#and im truly at my fucking limit

[wisepuma23]

Knives and forks clink against the dinner plates, metal scraping and laughter, their base drips with water from above. Drip, drip, drip. Impulse watches. It seeps into the center of the table, a growing patch on the wooden grain. Right between the steaks and loaves of warm bread. Nobody pays it any mind. Drip, drip.

(…Nobody but him.)

Etho says something he doesn’t catch, a bark of laughter from Tango. Beads of water splash onto the surrounding food.

Impulse’s hold on his fork goes tight. 

He needs to fix that. 

“Impulse buddy, you with us?” Skizz shakes his arm, “You agree Scar’s acting weird right?”

“Yeah yeah,” Impulse answers on auto-pilot, “I heard rumors he’s been trying to get kills. Yellow Scar, man.”

Tango cackles and the conversation cycles on. Impulse steels his jaw, he can’t zone out again. Keep pretending, he reminds himself. It wouldn’t be good to stab his teammates at the dinner table. He’d have to clean the table out. Maybe pull out the entrails from the cracks in the grain of wood.

(Drip, drip.) 

No, focus. 

Focus.

(A faint, metallic scent permeates his senses– gone in a moment.) 

Impulse bites into a piece of steak. Buttery juice slides over his tongue and between his teeth. The taste of blood makes his grip on the fork creak. For what feels like the first time in millenia, his glamor itches at his skin. The careful control over his form twitches and squirms like a coiled snake poised to strike. 

Show them what you really are, hums in his mind. The dripping echoes like a wardrum. Show them your true face.

 Impulse licks at his lips, “You did a nice job, Tango. It’s delicious!” 

“Aww!” Tango coos, his flames crackling a soft orange-red, “Etho lent me some seasoning but he won’t tell me where he got the happy happy sauce.” 

Impulse takes another bite, canines digging into flesh and bone, and the rip is loud. Or is it loud for him? Again, infernal magic bubbles at the back of his throat. He swallows, appraising the flavor. It doesn’t drown out the sickly sulfur like he hoped. 

“Bdubs?” Impulse guesses with a tease.

“Oh come on,” Etho groans, “Ah I guess that was way too easy.”

“He married me too, remember?” Impulse laughs at Etho’s expression, “Can’t blame me for forgetting the best meals I’ve ever had! Bet he’s feeding his family around now.” 

Etho waves him off as they cackle at the blush rushing up past the mask. Impulse cuts another piece off the bone. Rip, snrk, clink. Idly, he wonders if human skin still made the same noise. 

The clink of metal against the plates, the dull pounding of water. The snap-crackle of Tango’s fire. Buttery-sweet blood coats his tongue.

He remembers the musky smell of Etho's burning hair and flesh, his screams turned into bloody gurgles as he flailed in lava in the first game. Just minutes before everything ended. 

Impulse tears off a chunk of meat.

(Snrrk, clink.)

People die in so many ways. It’s why he loves the variety poison provides— stomachs twisting and lungs seizing— and yet he wonders if anybody’s tried skinning someone, if the server would even allow it.

Impulse swallows a dark laugh, is vivisection on the table? His glamor shivers.

Metal catches the light, the smooth shimmer taking him back. To sharp arrowheads and snapping magma, to a castle reaching into the sky.

He remembers a golden clock.

(Rip, snrk, clink.) 

Impulse remembers the way Bdubs’ flesh bubbled and blistered from the Wither. The way his Red bloodlust sang at the way his corpse crumpled to the ground. Bdubs’ skin growing dark, mottled with blackened streaks and bruised from the Withering and regular battle. 

The worst of it healed over, scars stitched into flesh. But he’d be a liar if he said he didn’t revel in it, the stained canvas left on Bdubs’ face and arms. 

He kissed that face. Peppering them along wither-cracked ribs and arms, tracing every dark and poisoned line with a smile. I’m sorry, he had said. I’m sorry.

He meant it. (Yes, really.)

Impulse hadn’t meant to curse Bdubs with chronic pain and scars, especially since he had to feel the echoes of it through the soulmate bond. He loved Bdubs. Loved him since the beginning.

And he remembers the rip-schk! of the ax in his back. 

The way his blood pooled on the grass as everything went dark.

The phantom feeling of Pearl’s wolves tearing flesh from bone in long strips and bites. Riiiip-snrk-crunch.

Blood dripping from between their teeth.

(Drip, drip.)

Impulse stabs his fork a little harder into the next cut, picturing a handsome face with a cute and crooked grin. Damn him. He glares down at his plate. No, focus. Pretend, he tells himself, you’re good at that, aren’t you?

There’s a hand over his, warmer than it should be. He looks up.

Tango has cocked an eyebrow up with a cute little nose crinkle, “You in?”

Impulse blinks, the words registering in his head.

“Yeah, sure,” He grins, “A walk sounds great. I think I’m tired of Skizz’s stink overpowering the place. We really need to install some ventilation.”

“Hey!” 

And they laugh, bright and loud as Skizz pouts, checking his armpits. The glasses shake as Tango rattles the table with a smack, a cackle on his lips. Etho’s eyes twinkle with amusement.

Impulse’s focus drifts. Back to the present, away from the blood.

(Drip, drip.)

And yet.

(Rip, snrrk, clink.)

…The hunger prevails.  

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OOH YEAH BABY! PARTY TIME BABY! MUSIC! DRINKS! SOCIAL PRESSURE & A PSYCHEDELIC BREAK DOWN! WELCOME TO VAMPIRE SOCIETY MOTHERFUCKER! ARE YOU SCARED? DO YOU UNDERSTAND YET? ITS OKAY IF NOT. FIRE DISSOLVED IT! ITS ALL GONE NOW. HAVE FUN!

