rewatch to remind myself of all the details i need to fill in and check off here #theres a lot im missing #but if it were me!#if it were me the scene where yaz stops the doctor and runs off to save the child would echo the end of 12x10 #the aftermath of it would be brutal i think #13 would be torn apart by conflicting impulses #YOU SHOULDNT HAVE/yes you should have it was the right thing to do/but ILLEGALIMPOSSIBLE/you did what i coudlnt (shamepride)/#it was done for love/how dare you/it was done for ME/the universe cant suffer for me i cant bear that/#you had no right to make that choice/i wanted to protect you from it/you had no right to put the end of the universe on me like that #she would break open completely it'd be messy as fuck #and incredible to see #and then i havent even imagined yazs responses yet

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shannonsketches · 8 months ago

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Terrible news gang after the passing of Toriyama sensei my DBZ brainrot is back

#I'm still mad at tumblr but I needed to say this #RIP to a legend #The MVP the OG the man who made me want to tell stories safe travels #I've been delving into Super after not wanting to deal with it but I'm actually enjoying it a lot #I saw BotG when it first came out and I thought it was fun but I saw Ressurection F lately and that gave me some real good brain scratchies #Not exactly what I wanted but you know what it was fun and I waited 25 years to see Vegeta beat the tail off that bitch so I'm good #I know he comes back but this was nice for me this was a nice thing to come back to after all these years away #not promising art or content still very mad at tumblr #just an update I miss Toriyama already and I'll miss his interviews that piss off half the fandom and make the other half scream-laugh #good times...end of an era rip sir you were one in a billion #Fun Fact: If you've known me a long time you know my Big Three Blorbos are Magneto Vegeta and Ganondorf and I tell people #It's because they're the same character under slightly different circumstances #A lot of my NabsGan writing came out of shipping Vegebul and I personally think it shows lol #dbtag

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mistergrass · 10 months ago

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hmm

#I've been going through my old furuba headcanon/meta tags and man do I miss it #I also want to acknowledge some asks I've gotten in the past *checks notes* couple years #I can only do one thing at a time like a sim #and the one thing I've been doing has been going back to grad school for some reason #anyway it's my last semester #and I'm very very very tired #and really missing writing things that aren't my thesis #things like fanfiction #things like my incomplete fanfictions #anyway maybe I'll see whoever's still hanging around here in a few months #wish me luck in the meantime #it's week 2 of the semester and I already cannot stress how tired I am

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souenkun · 3 months ago

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Life update: my brain feels like scrambled eggs but I've also started going on short walks with my cat, and it turns out to be a nice routine. Apologies to messages and ao3 comments that I haven't been able to reply; I'll get to them soon! 🫂

#haven't been able to focus much at all throughout september and it's getting tiring :/ i miss writing too and i'm not getting any wips done #my health hit rock bottom again though which explains the fuzzy brain fog + constant tiredness. nothing new with that lol #going around in circles while my cat explores with his leash is surprisingly fun though! :o yes my ankles k-words me afterwords #but i get to see sunrises/sunsets and feeling the wind is honestly so much better than getting cooped up in my home while icing my joints #what is another jump in points in my pain likert-scale indicator compared to the joy of touching grass (more like concrete)#one way to describe my life currently is the chained man meme whenever i'm indoors and the unchained man meme whenever i'm outdoors LMAO #anyway. yeah. i even forgot to put the queue on for here 😭 i'll slowly reply to messages and comments. sorry it took so long 💔#please take care! 🫂🫂🫂 the wind is getting colder where i'm at. i don't experience fall here but it's likely starting in some areas #personal

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doodlingwren · 3 months ago

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Hiatus

I am going on hiatus for a bit more. I really really hoped the stuff that have been going on lately were already "sorted out" but, uhm... they aren't. I need to take a bit more time offline once again, and try to work things out.

Thank you for your patience ❤

Wren

#EDIT: I've deactivated my IG for a bit because it wasn't helping at all. I'll be back there but I need time #wren text tag #somehow issues from mid July/early August have managed to get worse. Like I'm not even surprised bc I'm used to it but GIRL . What the fuck #“it's finally summer”+“can't wait to draw!” * gets 3 hiatus in a row * maybe drawing or summer isn't really meant to be 🤨🤔#I hate having to log-in to post a hiatus message and then dissapear again when I'm supposed to post my doodles n have fun #Feels like one of those jesters that appears at luncheon to entertain the royal court and then they go missing for the rest of the month #bc I'm trying very hard not to hide in my shell + having a bit more presence here to post my artwork #and somehow I fail at both like fucking heck. How can you be so bad at this.#but in short I won't be here to answer stuff and being silly or whatever people expect me to do #because if you're here for the silly stuff. MAN. I'm am sorry but I don't feel silly at all.#Somebody once said “the horrors are never ending yet I remain silly” but I forgot the “remain silly” part #And if you're here for drawings. I don't even have time and I don't feel like drawing at all. Idk which one is worse #The bakery hangs up the “closed today” so people know they have to go to buy bread somewhere else. Same here. But it won't last a day #idk why the bread analogy. Guess I'm a birb after all #this is also the closest thing to a vent post I will ever write and I managed to say nothing at all. Vagueposting about vent. Good job Wren #tw: vent #tagging in case somebody like me needs to have some tags filtered #the hiatus will go on also a bit longer because the last few weeks my mental health suffered a lot and I know my limit #also this post was queued. If I see I can still be active before publishing I will delete it otherwise see for yourself #also queue doesn't work ig like I programmed this for 9 pm hopefully it will be up by then and not any other random time

