#about fucking time Belle

[sacratos]

Day 1 -> Sacrifice | Headache | "This will hurt."

Masterlist | Prompts Page

Word Count: 232

Caretaker gritted their teeth as the phone rang out again. Whumpee was in the back of the car, breath shaking as they shuddered again in a feverish sleep. They weren't going to answer it. They would ignore the incessant ringing. They wouldn't-

"Hello?"

Caretaker's eyes flitted to the mirror at Whumpee's voice, quiet and weak but without the usual stutters they had been speaking with for the last few weeks. They hadn't even noticed Whumpee had awoken.. or that they had grabbed the phone from it's place on the passenger seat.

They pulled the car over, eyebrows knitting together as Whumpee paled the slightest amount. As they nodded and let out a meek "yes, Sir." before flipping the phone shut again and throwing it out the window.

"I have to g- go- to go back-"

"No! Whumpee- you barely survived! No. I won't let him take you again."

"He'll ki- kill you! He knows where we are!"

Caretaker's blood ran cold. "What?"

Whumpee's eyes were wide, not with fear, with something else. Hesitance. Despair. An unwilling betrayal.

"H- he made me swallow a tracker- I couldn't- I tried to spit it out-"

They sighed. It was fine. It would be fine. They would make sure Whumpee was looked after and they would go instead. They text Whumper. Let me take Whumpee to a hospital. Then you can have me instead.

The reply? :)

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

If people could stop reblogging from trad fascists like Greater-than-the-sword or Prolifeproliberty that’d be a huge improvement.

[puwumats]

the wine's got me fucked up thinking about the keyleth/orym parallels. something horribly tragic happens to people you care for. it was a deliberate, and callous act, and killed innocents for no other reason than to further the one responsible's goals.

and now, due to world-ending circumstances beyond your control, you have to sit at a table with your friends and that very same evil and talk to them like they are your equal. some of your friends even want to side with them, however temporarily, for some higher goal. but you can't stop thinking about all those that you lost, because of this person. and the anger bubbles and boils away right underneath the surface of your usually-sweet demeanor, until you explode or die.

"you called a hit on my family. a successful one - fuck you" and "call me child one more goddamn time" are the same frustrated and bitter cry, just in a different key.

[laterkatersays]

4 Sided Dive | Episode 29 The Tower | Thru C3 E113

Question: Did Ashton find Jester’s relationship advice helpful?

Taliesin: (Emphatically) Yes.

Question: Why did he seek advice on Fearne at this time?

Taliesin: Honestly, because between guilt, which has been kind of festering forever in Ashton’s head, and also that they don’t really, like, they don’t hit on people normally. When they hook up with people, people hook up with them. They’re not really-

Marisha: The initiator.

Laura: I could see that

Taliesin: They’re not the initiator. They’re just willing to be cool, and then be nonchalant about it, and like, whatever. Like it’s not, there’s not a lot of- And like, not that this was commitment either, but I’m like, I don’t hit on people.

Marisha: Uh-huh.

Taliesin: And also, I feel really bad about a bunch of shit, which also then adds a bunch of like- I don’t want to be guilty and I don’t also want to be going, “Hey babe, it’s the end of the world, want to?” Like, no, no, no, no, no, I’m into this! It just happens to be the worst time that there is for this.

Laura: Has Ashton ever pined for someone before?

Taliesin: No, no.

Laura: Is Ashton pining for Fearne?

Taliesin: (Like when you’re trying to express something and your friend hasn’t quite understood) No…

Sam: What is it about her that turns him on most?

Taliesin: It’s honestly, it’s the- it’s a mirror of their own recklessness.

Sam: (Indicating Fearne’s supposed marsupial pouch)

Taliesin: Yeah, well, that, it’s the pouch too.

Taliesin: But no, it’s very rare for them to meet somebody who is just as irresponsible, who like has that same irresponsibility. And like, the way in his head that it pops up is, like, she really hits him in the best of the worst of him. Like, very much the you bring out the best of my worst. Which, the worst is never going away, and I kind of know that. So, I feel like my chaos is better around you, and I like, I’m not used to really liking people that way. Like, it’s always a little messy, ‘cause family is just designed to disappoint you and go badly. So yeah, it’s a whole-

Taliesin: (Speaking about Ashton specifically, I think) They’re not healthy! At all!

Marisha: No, you just said a lot of really sad things.

Taliesin: Oh they’re sad, they’re sad. Yeah, life has not been kind. They’re doing their best.

[screechingfromthevoid]

nothing (besides everyone ignoring Orym's deal) has made me angrier than watching Dorian keep up this facade. Dorian Storm has always been a type of mask he's worn. At first he called himself a liar because of it. The happy go lucky bard was a way of escaping for him. He was escaping Brontë so he created Dorian. He didn't believe he was Dorian. Until the Crown Keepers made Dorian real. And for a while, he really believed he was Dorian. That he has this new family and new life and he could be who he truly wanted to be.

