#because from what I can tell

[awakefor48hours]

write the azula/marinette fic, I will read it.

I promise I will one of these days. I probably do need to rewatch ATLA again because I haven't seen it since 2020

[egginfroggin]

Since I have other fics in progress, I feel like this is a good time to finally talk about the other other version of WTST that I mentioned here.

There is no difference to what Emmet goes through in Hisui, but what goes on with Ingo is. Uh. Worse than in the main fic.

Okay, first, to prevent confusion:

The Future Will Be Special, the Past Was Not (named after the extra stage theme, "Tomorrow Will Be Special, Yesterday Was Not," from Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith) is the companion fic to the main, original Welcome to Sinnoh's Temple fic; it has not been completed yet, unfortunately, but it essentially tells Ingo's side of the story, much in the same way that WTST tells Emmet's side of the story.

A Promise Broken Is a Lie Told is the version of things alluded to in the above post, where Ingo handles Emmet's disappearance... very badly. This is the version of things that I'm talking about in this post.

Fic talk below the cut -- be warned of themes such as self-blame, self-hatred, bad coping mechanisms, and self-isolation. Please let me know if I should tag anything else. Thank you.

Little changed about the incident -- Emmet's disappearance -- itself; it was really more of a hypothetical scenario where Ingo did not handle his grief well at all, taking his twin's disappearance worse than in the main scheme of things, and it leads to him making some very bad choices.

Bad choices include:

Taking all of the blame for Emmet's disappearance upon himself, even though there is really nobody to blame and it was, as far as anyone can tell, a freak accident. However, in the wake of tragedy, it is human nature to want to pin the event on somebody -- Ingo just happened to pin that blame on himself.

Isolating himself from his family. In the original companion fic, his family -- Drayden, Iris, and Elesa -- is a huge well of support for him. They still are in this version of things, but he spirals just a bit too far and, in his desperation to remove himself and his problems from them so as to not be a burden, he keeps them at arms' length, denying himself their support.

Applying value to himself based on things beyond his control. When he and Emmet were little, they lost their parents, and in an effort to comfort both Emmet and himself, Ingo promised that they would always be there for each other. Naturally, that was derailed, and even though it was a mutually-kept promise -- Emmet had insisted that it wasn't fair for Ingo to be the only one upholding it and that it was his promise, too -- he views himself as the one at fault.

As a direct result of the above point, Ingo considers himself a failure because he couldn't keep Emmet close -- whether something stole Emmet away or Emmet left of his own accord, it isn't 100% certain, but what matters is that he's gone.

Coping by "replacing" Emmet with something else to be protected. A way to prove that he does still have value in that he can keep something close to him, or that he's competent in being able to protect something. This is also a way for him to feel somewhat in control.

The replacement feeds into the points about denying himself familial support and keeping himself away from loved ones so as to not be a "burden." How? The last point:

"Proving" himself -- to himself -- by taking the title of Champion And chooses to remain in the Pokemon League, at the end of Victory Road, as much as possible, making it harder for anyone to get to him in the first place.

Surprise, Champion Ingo AU! He gets a coat.

As an aside, to pursue the Champion title, he resigned from Gear Station, thereby also cutting himself off from the Depot Agents -- also known as his family away from home because they are all fantastic beans who care for each other and very much, like a good little healthy work unit.

Speaking of healthy things, Bad Decision number... 6? 7? Number x:

Neglects himself in favor of looking for Emmet in his free time. Of course. He doesn't give himself any time to relax. This worries literally everyone he comes across, because it shows. In multiple ways. He does not look in a good way, even if he's all prim and proper for a challenger. Everyone can tell. Everyone.

He leaves Gear Station about six months after Emmet disappears, traumatizes the Elite Four and Alder, and becomes Unova's Champion. And then proceeds to near-murder every challenger who reaches him.

Politely, of course.

He may be drowning in self-blame that's bleeding into hatred and waging his self-worth on how well he can defend his title, but he's still polite!