[pinkmoondoll9shihtzu]

The ethel cain irony epidemic rant is so real SO REAL i could sound off on that subject i could write a novel length essay it's neat how she said she wants to make a video on it cus for the past few weeks i was thinking of making a video on it TOO i just never committed to the idea since my feelings on it align w the subject matter which is: Who even cares , thats the whole issue, everything is supposedly "Not That Serious" theze days So why say anything. I hope she does make a vid on it though. nihilism & cynicism thinly veiled as irony is ultimately what pushed me offline (as in, not scrolling) since august and as glad as i am to be free of it all it's also still existing whether i engage or not & it is not exactly an encouraging landscape for sharing everything i've been working on for months so hard with all my most earnest efforts . . .

[eff-exor]

them jerking off in front of me while making me watch & match the pace of their strokes on a dildo they’re forcing me to ride, hitting me every time i lose focus & get overwhelmed by how good it feels to be porn for them, them replacing the dildo as they’re about to cum, causing my eyes to roll back and me to bite down on my bone gag BRBRNEMRR

[rabbithaver]

every so often i will see a post from a leftist on this website that is so egregiously ableist that i remember that like. oh yeah the userbase of leftists on this website is violently anti-disabled people and will jump at any chance to demonize any of us for any reason. i just forget that fact because i'm extremely dedicated to curating my space

i'm paraphrasing here but i saw a post that said, "every time i see an American [disabled person] mention being scared about the election because they're afraid of losing their benefits i have to laugh. anybody who wants blood-soaked money from the US government deserves to starve" which. like. goodness that's a lot to unpack. i think we should burn the whole suitcase instead !

[mxwhore]

mutuals we are struggling

[tchaikovskaya]

while my mind is on headlights and my patronizing gripes about them, i'll add this: if it's raining hard in the middle of the day (like *insert the unfortunate idiom of domestic abuse* kind of rain when its still very bright out), and you're driving in somewhat dense/heavy traffic, do not put your fucking high beam lights on. the light bounces off of the rain droplets and makes visibility a billion times worse. for goddamn everyone around you. which makes everyone else put their high beams on bc they cant see SHIT. creating a dangerous and eyeball-searing feedback loop.

when you're driving in rain, esp on a lower-speed road, having your lights on is important secondarily [primarily is your own visibility obvi] for a) letting oncoming traffic see you, and b) letting cars in front of you see you in their rear view mirrors. some people even say that if its bright enough u can/should use fog lights to mitigate the whole light-water reflection effect, but iirc those usually dont light up the car's tail lights, which are important for cars behind you to see you. however i maintain that unless you're driving on a highway/interstate or some other "higher-speed" roadway with few stops/lights/intersections, if the rain/snow/fog is so bad that you can't see a car like 4-5 car lengths in front of you until they hit the brakes and you're Right There and you need to stop or significantly slow down, you're either driving way too fast for the conditions or following way too close. :))))

[voulezloux]

.

[the-kipsabian]

OKAY so heres the thing

i got one slip done. i think correctly. im not 100% sure tho, so im gonna use it as a test piece to see if it sends out correctly and everything works. its going into the mail tomorrow

if it works, im gonna start sending out the rest. and after that im gonna figure out the remaining bracelets and postage payments and shit. it all just depends how well this one envelope does with the custom slip ough

[pepprs]

my depression is getting really really bad. like it’s been bad before but this is like… consistently really bad. like a long unending stretch for several weeks (and tbh months) now. to the point where no inoculation actually sticks (and im isolating myself from most of my inoculations anyway and feel unable to stop doing it even though i know it’s self destructive). im either helplessly unbearably miserable or numbing out on video games. i just don’t feel like it’s going to get better for me and i KNOW that is factually untrue but the feeling is louder than the knowledge and it’s just utterly immobilizing. ive been sinking in quicksand for 2 years.

[indiegame]

this week is gonna be so rough

[lichbutch]

ough bad times scoob

[meatriarchived]

for what its worth, yeah, charlie/hoyt's gonna be an npc / bg muse and only will be thrown at those comfortable with his nasty [ insert banjo solo ] ass being tossed their way uwu

[rigelmejo]

Impulse driving right now. Tempted to buy clozemaster lifetime just cause. I really do like their premade X thousand frequent words in sentences, for lots of languages. And i love radio mode cause its basically my preferred study (audio in target language then translation audio) so i can just fucking study by turning it on and doing it while i do other stuff.

Like. Ive been listening to old glossika chinese (which i WILL review when i eventually finish) but i know it only foes up to 3000 words, possibly less. And clozemaster includes different conjugations and filler words like soshite dakara mochiron which are actually super fucking common but glossika takes forever to get to.

Tempted to lifetime cause. I hate monthly suvscriptions. I have bad memory. Id kind of like to buy lifetime so i own it forever and can use it whenever i want then forget for months without an unexpected bill. Ugh

Mildly related: i wonder if satori reader has lifelong membership purchase option. Cause that has so much good reading practice...

[phystick]

fr im not even out of the house yet but the longer i live here the more i realize like 90% of the problems between me and my mom wouldnt exist if we just werent around each other 24/7

there's no shame in continuing to live with your parents as an adult, but it does have an undeniable poisoning effect on your brain that you can't start healing until you live somewhere else

[grisklein]

It's like god or whatever higher power is torturing me slowly. I get one good thing and then two bad things happen. I get one good day and three bad days follow. I can't ever catch a fucking break. It's always fucking something and it doesn't ever end.