#Which might actually hurt worse

[brucenorris007]

No More Magic

“I remember every second.”

She lied. 

Rick downed another double and wondered how he’d been blindsided by it; he’d been with the 12th long enough to pick up on their methods, their approach to cases. He brought the perspective of the story, they looked at evidence and patterns.

What was his track record with women if not a pattern?

He knew Kate cared about him, in some capacity; caring made her the best cop in the precinct, Hell, in the whole city. And she hadn’t been totally innocent of flirting with him over the years, either. The evidence, as Beckett would’ve called it, at least showed some mutual attraction.

She wouldn’t have sought him out (after months of no contact, a vicious voice murmured) to bring him back if she didn’t care. And they hadn’t stopped flirting, they’d just eased off it a bit out of consideration for her trauma. In some ways, the past year had felt more intimate, at least to him. She might’ve even been wiling to sleep with him, provided they didn’t attach any meaning to it beyond the carnal.

She cared, but it wasn’t anything real. Nothing that would’ve made it last, made it beautiful. 

Kate didn’t love him, and she wasn’t going to. Simple as that.

Rick knew he’d been here before, every time he made a conscious effort with someone. Ultimately, all his attempts at a happy ending blew up in his face for the same reason; Beckett said it herself, he was the only common point in his relationships. Everyone adored Richard Castle, the handsome face on the best-seller book sleeves.

Nobody wanted Rick.

He took another drink, sliding the glass to one side so he could hunch over the bar. He pressed the heel of his palms against his eyes; he’d fled to one of his backup taverns. Beckett didn’t go out alone, as far as he knew—then again, he used to think he knew a lot of things—but if she did, it’d be the Old Haunt. He’d wanted space, time to get out of his own head, through drowning in scotch if that was what it took. Some self-defeating tendency in his brain just wouldn’t let him escape. 

He could only think how unfair it was that familiarity didn’t dull the sting of rejection; that failure still hurt so damn bad.

Kyra, Meredith, Gina... The sum of his parts just wasn’t enough to be anyone’s first choice.

He grumbled under his breath, pulling another shot.

‘This isn’t working.’

He needed a weekend away, a couple days out of the city to get his head on straight again. Los Angeles—no, he had memories there too—Chicago, then, or maybe Vegas for a distraction...

His phone, on silent for once, buzzed in his pocket. Against his better instinct, he pulled it out at the behest of some masochistic streak in him that hoped to see a message from Kate.

His daughter’s name came up instead.

Alexis, the center of his galaxy, the one woman in his life who preferred Rick—Dad—to Richard. His baby, about to graduate and head off to college in a scant few months.

She barely needed him anymore, and soon she’d be living under a roof he didn’t own.

That thought provided a brief moment of stone cold sobriety, and with it came clarity. It’d be so easy to meet someone superficial, to slip Richard Castle back on like a coat and just hide forever. Oh, it’d hurt, but he’d done it before; he’d changed though. Grown, he liked to think, because of the 12th, and he’d studied enough psychology during his career to recognize the temptation to regress. 

Rick didn’t want that.

He closed out on his tab, put on his coat and left the bar. He shunned the idea of a cab or his town car and started walking home. He’d use the time to sober up; neither his mother nor Alexis deserved to suffer his poor company and his inebriation.

He’d take some time off the 12th—he wouldn’t quit yet, he liked doing good too much for that—spend whatever precious moments with his daughter remained before she moved out, and he’d write.

Hopefully in that time, he’d manage to tease out the distinction between resignation and acceptance. Once he had, he’d... move on.

[edwinisms]

genuinely it’s this kinda shit that makes me seriously question my existence as a film major, specifically one focused on screenwriting for television. like it’s such a disgustingly hostile environment for any creators and just seems like an industry that gets progressively harder and more painful to participate in. why am I even doing this if whatever I may end up putting my time and effort and soul into will probably end up spat on and tossed out (if it even miraculously gets picked up by one of the handful of big malicious streaming entities that control what is and isn’t produced and seen in the first place). it’s either 1) don’t make any money and be doomed to have a second job forever, or 2) be subject to the torment and humiliation of the streaming service empire for eternity. that’s the state of show creation right now and it actually makes me sick and I just hope one day soon everyone gets tired enough of this status quo to shift the norm of how shows get produced back to a state where shows don’t require the permission of streaming services and other big corporate entities to exist and continue existing. that’s the only thing that’d make me feel like I have a real future in my own field.

[braceletofteeth]

I saw you holding the gun. I was afraid that it might accidentally go off. I was afraid that you would get injured.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[unproduciblesmackdown]

omgg lol [guy who won't stop going "more like scapeGOATED" voice] now hold! on!! lmao [same guy just saw encanto voice] Hold on!!!

