#aka i love you

[wolsim]

“No, you're good.” The Judge from Hell (2024), dir. Park Jin Pyo

[hippolotamus]

somewhere, in another universe, i’m letting myself in your front door. you yell your greetings from a far flung nook of the house where you’re searching for something a cat ran off with. in return, i bellow my salutations and make my way to the kitchen for a glass of water. eventually you emerge, triumphant, smiling and pink cheeked, brandishing your find like a treasure before tossing it onto a dining room chair. there’s soup on the counter that i brought from your favorite restaurant, because god knows — and so do we — that i couldn’t make any worth eating. the containers remain there while we wordlessly migrate to the living room, dropping on the sofa, and automatically huddling together under a blanket. one that a friend sent for your birthday a few years back. the room isn’t cold or chilly. not enough for soup or a blanket with 2019’s hyperfixation screen printed on it. but both are equally necessary. vital, even. because there is nothing else i know how to offer except wrapping around you and pressing my lips to your hair. not when i ask ‘how are you? really?’ and you say ‘i don’t know’. or when you ask me the same question, but i bury the answer because i’m here to focus on you and the way your voice said what you weren’t on the phone. not all the ways i feel woefully inadequate. in the silence that follows i compromise with the closest truth allowable. i miss you. you understand that it’s not the type of missing resolved by physical proximity, but the type that’s only fixable by healing and recovery. by time. the type one wishes could be solved by snapping their fingers or waving a proverbial magic wand. another talent we both know i don’t possess. but i can bring someone else’s kitchen made comforts, and kiss your forehead. i can hold you as long as you’ll tolerate me while i learn every way under the sun to say ‘i love you’. ~ quiet hearts and open doors

[strangenewwords]

@ncc1701ohno is the best kind of friend a person can have.

just saying.

[cracklewink]

My Mane 6 Redesigns all together! I was going to post them separately but ended up finishing them all before I got around to it lol

[hollis-art]

they can be best friends. they can be lovers. whatever they are, i am rooting for them

[applepixls]

etho upon learning pots can be smashed by flying into them: "wait............. minigame!!!"

its like that one childrens book "if you give a mouse a cookie" except its "if you give a redstoner a new game mechanic"

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

Eldritch/not-entirely-human Grunkle Stan stories have been eating away at my brain, so I have a silly little concept of Mimic!Stan.

He and his Mystery Shack are both mimics that lure tourists in as a literal "tourist trap" to gather and devour them! Since the house is alive, it raises a few (read: several) child safety concerns that lead to a LOT of rules to be created for Dipper and Mabel to follow when they eventually arrive, such as:

Be careful not to get lost in the winding hallways! The Mystery Shack is bigger on the inside, and you don't want to end up in the wrong areas.

Don't go through randomly appearing doors, they may eat you.

If you think you feel the walls around you breathing and the floor beneath you shifting, no, you don't.

If you think the walls feel a bit damp, you're imagining it.

Watch your fingers around windowsills! You wouldn't want to lose any of them.

Don't linger too long under the doorframes; it may start feeling like they are slowly constricting around you.

[icelogged]

[cherrysaltvape41]

[oathkeeper-of-tarth]

Then all those years of building - were they worth anything? Yes - they're just hoping you don't realize it.

Rebecca Sugar going in for the kill with some sketches out of absolutely nowhere. Here's my best attempt at getting an okay-ish image out of a blurry vertical phone recording of a screen. Original video was posted on the official rebeccasugar account on TikTok - a big thank you to @jeejyboard for bringing it to my attention.

[modmad]

tiny toon scaled up to kiss better >:'3

[red-moon-at-night]

okay the whole vase is great but something about Helen sitting on Aphrodite's lap as she wraps one arm around her shoulder and brushes her leg with her hand, staring into her eyes like that... as she is persuading Helen to go with Paris (while Peitho aka persuasion stands behind them) is so incredibly iconic.

and gay. toxic yuri, if you will.