Anyway, that's the basis of the fic. It's really an excuse for me to be mean to Ingo, much like how Welcome to Sinnoh's Temple was -- and still is -- and excuse for me to be mean to Emmet.

There is a happy ending. And therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.

Thanks for muddling through this! It's a bit nerve-wracking to post, like Pandemonic Planet, because apparently I am extremely self-conscious about posting self-indulgent things. And frankly, this particular flavor of WTST isn't fundamentally super different -- it's just hypothetical.

But also the urge to justify my hypotheticals is strong, and I... don't have much of a justification for this beyond "hehehe sad train man go brrrrrrrrrr." Sorry.

This is all still in progress, of course, cooking on the back burner behind all my other fics, but some things are subject to change in the future. Things will probably be added or removed as the idea develops.

Have a good day! And please take care of yourselves! <3

[morganbritton132]

No one tells you when you get a Big Serious Job™ how many fucking abbreviations you’ll be forced to learn.

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

I could wax poetic about why Viktor's League backstory is inherently more interesting and more thematically resonant than where they went with him in Arcane season 2, but the cold hard truth is

a man covered in grease and probably blood who builds his own body out of scraps with his own two hands, can in fact build any contraption out of dinted metal sheets and a few screws including a deathray, performs deeply inadvisable operations on desperate but consenting people with his own tools, generates a cult following against his wishes because of his ability to inadvisably help people but the power's all his now anyway so he may as well, wants to clean up and save the undercity but is (only sort of) misunderstood as a walking Geneva Convention violation a freak and a supervillain, torments his arch-nemesis on at least a weekly basis and probably homoerotically hunts him for sport, had his life's work misattributed to people in the ruling class and is angry and tragic about it forever, tries to rip out his own emotions and is unsuccessful but pretends like he was not, is actually oddly kind to children, and is at the end of the day still just some guy,

is just hotter okay

[fonthoura]

Hc where Garak knows Julian is a liar, but he can't, for the life of him, know what he's lying about.

Like, he has this feeling, given to him by years of training and an observant eyes, that Julian is very purposefully unauthentic, and it seems that no one else notices.

He sees how Julian talks a lot and overshares, but never really says anything, to the point where his friends would have a hard time answering any question about him, like, for fucks sake, it took reading his file to get to know his date of birth because no one knew.

Jadzia thinks he has a brother, Miles is convinced he has a sister, and Garak is fairly sure he is an only child, the problem is, Julian doesn't talk about it. He talks too much and hardly says anything.

Garak also notices how he is always tense, as if holding back, like when he lets himself be punched when he clearly sees it coming, when he let's things break even though Garak is sure he could've caught them mid air, how he seems to calculate the perfect amount of clumsy in a day (once he even bumped into Garak and pretended to be distracted) and no one notices.

But Garak does, Garak knows he is lying about something, he feels it, specially when he looses on games and arguments, like he could not think of something else but Garak sees it in his eyes that he is hiding something.

And Garak constantly gets worried, despite his best knowledge, about him.

He knows how lonely it is, to keep yourself hidden from the world, to not let anyone know you, to hold the weight of a thousand secrets on his body, and constantly he sees this weight taking it's toll on the doctor.

Julian keeps people at arms length, he gets close on condition, he larps with Miles, discuss literature with Garak and converses with Jadzia, but keeps them all compartmentalized, always distant, even his crush on Jadzia being shallow, no real depth to it.

Julian seems skin deep and Garak knows how it feels and aches for him.

So he constantly tries to scratch the surface, aways tries to get Julian out of his lie made shell like Julian does to him, and he doesn't succeed, but he keeps trying.

Specially after he finds out that Julian had been gone for a month and not even him noticed it, he knows it's because no one would, because Julian keeps so much of himself hidden that you can't distinguish him from a fake.

And then, doctor Zimmermann shows up...

[theresistanceneverquits]

There’s not enough people talking about how important Stephanie is to Damian’s growth pre-Flashpoint.