[millionsnife]

//i've got Medical Bullshit (read: chronic pain from skin condition flare ups in multiple locations) going on which is why i have not been here despite intending to be. i do still exist tho

[toastsnaffler]

ah shit only just realised its september now.... lets hope the rest of this month isn't like this.....

[shortfeather]

the way the water echoes

did a little sprint based on that neverend mod idea, centered on cleo courtesy of @tripping-sideways. posting this mostly unedited; i think tumblr-only writing is gonna be more casual for me than AO3.

warnings: isolation, sort of imprisonment, liminal spaces, drowning, minecraft death mechanics including deliberately forcing a respawn

It doesn’t really hit her until she’s staring at the pit that leads to a second level, communicator hanging silent at her waist, how much trouble she’s in.

Cleo had been searching for an End portal a little closer to their base. Even with the Nether shrinking the distance eightfold, the main portal was ridiculously far from their home, and considering the amount of endstone she was going to be using this season it made sense to find one nearby. The stronghold had been half flooded, and they’d come close to death against the Drowned in the halls before finally making it to the portal room.

The lava was warm against their undead skin, even as the portal frame exuded a voidlike chill. To their delight, the frame had been mostly filled, just two eyes short. Cleo had popped them in, set a bed down for spawn, double-checked their gear, and hopped on through. Had bent their knees slightly, the way every new player is taught, so the jolt of the hard obsidian landing doesn’t do any damage.

Instead, she’d fallen far and landed in a deep pool of water, surrounded by white walls and with a beautiful blue sky shining down from above her. The exact opposite of what they expected.

Really, this whole dimension is about as different from the End as it gets. The End is all disconnected islands, here is a never-ending series of halls and rooms. The End is dark and cold, here is bright and pleasantly warm, enough for the cool water that covers the floor to feel like a comfort. The End is dead, and here there are bushes of something her inventory calls liminalgae, and occasionally, groups creatures similar to axolotls called poolfish. She can even pick them up, attracting them with the liminalgae like a cow to wheat. They're rather cute. The End is mostly void, here there is a beautiful flat ocean beyond the walls that an invisible barrier prevents her from reaching.

The End is a place Cleo knows how to leave, and here she does not.

She’s tried. The first thing she did upon scrambling out of the water was message X, only for her communicator to show a chat validation error. Their messages can’t go through, though waiting about ten minutes shows that they can still see the messages everyone else is sending. That’s comforting, to a degree; if they wait long enough, someone will realize something is wrong, and Xisuma can do his admin-y things and get them out of here. She’d told Joe what she was doing right before she found this dimension; maybe he’ll look into it even before someone thinks to call X in.

While she’d waited for other messages to come in, she’d taken a look around the room. Everything was made out of some variant of an unfamiliar block, similar in look to an iron block, but with a grid pattern and a feel like glazed terracotta. The entrance was decorated beautifully with bushes of the liminalgae stuff, which broke easily beneath her fist and stacked nicely in her inventory.

Which was also how she discovered her inventory was empty. 

Around then, her communicator had displayed a message from Mumbo, something about server lag. Cleo ignored it for a moment, because their inventory was empty, even their armor slots and offhand—they’d been fully prepared to go End mining, going so far as to stick a carved pumpkin on their head. It’s all gone.

Then they process that their communicator buzzed, and the fact that it’s not completely broken isn’t nearly as relieving as it could have been. They still can’t send messages out, but they can see what their friends are coordinating, and be prepared for whatever rescue entails.

Whenever rescue comes.

It doesn’t take long to get bored, which is why Cleo starts exploring, despite the fact that their F3 screen only says no, lmao. X is going to get an earful for including whatever mod this is when she gets back—

For now, they wander. They find some bizarre architecture choices, and rooms full of poolfish and liminalgae both. They discover, with a deep sense of dread, that the beautiful view of the flat ocean outside is a mirage; exploration reveals a set of windows that theoretically should point directly into another hallway, but instead show that bright blue sky. Whatever’s out there… 

Well, she’ll never know what’s out there, because the block refuses to break beneath her fist, no matter how long she punches at it. Same with the walls.

For untold days, she wanders. Without her F3 screen, there’s no way to be accurate about the time she’s spent here, but it feels like a week and a half. There’d been a jolt of hope when Joe asked if someone had seen them recently—but Tango had reminded him that they were End mining, probably deep in the grind by now. It’s been a week and a half, approximately, of ankle-deep water in hallways, and deeper water in grand, open rooms, and nothing to eat but liminalgae and nothing to do but walk around and breed poolfish. They’ve been staying close to the spawn room, unwilling to lose their one known location in this unknown dimension.