[allornothinggg]

am i the girl you dream of? ✺*ೃ༄

[acid-ixx]

gets fucking stabbed by damian and my last breath still be like "it's not his fault ! he is ten and was raised to be murderous since he was born ! kid entered a household where everyone ignores my existence, i don't blame him for assuming that to be the norm and acting evil to me so that he assimilates to his new environment ! bro literally went through the worst all his life so of course the way he expresses himself is harmful to others !"

and then i get stabbed again lol

— masterlist !

OH MY GOD PLEASE 😭 the gaslighting yourself is real, i'm telling you.

unfortunately, the reader's toxic mindset of justifying everything your family does is a common scenario for every time one of them fucks up; only in the past though. the present chapters will have you slowly realize just nothing really is ever your fault. that you've never once been in the blame for the actions of your youngest brother.

but right now, i want to focus on why you just seem to let damian go about his own crazy path of targeting you. and it's either it's because you have nothing, nobody else to fight back with you, or it's purely because you allow him to.

to destroy you, to make you suffer, to make you learn that you have no place, or standing in the family. and if you do have a place, it is at the rock bottom.

this is what damian is taught: the weak should be eliminated before they fester into some type of unnecessary cancer.

you're weak, when he first saw you, when you first approached him with your tail tucked behind your legs and an invitation to hang out together with the scent of cookies wafting in the air— he knows that it is you who will make him weak.

you give him temptations to be a child, he's raised to fight against it. he ignores the unwelcomed feeling of wamth that blooms in his chest, those are feelings that gets you killed.

so it's how the story goes: he brings his sword up to your neck, and sways his hands swift enough to make a small cut to ensure that the first thing you associate him with is fear. and for someone vulnerable like you, it doesn't take much before you quickly submit to the prospect of your place beneath a trained assassin like him.

he ignores the sudden pang of his heart and the aching, gnawing dread that chews at his mind at the memory of your widening eyes and the wobble in your steps.

it's already damaging enough to have the youngest be introduced and immediately accepted into the family, but it's worse when he's significantly younger than you, a boy nearly half your age; someone you've always wanted to have, to care for, to help raise and cherish... despises you from the start, before you two even formed a connection.

someone you once called your younger brother, now became an enemy in opposing lines in a place called home.

what would've been fine-tuned jealousy towards him because he was given everything in a silver platter turned into shame that you couldn't even face him, not right after he threatened to kill you, no... and especially not after you've convinced yourself that if you couldn't even prove your worth for a young boy like him, then you really have nothing good to offer.

you give him the autonomy to think it's alright, that due to his upbringing, alongside your naive brain always justifying that your other siblings are right, and you are in the wrong— he was given every opportunity to torment you when you even go as far as being in the same room as him.

and i have my receipts on why you're just like that; all in the grace of low self-worth and self-esteem. past you reasons out that it's because it's always your fault.

you couldn't even find a way to save your mother, you couldn't even establish your place in the manor, you couldn't comfort bruce when he was still not over jason, what more could you be when all you see damian as is a young, broken child like you? that behind that veil of threats and weapons ready to attack you, is someone you knew could've been different, if he was raised right...

if he'd given you a chance to help nurture the softer, more humane part of him.

you've always wanted a younger sibling, not only from back when you were just with your mother, but also when you were introduced to the manor. because not only did it mean that you'll know how your mother felt when she raised you, but because you thought you'd have somebody by your side throughout the silent torment you've went through.

and when you're graced with one, who doesn't even consider you his older sibling; you let it be.

you let him be himself.

damian wayne, demon's granson, the son of the bat.

so many titles he's called, but never one where he's your younger brother.

it doesn't help that you justify his past, because the man you idolize, dick, does so too whenever you try to complain. his excuses are never out of malicious intent to have you suffer further— it's just that he never once actually considered you as important enough to bat an eye on, like how the rest of them treat you.

because you know that even dick has his limit towards the youngest member of the family; he just never reaches it when it comes to you.

so if you have a person allow another to act terribly towards you, but have another, a friend or family, who teaches you that it's not right, who fights by your side; it wouldn't take long for you to also learn how to defend yourself then. you'll gain confidence that you're at least not alone, that your actions are completely valid.