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stabbyfoxandrew · 4 months ago

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i will now be downloading every fic i read forever

#lol i've been down a rabbit hole trying to find a way to Get It Back. but i'm too stupid to actually do it.#so yeah i'm just going through it.#fucking grieving #not just that one fic like there are Many that have been deleted that i miss and i want them :(#the world is cold and hard... jeanmoreau bending his crush's dad in half is warm and soft and GONEEEEEEEEEE lgkdjkgldjgkldjgklj #maybe i'll fucking write a new one...#i mean i won't because good lord i have enough shit i'm trying to write :')) but i wish man #anyway. insanity over gonna do something that matters now i guess #diaerie

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sky-is-the-limit · 1 year ago

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Flirty/cocky Graves all the way (should be walked like a dog)

The poll is currently not swinging in your favour, dear anon 👀 I mean, we'll see tomorrow innit

#I'll probably write both but the 2nd one after a while cause i miss writing for my main man Price #ask #cod #phillip graves smut

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lacomandante · 11 months ago

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okokokok i raise you teresa reading sense & sensibility honestly!!! elinor pushing through grief and loss and hardship with no ability to take up a sword and change her circumstances, and the drama of marianne being taken advantage of for having the courage to love freely…. i think she’d wanna gut mr willoughby tbh!!

Teresa reading any of the JA novels tbh!! But YES S&S is a fantastic one! I think as an older sister too (at least, that's my headcanon- Vivar mentions her sister, Maria, and in the books it's Ramon, so I say Teresa is the eldest child/sister, and I say she has both siblings!) she can really relate to Elinor- she has to take care of her family first, to put her own emotions and heartbreak aside, especially in times of great change and tragedy. She has to be the strong one. Teresa would definitely see herself in Elinor, and though I don't talk about her a lot because there's nothing about Maria in canon and she's basically a blank slate, I think Maria being like Marianne is a great dichotomy between the two.

I always thought of Maria being the baby of the family, so she gets away with a little more than Teresa did- she's also the youngest daughter, and while Teresa probably has a little more pressure to marry well, Maria more than likely doesn't. Maria can be a romantic, to chase after who she wants, though I like to think she's a little more airheaded than Marianne, less bold, but just as excitable. That one scene in the 1995 P&P with Lizzie and Maria Lucas makes me think of their relationship- Teresa guiding and teasing the overly worried Maria. "Mariah, this is your trunk and these are your gowns. You may arrange them in any way you wish- Lady Catherine will never know!" Also that scene where Mariah tells Lizzie to hurry downstairs and does a little spin- that seems like a thing Maria would do! Excitable and fun and so young.

And YES she would want to gut Willoughby for being such a rake and a terrible person!! Especially for knocking up a 15 year old and leaving her to fend for herself!! For the heartache he put Marriane through as well. Teresa understands the economics very well and knows that love sometimes isn't enough to make a relationship work- money is just as important. But it doesn't stop her from breathing a sigh of relief when Marianne dodges a bullet when he leaves her. Sam and I like to think Sharpe gets P&P for her and they read it together, and when they go to Yorkshire and meet a George Wickham they look at each other like 😳😳😳 mr willoughby and wickham found dead more news at 11

#;letters #(i just got finished listened to a reading of s&s so this was perfect)#(although of all the jane austen novels teresa reads i will be biased. i think persuasion is her favorite)#(because its the most mature of her novels- anne is older than any other protagonist. and teresa is a romantic and LOVES romance novel)#(especially in her youth though i think she tries to hide it/deny it but by the time she meets/marries sharpe she can indulge in it ;w;#(but i think she enjoys anne's maturity and how brave she is in the face of longing and heartbreak and yearning)#(8 years!! 8 years since she's seen the man she loved- the man she never stopped loving. it might not have been 8 years)#(but teresa understands that longing of missing someone you love dearly- someone gone off to fight- not knowing if youll see them again)#(all too well)#(one day i'll write out the moreno family dynamic i have most of it in my head as well as family fancasts....)#(also ty for your patience!! ill answer your next ask asap <3)

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speckle-the-crow · 1 year ago

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Every time I read a book by Fredrik Backman, I'm left speechless. !!!LONG RANT BELOW!!! + my reviews of the books I've read by him

It all started one year when the book "A Man Called Ove" was chosen to be read in my bookclub. The teacher was talking about how he has a different style of writing and I'm like oh alright bet let's try it out.