Their communicator buzzes more as time passes: Doc pranking Gem, Gem killing him in revenge. Xisuma reminding everyone to avoid the world border chunks until the next update. Grian pretending to be Iskall’s conscience, teaching him how to use boats. She mutes the communicator. It hurts to see everyone this way, while she’s stuck here.

She still checks it; she's not stupid. She just… can’t keep watching the texts fly by without her.

And then she finds the pit.

It’s a room unlike any other she’s seen so far. It leads down, deeper than even the deepest pool of water she’s encountered, and it’s filled with rows of stacked arches, bridging the gap. She crouches onto one and peers down. It’s darker, but not pitch black, and there’s a pool of water at the bottom, the same shape and size as the one they originally fell into.

In her inventory, her collection of favorite poolfish squirm. Cleo’s guts match the motion, because this is obviously where the dimension intends them to go. The pit yawns before her like a beckoning, like a challenge. But there’s no blocks here, no drops from poolfish or craftables with liminalgae. If Cleo jumps down, she has no way back up.

No way save dying, drowning or starving wherever she finds herself. Because that was the other thing she’d tried, when her messages refused to send and her inventory yielded nothing. Cleo had dove down to the bottom of the spawn room pool, and pushed all the air out of their lungs, and breathed in that cool water.

It worked everywhere else. It wasn’t pleasant, but it worked, and they were a grown-up who could work with something that wasn’t pleasant.

They’d respawned in free-fall and crashed into the very pool they’d just died in.

That had been a very brutal realization: they were stuck here. And yet it feels like that realization pales in comparison to the pit before her, the pit that calls to her so tauntingly with its insinuations. That there is more to this place than white walls and fake ocean and sunlight. That there is escape, if she’s willing to fight for it. Escape that may come quicker than her friends.

Cleo has always been a fighter. But they’re smart, too. Before committing either way, they check their communicator.

Unread messages:

<GoodTimeWithScar> DONT HOTGYU ME

<GoodTimeWithScar was shot by Grian>

<Grian> get gud 

<iJevin> seriously, is cleo just living in the end at this point?

<StressMonster101> Im sure theyll be back soon, luv

Without timestamps, it’s impossible to tell how recently Jev and Stress sent their messages, but they make Cleo waver. The safest option is to wait near the spawn room, where X or Joe will eventually spawn in and help her escape with their admin-y ways. With the poolfish and liminalgae, she can survive as long as necessary, although the liminalgae doesn’t seem to regrow. Still—up here, where she understands the terrain, is safest.

<iJevin> stress its been a MONTH

<iJevin> even for a megabase grind thats ridiculous

Cleo’s stomach falls out from under them.

A month?

They’ve been stuck in this endless pseudo-paradise for a month, and people are only just now worrying—

No. No, fuck this, fuck everyone except Joe who asked about them way back towards the start, except he hasn’t said anything since so actually fuck him, too. And fuck X for chatting about updates like everything’s normal, and Ren for saying innuendoes and double entendres like nothing’s wrong, and Grian and Scar for being Grian and Scar when she’s stuck in here—

Fuck Jevin especially, for saying that where they could see, where they could realize no one is coming for them.

Distantly, Cleo realizes that this is a bit much, that people do regularly go off and grind resources for absurd lengths of time, but that doesn’t stop her from beating back sobs by fostering the rage in her chest. Distantly, she realizes that this is all uncomfortably close to a breakdown, and they don’t get those. They don’t do those; they’re a fighter, someone whose first answer is violence and barbed words and arson. 

So. Fuck their friends. Fuck them all. Cleo will rescue herself. 

They double-check their poolfish and liminalgae count—enough to last another goddamn month, if need be—and jump into the dark waters far, far below.

[nerdynikki94]

Honestly? Did I want more from DTAMHD? Yes, I did. I wanted something signifying actual progression for Dennis' character (even just a crumb of genuine growth) , and I sincerely don't think we got that. However... we did get a fascinating insight into the process of his mind. Dennis' level of self-denial is so ironic and profound. He can't acknowledge the inevitability that he's middle-aged.

(I swear this episode honestly has given me an alt hc, that the show is based in his mind; because logistically, a man of his lifestyle and malnourishment could not commit the feats he is constantly sailing through. TGGB & DTAMHD... back-to-back? What happened to his hand? Did he even sprain it? Or is he just the most dramatic brat in the gang - clearly the latter.)