Bruce had seen Damian as a beast to be tamed, Tim sees him as a ticking time bomb, and Dick is far better with him but he’s still an authority figure for Damian to combat with. But then he meets Stephanie, a college-aged girl who nobody trusts and he bullies her relentlessly and becomes inseparable from her.

She doesn’t interact with him based on his past, but on what she can see. This 10 year old just threatened to kill her? Wow he doesn’t get outside much. He’s not old enough to have seen Gremlins. What do you MEAN you’ve never been inside a bouncy house before we are fixing that immediately.

They are like cousins to each other. They poke fun at each other for being lame and stupid and Dick has to tell them both to shut up. She doesn’t see him as a project to be molded and redeemed, he’s just a kid with a crappy childhood like her and if he’s nice to her for 5 seconds she’ll do something with him to let him feel like a kid. And he doesn’t look at her and see a liability or a failure or a lost cause, like everyone she’s ever interacted with does. When he’s awful to her, it’s because he’s an obnoxious preteen boy.

And then you get the “there’s room in our line of work for hope, too” scene. Because Damian has gotten to know Steph and he can’t fathom why she’s here. She obviously has had to deal with crap and is still working through being kept on a leash by Nightwing and Oracle, but she isn’t broken like the rest of them are. Damian is surrounded by people who were molded and shaped and torn down and broken to become the monoliths that they are, and then there’s this girl who seems so at peace with herself and is constantly making quips, and it’s so foreign to him.

And she tells him that she’s in his world because she believes people are worth fighting for.

[meamiki]

silly comic based on a time i struggled to read live on stream :thumbsup:

context clip compilation below ASDASDFASA

(cw for brief mention of hospitals/strokes)

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

As per usual, it’s DP crossover with (probably) DC, although you could probably adjust it for other fandoms

ANYWAYS

A little kid and his mother are trick or treating in another city, perhaps at some kind of event rather than knocking on doors, and the kid is dressed as Phantom. It’s very adorable, with his little ghost-shaped bucket and clearly homemade and already stained costume—listen, white only works if you can just fly over street grime or phase it out of your clothes—and his slightly I’ll fitting wig. The kid is SO happy to be out and about dressed as his favorite, and maybe even showed it off to Phantom back in Amity Park before his family left.

The hero, insert whoever you wish here, is probably in civvies and just enjoying the event. The kid, meanwhile, is so glad when people ask who he is so he can explain, and so- the hero gets to hear ALL ABOUT the local town hero who is probably pretty small time despite the kid’s clearly exaggerated stories. The hero certainly never heard of him, but the kid’s mom confirms that Phantom really was the town hero, despite some mixed reviews of the poor guy.

“Did you manage to show him your costume?” the hero asks.

“Yeah! We went down to the cemetery to leave flowers and I got to show him my costume.”

Wait. Cemetery? Maybe it was part of theme, because Phantom had to be named that for a reason, but… it sounded like…

The kid ignores the suddenly VERY still hero and instead turns to his mom. “Momma, do you think we should bring him candy? He doesn’t get to trick or treat like we do, and I can work super hard to get him a bunch!”

The kid’s mom just smiles. “We could, but maybe we should bring him something homemade. I bet he’d like something more filling, teen boys like him have a hollow leg.”

The kid wrinkles his nose. “Like Vernie with the pizza bagels?”

“Like your cousin, yes. We can make some cinnamon rolls and take them to his memorial, maybe bring some of the apples from your grandpa’s garden…”

The hero is pretty much forgotten as the two-part family wanders off, not quite intentionally forgetting the hero is there so much as the hero somewhat accidentally ended the conversation when they just froze and didn’t ask anything further.

Not that the hero didn’t want to. But they’d learn something very serious.

One—there was a small town hero they’d never heard of. Two—that hero was apparently a teen. Third—most pressingly, the teen hero was both beloved enough to have kids dressing up as him and dead enough to have a grave.

This… might require some phone calls.