GOD. That book was a solid 10/10. It touched dark topics like death and suicide while also having a good humor. The chapter with the cat being almost frozen to death had me giggling a little too much 😂 I loved seeing it on screen when the movie came out.

So many good quotes were in this book. Especially between Sonja and Ove. “You only need one ray of light to chase all the shadows away,” “But if anyone had asked, he would have told them that he never lived before he met her. And not after either.” “Of all the imaginable things he most misses about her, the thing he really wishes he could do again is hold her hand in his.”

This book was just so amazing. I have nothing bad to say against it and strongly recommend it to be the first book one should read by Fredrik. It shows the dark themes he touches while having humor, how good the flashbacks are shown. How they leave you with more questions until you're gut-punched.

Alright. Second book I've read was Beartown. I got it as a birthday gift along with Anxious People (I'll talk abt that later). I knew Beartown revolved around the topic of rape. But god, it was still a hard read. Watching a small town get torn apart over the drama, how nobody really believed Maya and she was even bullied for lying. It broke my heart, leaving me in tears.

The worst part? How real this felt. How it's probably happened to countless girls and guys before. Being raped but not believed, then being bullied and harassed.

The quotes hit hard in this too. "It's not always obvious, because the people around a bullied child assume that he or she must get used to it after awhile. Never. You never get used to it. It burns like fire the whole time. It's just that no one knows how long the fuse is, not even you." “Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.” “What you create, others can destroy. Create anyway. Because in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and anyone else anyway.”

I don't have too much to say on this book as it was an extremely hard read and took me about a month to finish. But it was still a great story. I don't know if I'll finish the other two books anytime soon. I think what makes it hard is that there's no "happy ending." The rape can't be undone. The damage can't be undone. Maya will forever be scared of the dark. How Kevin has status, keeping him safe. Yes, he is scared of the dark now, but it's not enough. Nothing will fix what happened.

And what I just finished reading today, Anxious People "It's a story about a bank robbery gone wrong? How can that make me cry?" -Me to my teacher.

God. What a book. This book made me laugh and almost brought me to tears. If I wasn't in school while reading this, I would be ugly crying.

This book perfectly embodies Fredrik's writing style. How EVERY little piece matters. Every character is important. You're reading and then hit with a plot twist. Knut being dead? Never expected. That one COMPLETELY threw me in for a loop. The way the chapter hopped back to the flashbacks and then to the interview, oh my god I loved this so much. Might be my favorite one yet.

Every character was so diverse with their own story and struggles, yet they all came together and helped each other when they needed it. I loved the fact that there wasn't a villain in this story- the bank robber wanted to harm nobody, just take care of her kids.

So many of these quotes hit home. The funny ones, the serious ones.

“Not knowing is a good place to start.” I always tell my therapist "I don't know." She said I'm the only person she allows to say that. The fact that a psychologist said that??? It just comforted me so much.

"...but inside she was standing in a forest screaming until her heart burst. The trees grew until one day the sunlight could no longer break through the foliage, and the darkness in there became impenetrable." This one also hit home for me. I'm a very angry person but try my best to control it. Multiple times a day, I imagine myself running into a forest, screaming and yelling my heart out, nobody hearing me. I felt so understood, so seen in this.

"Can you imagine what a bad parent you must have been for your children not to want to be parents?" Woah. I had to close the book and think about this. I don't have the best relationship with my parents, but they are okay parents. They might not rob a bank for me though 😂. But this quote just... I don't know. It really puts a different view on things. It almost makes me feel a bit bad. All in all, this is a quote that lives in the back of my head rent free.

Ever since the first page of this book, I knew I was in for a ride. It felt so long ago, reading chapter 2, "don't think about cookies". This book is a solid 100/10, I will never get rid of it and will reread it many times to come.

Please. If you're looking for a good book to read, please just do ANYTHING by Fredrik Backman. His writing style is unique, fun, just so different and a breath of fresh air. His books will make you cry and laugh and you'll find quotes that you carry on with you for years to come. As I write, I find myself often writing in his sort of style. He is truly an amazing writer and comes up with amazing plots. Before reading his works, only one book ever made me cry. (A Mango Shaped Space). But no movie has ever made me cry. I sobbed in the theaters watching A Man Called Otto. Can't wait to watch Anxious People on Netflix now! I've heard bad stuff, but I'll still watch it.

I hope I managed to convince someone to read a book by Fredrik Backman. Or possibly even re-read a book. I know I want to keep reading books by him. Maybe My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry?

#fredrik backman #anxious people #a man called ove #beartown #book reviews #basically a ramble about how much I love him #please I'm begging you READ ONE OF HIS BOOKS IF YOU HAVEN'T YET #I'll never get over his writing omg #10/10 his books never miss

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