And then his brother came back and made his problems Dorian's problems. Until he had to put Brontë back on. Because even if the Crown Keepers + Cyrus called him Dorian, he was Brontë. He had to be who his brother thought he was.

When Cyrus dies, the thread to Brontë had snapped. He was going to see Orym, back to the Bells Hells, back to Dorian Storm. But the foundation of Dorian had shattered. Dorian was created in order to run from his place in life, family, Cyrus. Now he was gone. The Crown Keepers had fallen apart. His friends fell through his fingers and he couldn't do anything to stop it. He was once ready to side with a betrayer god for these people and now they're in the wind.

So Dorian shows back up to Bells Hella and he's completely broken. The foundation of both of his lives has been thoroughly rocked. No brother. No Crown Keepers. The two things that forged Dorian Storm. He wears that mask so fucking well. Because he still wants to believe in it. He said it live on stage that he should "believe his own backstory". The one he made up. The one where he was a bard.

He wants to be Dorian so bad. He spends all his money on Orym, he spins the bottle so he can kiss his friends, he flirts, he blushes and giggles at compliments. Exactly how Dorian would, should.

But he wears the gold of the heir. He has a festering animosity inside his chest. He doesn't sleep. He's thinner than he was. He doesn't sleep. He sicks abominations after their creators. He talks to God's without an ounce of self preservation, daring them to strike him down. He does not acknowledge them as they taunt him.

The god of beauty and magic calls him beautiful and he does not smile.

[mosstrades]

THE FUCKING TMA VIOLINS AS [ERROR] EMERGES. YOU CANT DO THAT TO ME YOU CANT FUCKING DO THAT TO ME YOU CANT YOU CANT

[dykedvonte]

Why do you think did Curly let Jimmy go before the crash? I've seen the theory Curly briefly thought about crashing too but didn't expect Jimmy to go through with it

I generally believe it was shock and a bit of denial.

It’s the sort of thing where Curly knew Jimmy enough to know he blows up at things but he never would’ve expected him to go through with something so crazy. He gives Jimmy way too much benefit. It’s just his nature and the dynamics he has with Jimmy. They have a stable relationship as friends but it’s stabilized by the unhealthy toxic aspects that keep him in it. He’s like this with Anya, taking the gun is something he really shouldn’t have kept off the record, so is Swansea’s feigned hostility toward Daisuke. He doesn’t want to get people in trouble and doesn’t want to believe anyone would cause trouble other than to themselves. He’s a very lenient man.

I think the words were hollow in his head. Said but not really meant like all the times Jimmy lashes out and says something cruel to him or others. He never means it, if he did why would he still be Curly’s friend? Curly’s head wasn’t in the right space in that moment, he just got through panicking with Anya and if the sound design is anything to go by, was panicked and preoccupied going to confront Jimmy. I mean, the flash of the warning signs before he runs back are identical to the dissociative episode of sort he has when going to talk to Jimmy to do his Psyc eval.

There is this sort of assumption in fanon that Curly was the idealic person for the job and simply failed. None of them were the idealic people to be there, it’s Curly’s entire concern with the ladder he chose. I see more interpretations of him being purposefully ignorant where I see him as just always looking the wrong way or not in a place where he can see it. There’s something different about seeing something than being told about it in the human mind. It may just be the psych student in me but Curly def has some sort of cognitive dissonance just like Jimmy but when it comes to his role as a Captain vs who he is.

They blur in his head to where if you ask him if he was acting as a Captain or a friend or himself to his crew he couldn’t answer. Not with confidence even if he did. There are many times we see that Curly himself is not in the right headspace to lead the Tulpar and that’s outside of anything with Jimmy. He’s spacey, he’s not sleeping, he’s deeply unhappy with himself and life. It’s why there’s believability he crashed the ship. Maybe the others saw it, or maybe Jimmy heard enough of it to spin it in a way that made Curly seem suicidally depressed.

So the tdlr is I think it wasn’t so much letting Jimmy go, more so not seeing the severity of what he was allowing to transpire. In his mind it’s just another one of Jimmy’s bluffs, cruel words, off words but just words. Jimmy rarely ever acts, why would he now? Maybe he’s never seen it because Jimmy hides those actions? Either way, he just never thought he’d really do it.

[girlwiththegreenhat]

in spite of everything i have never been more convinced that kitt is completely in love with michael actually. the car, he yearns

[danwhobrowses]

What's this? My skin, cleared? My crops, watered!? My heart, soaring!!??

Callowmoore softness, comfort and sleeping beside each other my FUCKING BELOVED!