[thedisablednaturalist]

physically disabled person: hi

every abled neurodivergent person in the whole world: Hi I know this isn't about autism but I have executive dysfunction and I really think we should talk about that more not to derail or anything I just wanted to share my experience :) don't forget that not all disabilities are visible! I have anxiety and depression and this explains sooo much!

[blackkatdraws2]

The narrator and the ugly ahh protagonist [Blank Scripts AU/non-canonical]

[turtleblogatlast]

I think a lot about Leo standing up for his brothers in the things that really matter to them.

Like- Leo is the one who immediately pushes Mikey and Donnie into finding Raph the second it’s clear that their oldest brother is missing because he knows Raph can’t handle being separated like that.

Leo is the one who stands up for Mikey when Mikey wants to go on a solo mission, actively vouching for him and being the one to convince Raph into letting Mikey go, because being independent and proving himself just as capable of standing on his own two feet as everyone else means so much to Mikey.

And Leo defends Donnie’s honor in particular when his brothers’ intelligence is insulted because Leo is well aware of how important Donnie’s smarts are to him - and how important having those smarts valued and acknowledged is as well.

All this goes right into just how well Leo knows his brothers. For as much as he’ll tease or fight with them, he knows them, and he loves them.

[gothra]

I’ll never forget when I was arguing with a person in favor of total prison abolition and I asked them “what about violent offenders?” And they said “Well, in a world where prisons have been abolished, we’ll have leveled the playing field and everyone will have their basic needs met, and crime won’t be as much of an issue.” And then I was like “okay. But…no. Because rich people also rape and murder, so it isn’t just a poor person thing. So what will we do about that?” And I don’t think they answered me after that. I’m ashamed to say I continued to think that the problem was that I simply didn’t understand prison abolitionists enough and that their point was right in front of me, and it would click once I finally let myself understand it. It took me a long time to realize that if something is going to make sense, it needs to make sense. If you want to turn theory into Praxis (I’m using that word right don’t correct me I’ll vomit) everyone needs to be on board, which mean it all needs to click and it needs to click fast and fucking clear. You need to turn a complex idea into something both digestible and flexible enough to be expanded upon. Every time I ask a prison abolitionist what they actually intend to do about violent crime, I get directed to a summer reading list and a BreadTuber. It’s like a sleight-of-hand trick. Where’s the answer to my question. There it is. No wait, there it is. It’s under this cup. No it isn’t. “There’s theory that can explain this better than I can.” As if most theory isn’t just a collection of essays meant to be absorbed and discussed by academics, not the average skeptic. “Read this book.” And the book won’t even answer the question. The book tells you to go ask someone else. “Oh, watch this so-and-so, she totally explains it better than me.” Why can’t you explain it at all? Why did you even bring it up if you were going to point me to someone else to give me the basics that you should probably already know? Maybe I’m just one of those crazy people who thinks that some people need to be kept away from the public for everyone’s good. Maybe that just makes me insane. Maybe not believing that pervasive systemic misogyny could be solved with a UBI and a prayer circle makes me a bad guy. But it’s not like women’s safety is a priority anyway. It’s not like there is an objective claim to be made that re-releasing violent offenders or simply not locking them up is deadly.

[fascinationstreetmp3]

I have what you're looking for. High quality. Befitting a man of my tastes. I have a room over on Divisadero, not too far a walk.

[ricky-mortis]

Curtwen Week Day 4: Haunted

[deancasforcutie]

Dean complimenting fellow queer people on their game

Bonus inverse, trying to out-game someone to vicariously flirt for/with your presumed-but-not-at-all-straight friend who has no game whatsoever:

[doverstar]

can't express accurately how happy it makes me that c.s. lewis did not leave room for many interpretations in narnia. it's christian and you can't get around it. susan chose to care more about worldly things than what matters and he said what he said. the lion is Jesus. evil is evil and good is good and people have to choose. and that makes some readers angry because it's nearly impossible to ignore and they want to ignore it. they want it to be something else and they can't make it something else without making it not narnia. love that. that is doing it right