It is important to note that he didn’t fix the actual problem. He momentarily masked the symptoms, but ignore long-term help with blood pressure medicine is not going to fix the issue, nor is it going to protect him from fucking keeling over in a stressful situation (when he's not in a contained and quiet Doctor's exam room) and his blood pressure spikes.

I'm honestly a little jaded at this point (16 Fucking Seasons of crumbs, y'all), but if one were to continue 'trusting the structure' this episode conveyed a lot.

The B Plot: The pressure cooker. The metaphor parallels the building pressure Dennis quick-tempered bouts of rage. So, to toss out a little 'cat-in-the-wall' conjecture here: The pressure cooker is Dennis, but we all saw him eat that bloody diamond in the end and we all heard Mac's speech about coal turning into diamonds under massive pressure. Dennis' experience is a theory of pressure, he daydreams it all in the span of a minute or so. He's roleplaying with hypothetical obstacles. There's no risk. Maybe Dennis, isn't the pressure cooker, but the coal.

If I were to try and take anything hopeful out of this episode, it would be the way the narrative is showing us that this episode acknowledged that Dennis isn't ready yet. It's not his turn to break. It's going to take real, substantial pressure to get that diamond.

It was a hell of a misdirect (and honestly a little bit of a slap in the face), but if these characters live in the real world, where people are bound by the laws of mortality, then Dennis should have his time.

Genuinely, who fucking knows?

I'm not hating on the episode. We all know this is the trashy dick joke sitcom. I just thought that if Mac & Charlie could have moments of genuine heartbreak, culminating in deep catharsis, that maybe Dennis could have that too.... but no.

Can't wait to see the sunny dudebros miss the point & proclaim Dennis Reynolds - SA victim, traumatized individual with an emotionally tumultuous personality disorder - the new Andrew Tate.

I'm sorry, but yeah. I'm a little miffed. It was all a dream, and everything goes Dennis' way. Y'all I'm fucking tired. This was a great episode for Glenn, but a fucking frustrating episode for Dennis. I may have wanted a little macden, but all I cared about was seeing Dennis face the limitations of his mortality, to see that he's failing his body and his brain. He didn't have to actually take the medicine (I wouldn't expect him to), but Goddammit, everything seems to work out in his delusional favor. So, of course he's going to continue being delusional, and probably only change for the worse.

I'll say it: I wanted a broken Dennis, and we did not get that. He didn't even crack, the unbearble and apparently now canonical Golden God. That episode's title was intended to tease sunnyblr.

Excuse the plethora of tags. I just kept getting more irritated.

[jonny-b-meowborn]

Guess who fucked her wrists up during work because he refused to go on a single break because he felt like that's the only way to prove she's not useless since her autism stops her from doing anything a person his age "should" do

[caruliaa]

actually anyone from twitter if your gonna stay REBLOG POSTS !!!!!!! *especially* art/edits/fanfic !!

[arodrwho]

i have achieved. walk 2 days in a row

[caffeinatedopossum]

Sometimes it just hits me that not everyone feels like they have a bruise over their entire body everyday and I don't think I've ever really put enough thought into just how much that impacts me.

Like I just saw a tiktok where a person's dog stood up with its paws on them (as dogs tend to do) and I winced expecting that person to react as if in pain and they just... didn't? Does that actually not hurt for people? Because I think that would explain a lot

[multishipper-baby]

Thinking about soulmate AUs for my OCs because I'm in a romantic mood rn

[jettison-my-gift]

Mild rant incoming:

My dad just misgendered me multiple times in front of my brand new friend who’s only ever known me as a guy. Like I met her only a few months ago after being on T for years, so as far as she’s concerned I’m a guy, I look and sound like a dude. It’s chill. (Testosterone is fantastic 10/10 everyone should try it)

And then my dad comes in like “she this” and “her that” and he’s laughing and joking with my new friend and she looks super uncomfortable and I just want to disappear. And the worst part is I don’t even think he realised he’d done it. like it was a super brief interaction before he walked off and no one said anything about it. He’d just done it by accident. So I feel like I can’t be mad at him, like if I brought it up he’d probably be like “I hadn’t noticed I’d done that, I feel really bad about it” or whatever, and then I’d feel bad for even mentioning it. But it was devastating.

It just reminded me that it doesn’t matter if everyone who meets me reads me as male (which they do) they’ll always be some people who just think of me as “she” no matter what. I could have the most luscious beard and the deepest voice and my family will still call me “she” in front of people who I don’t want to think of me like that. It’s Inescapable.

And my family are accepting, they’re trying, as I said I’m convinced dad hadn’t even noticed he’d done it, but you can’t force people to forget who you were, you can’t force people to move on even if you have.

[our-inspire-verse]

Just keeps going round and round eh?