#another flashback!

[hannahssimblr]

Once, years ago now, Aunt Maureen took me to visit her eldest daughter, Karina. In the midday heat, beneath the shade of a fig tree we sat in a Venice restaurant, where bougainvillaea draped over the front of flat roofed houses and fragrant blooms edged the terrace. 

I loved Los Angeles. The food was always better, the people happier, the streets more colourful and picturesque than in Albuquerque, where everything was brown and beige, blending with the dust land. Karina laughed when I said this, sitting back in her chair in her oval sunglasses, a cigarette balanced between long slender fingers. 

“You should see where I live downtown, then I’ll ask you again how much you love it here.”

I didn’t know what she meant. I was thinking about those cool guys I’d seen on a basketball court earlier with their hats on backwards, the loud, bass heavy music they played from a speaker, and the skaters who dropped lazily into concrete basins on their boards. I wanted to be one of them, though I knew Maureen would never buy me something dangerous like a skateboard. I played things a bit fast and loose at the best of times and once almost rollerbladed clean off a pier, so she’d developed a fear that I might one day die of pure stupidity. Maybe when I was older and she wasn’t watching me from the kitchen window anymore I would move to LA, get myself a board and skate around on it without wearing a shirt, and get muscles and a deep tan like everyone else here. 

These were the kinds of thoughts I lost myself in as Maureen and Karina had conversations that either weren’t interesting or which I was unable to understand, but I was content sipping on my Fanta with ice, lurid orange, and so fizzy that it stung the back of my throat and thinking about being a grown up in LA while Maureen had her white wine and Karina her cigarettes. Soon they would order a plate of oysters that looked too much like boogers for me to sample and speak more about things happening, things that had already happened, and plans they’d made for the summer. 

“What’s your favourite time of year?” Karina said to me suddenly, snapping me out of my thoughts. I knew this is the sort of question you ask a seven year old when you don’t know how to speak to children, but I thought hard about it anyway to make sure I gave her the best answer I could. She was my cool, mature cousin, and I always wanted so badly to impress her. November and December, I told her, because I got presents on my birthday, then time off school on Thanksgiving and both these things on Christmas. I was still reeling from the PlayStation console that Maureen and her husband Mario had bought me last Christmas, slotted perfectly within its square, silver box, which I still had, stored carefully beneath my bed just in case I ever needed to pack it away and move it. 

“What about you, mom?” She said, and Maureen didn’t have to think. 

“The spring,” she said, “I just love to be out in my garden then, with all the flowers and that lovely sun, it’s not too hot. It feels like everything is just on the brink of bursting to life.”

I thought about that later as we passed the canal, all the beautiful spring flowers that erupted from the banks, and of home too, where by now, in the hazy days of mid May, the desert was blanketed with spring grasses, with violets and golden poppies and bluebonnets, burning a trail of vibrant indigo all the way to the mountains. 

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Ty to @scrapplesims for suffering living in LA once upon a time and for answering my weirdly specific questions about what it was like

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Dog Meshi.

[whoisnotmyname]

I love this line lmao

[stealingpotatoes]

luke who do you think you're hiding this from

(donation doodles! // tip jar)

[gyaa-fish]

more ff7 stuff, try to guess who my faves are lol

[zu-is-here]

@clownyclowns misspelled "good morning" said "Dream mourning" and I didn't take it well /hj

Dream & Nightmare by jokublog

[hexcii]

Awgh

Idk my PTSD and survivors guilt have been killing me these past few weeks

Oh if only I had two robot jesters to hold me through it </33

[pangur-and-grim]

a difficult ear cleaning experience

[bunnieswithknives]

The soul of Wicked is randomly inventing extremely elaborate relationships between characters who barely interact at all in canon. Also Fiyero is here.

[kwillow]

Jocosa gives her son lessons in wielding magic... though despite her best efforts, he grows up learning this particular lesson the hard way.

And, naturally, this was inspired by a question I was sent -- lore rambling below the cut.