[expectiations]

From Stage to Screen: The Many Faces of Eve Best

some of the pictures are from @evebestonline

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

my n1 guilty pleasure is thinkin that post m2 lauretta moved deeper into criminal after several years & ended up sentenced to jail somewhere in the middle of 1970s

[wyzzze]

You guys will let me know when the good trauma hurt/comfort fics drop about Harumasa and Lighter being triggered about being touched and seen without their choker/sunglasses and feeling nervous about their scars/how skinny he looks bc he's sick, right?

You'll keep me in your hearts when those fics drop, won't you? 🥺

[undead-knick-knack]

I don't think Laudna ever learned how to properly interact with children or that intentionally scaring people doesn't win them over

[shorthaltsjester]

sometimes people will say “going dark” and then what they’re actually talking about is just people no longer presenting a carefully constructed version of their emotions and experiences.

like. emotional turmoil is not the same as darkness. laudna in this Fictional Universe that has tangibly different stakes wrt to death and killing than our own, is at best like . morally neutral for what she just did like. man has been secretly trying to kill you, and then just tried to do so again, killing him back is a fair choice. and even if i was someone who is excited by delilah’s inability to escape from the narrative, this shit isn’t about delilah. laudna made a choice. if delilah is back or whatever it’s a choice that laudna made because something in that grants her more control than her existing conditions did. this isn’t some Delilah Takes Over, it’s Laudna Expressly Makes The Choice To Call Forth Something within Herself to remedy the lack of control that’s been thrust upon her. if y’all want to Continue to limit Laudna’s agency (as the cr fandom is so, so want to do when a female character makes a choice that isn’t Good according to some weird system of virtue ethics) go ahead.

likewise with orym. little guy is not “going dark” because he has finally made direct action about his emotional turmoil in dealing with a situation which has similarly left him without control and has also placed him in a position where his stalwart conviction towards protecting and honouring those he loves and has lost alike is constantly met with other people he cares for going well.. what if they had a point/we are killing other peoples loved ones/etc. which like . yeah that might be frustrating and in fact might lead him to go, actually, i can’t afford to try and maintain some abject morality where I carry a locket that will literally only provide guilt. orym is completely committed to his beliefs, the locket and what it represents has never been a limit to what he will do, only a reminder of the consequences of what he might cause in those actions. but they Are at war and orym has a billion things on his plate. he can put down the locket. especially when bor’dor is the explicit manifestation of that locket’s symbolism. the subtext rapidly became the text and orym doesn’t need a reminder. it’s there in the fact that team issylra is walking away with two friends, not three.

these are character who have at every turn denied their own emotions in various forms while still being acutely aware of what they deny, whether that awareness was/is fully realized or not. many of laudna’s early convos with ashton show us that there is some awareness to the lighthearted spooky goth girl and how that persona fades when she thinks too much about what has led her and maintained that reality. likewise the entirety of orym’s story thus far is defined by his grief in a very literal sense, it Has extended from that grief to also the commitment he had to the purpose of figuring out the assassination attempt on keyleth but as we have seen, that purpose has fallen apart. paired with the quasi-reopening of his grief that was getting to see will again only to have to turn away, i don’t think there’s a lack of awareness in orym of how much he hurts. but between his actions and 4SD, that hurt tends to get buried under guilt or Responsibility.

and now, finally, both of them have admitted to that Not in the safety of small introspection or one-on-one conversations but with actions that they cannot shy away from or deny. laudna killed bor’dor and orym encouraged her to. and it Is a complex situation but truly I don’t really think it’s a “going dark” one. because they’re not giving into some overhanging Darkness of Morality™, they’re admitting that they are hurt and have long been hurting.

or, y’know, tldr for those who continue to deny laudna and orym agency or fully villainise them for whatever weird reasons . you could listen to laudna and ashton’s conversation that pretty much lays it out explicitly. laudna claims she’s weak for having chosen to kill bor’dor. ashton denies that and affirms instead that, no, she’s hurt.

[sparring-spirals]

my dash: Bell's Hells are doing doppelganger trust exercises in the feywild for bonding purposes

me: oh???? :) my fools?

my dash: half of them wanted to use detect thoughts to get through it. they werent allowed to. but they were absolutely planning to do it.

me, with great affection: oh, my fools :') of course

my dash: They Handled This Less Than Optimally and were accusing each other suspiciously and randomly and using all kinds of strange tactics

me: my fools :'DDDDD of COURSE they did-

my dash: Even in an ACTIVE TRUST BUILDING EXERCISE with live doppelgangers, they were still grappling with their chronic Fuck With Each Other impulses

me with all the affection in the world: u fucking <3 bet <3 they would <3 maladjusted trainwrecks <3333333

[ithacanradio]

"do you miss kissing?" is a bonkers line to say to your newly acquired ghost friend as you're dying of hypothermia ily charles rowland