... but if you have an entire family that couldn't even scold the boy for leaving a scar on your neck, who brushes his mean comments about you aside, who isolates you even further with malicious words that you know becomes crueler when targeted at you—

then you have no basis for what is right, and what is wrong.

and that makes your authority, your trust in yourself dwindle like your already crumbling relationship with all the others the further you try to fight back.

that's when you learn what it's like to give up, all over again. if you accept his vidictive insults, if you know your place to turn back if you see him in the same room, if you knew from the start that sometimes trying doesn't equate to succeeding; then it'll at least numb the pain that comes after.

for the entirety of your life from when damian was introduced, that was how you coped—

but your life after the manor, after damian matures and learns softness, about empathy (that he's buried long ago during his training from when he was all but a toddler) on your situation; reading your journal entries because he still felt entitled to due to some hidden, twisted trait of possessiveness... that's an entirely different story.

would you still be as understanding as you were back in the past towards him? would you still force yourself to love the demon you saw as just a little boy? or would damian finally understand that it's too late to turn back time, to correct all his mistakes?

either way, if you were capable enough to change (at least, in his eyes), becoming an independent person (you think, huh? your place is at the manor), then maybe you could give him a chance too, to fix your relationship and build a bridge to an even stronger one.

one where you could finally baby him, like what you've desired. one where he could feel vulnerable, when he learned that it's valid to feel weak— it cuts back to the previous points: you make him weak.

and when he's out to find you after going through every single diary, every entry, after deducing that there's still a small spark in your that'll forgive him if he tries; he refuses give up any sooner if it meant replicating the same warmth he felt when he stood by your presence.

so... you wouldn't want to leave your youngest brother waiting for you, don't you?

after all, it's just like what your entries told him, right? this is what you always wanted, right?

a/n: everyone is entitled to their own feelings about how i portray damian and mc's relationship!!! i love how all of you guys have different conflicting reactions to this. it's all so complex for me, how damian sees you as someone who's weak and makes him weak (he's just a stubborn little guy), and you, who sees yourself in damian, alongside the added desire to just have someone to care for (because you want to so badly honor your mother's memory), and that person also caring for you is ARGH!!?!

i apologize for my long rambles (if anyone wants me to cut back on posts like this, just tell me), i'm sure everyone is anticipating chapter 5 and possibly (soon) chapter 6 (since the drafts, not the final work is becoming too long). but right now, all i could provide are my depictions of the reader's relationship with every member of the family. i love to churn scenarios where it feels like you're actually part of the family so i'm actually manipulating all of you guys to become attached to the characters too, just to add an extra layer of angst, hehe...

[choccy-milky]

MC doing what we all wished we could do (aka napping on the floor with ominis )😴💕

[aleixis]

isagi's the sweetest bf ever, and never forgets to get you flowers on anniversaries !!

even though he's stuck in blue lock, he always makes sure to deliver flowers to your house when the one year mark comes around <3 he'll spend the little free time he has on his phone, scouring through the collection of flowers at shops near your house and nearly dropping his phone on his face out of shock for how high shipping is, but he'll endure through !

he'll even consult the opinions of his fellow teammates, taking every chance he has to shove his phone into hiori or kurona's face, asking what they thought of a different shade of pink for the 4th time in a row. they might be a tiny bit sick of him constantly fawning over you, him constantly talking about you to them, but that doesn't mean he'll ever stop; over his dead body he wouldn't.

with the ring of a doorbell, you find a delivery worker with a large bouquet of multi-colored tulips on your doorstep. he asks, "from an isagi yoichi?" you smile in response, thanking him and taking the bouquet into your arms. the bouquet came with a small note attached, reading, "roses are red, violets are blue, no matter what flower, i choose you!"

bonus — your parents constantly tease you for the comically large bouquet you got from yoichi, and you still have no clue how he had the money to buy and ship a bouquet of that size !!

taglist : @why2277 @koffeekat @skullvgirl @saioratral @fishii28