Spells aren’t so cleanly divided into utility/combat/etc in this world. Chocodile has already made an excellent overview on how magic functions in Amaranthine, but the short of it is that a mage learn and use any type of magic, whether that be slinging lightning or moving objects or healing wounds or whatever else, but they require extensive knowledge of the forces at play, and it requires intense mental fortitude, quick calculations and precise control to wield it effectively.

Unfortunately, Theo is an inconsistent and erratic magic user. While he often uses magic for small, delicate tasks, like lighting candles or moving a book across a desk, channeling greater amounts of magic is a risky proposition. Theo's thought-scape is akin to a turbulent ocean or volcano about to erupt, and this is a detrimental quality when you need a clear, focused mind to keep your fireball in your hand instead of bursting all over your very flammable furniture.

When riled, as he would be in a combat situation, he’s as likely (or more likely) to get overloaded and immolate himself as he is his opponent. He has no compunctions about using magic for combat, in fact he'd relish the opportunity to use his innate "superiority" as a weapon against his "lessers" but it would be dangerous for him to try (which isn’t to say he wouldn’t attempt it out of desperation or impulsivity, but he'll suffer for it). After implanting the catalyst stone into his hand, his power is amplified -- but not his control. It might be safer for him to stick with weaponized pens.

The exception to Theo's issues with controlling magic is healing magic, which has become his specialty for good or for ill (ironically, more for ill). He wishes he could pluck the strings of pure magic, playing it like a harp as beautifully as his mother did, but for the life of him, he can’t seem to elevate himself above the crude matter of blood and bone.

[pastafossa]

DDBA SPOILER REALIZATION THOUGHT, SERIOUS ANGST

How we feeling about the realization I just had that Matt is probably drinking red wine in his apartment even though he prefers cheap beer because the smell of cheap beer is likely now tied irrevocably to his memory of Foggy's death?

They were at Josie's.

They were at Josie's: cheap beer, hops, bitterness. He knows that scent.

A scent now mingled forever in his mind with the taste of sour fear, of death in the air.

And of lingering copper, and the anguished, familiar tang of tears and Foggy's cologne.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lines drawn, teeth bared.

[Ko-fi members can check out the behind-the-scenes thumbnails for this comic!]

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[bakubaekjin]

Jeff Satur - ฉันก่อนเจอเธอ (Lost and Found)

[swan2swan]

.....rewatching this scene and I am fairly convinced that Sammy's already got a ring on her somewhere.

[poetofdoves]

silco, vander and benzo are so bloody cool looking here. im sort of obsessed with them. this looks like an album cover

[wantonlywindswept]

time capsule alpha 17

okay so like we don't actually know what happened to Alpha-17 in the end, right?

it just says that 17 was critically injured by grievous and put on a medical transport to get treatment, and then not-dead ventress commandeered the ship and took off

so with critical injuries it's entirely possible that 17 was stuck into stasis or cryo until he could get help

and entirely probable that ventress got where she wanted and then fucked off, and the ship ended up stranded somewhere and forgotten

which means it is definitely possible that at some point after the fall of the empire, someone finds and patches up and revives 17, who has against all odds survived and is PISSED when he hears what the galaxy's been up to

and maybe kix has also been found much sooner and woken up and is living with a much more chill/brotherly boba on tatooine (go read Keeps Getting Harder to Find, it is glorious, don't be put off by the unfinished tag it ends at a good point)

and one day the doors of the throne room (are there doors? whatever) slam open and everyone on tatooine knows that daimyo fett fears neither sarlaac nor death but the sound he makes when a massive furious clone stomps into the room is maybe slightly possibly fear-adjacent

and kix doesn't even try to put up a front he just squeaks and ducks behind the throne

and alpha 17 surveys everyone in the room with a patented look of disgust and Judgement and bares his teeth in what might be considered a smile if you were concussed and goes

'my dear least favorite little older brother, what the FUCK is going on'