#break thing

[whumpsday]

Kane & Jim BBU AU #1: 100913

Kane & Jim AUs Masterlist / Next

content: bbu, pet whump, shock collar, broken dish trope

welcome to the Kane & Jim BBU AU! if you don't know what BBU is: in short, it's a shared pet whump universe a bunch of whump authors write in. more info here. as i feel it necessary to state up front to avoid confusion, everyone in this AU is human, no vampires.

@bbu-on-the-side BBU Community Days #3: Discipline

-

913 was a good enough pet.

He wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, but he was good at most of what he needed to do, his tasks. Cleaning wasn't hard. Neither was laundry, or dishes, or caring for plants.

Cooking was especially easy, that was 913's specialty. Not only that, but he enjoyed it, too. He didn't get to enjoy a lot of things at this place. Given it was his specialty, they would probably advertise him for that. Then he could cook every day for his owner and not have to worry about anything else.

However, while the chores came easy to him, the rest didn't. The pet stuff, the things everyone had to learn no matter what kind of pet they were. The positions, and how to talk all polite, that kind of shit. The respect crap, that was where he always messed up, and that was where he got his punishments. He wasn't trying to fuck up, it was just a lot to remember at once. He could never be a platonic.

913 rubbed at his collar. He hoped his owner would get him one without shocks. Even when it wasn't activated, the prongs dug into his neck all the time, and he hated it. Made him antsy.

But he didn't have time to worry about that right now. He grabbed his bucket to take to the other side of the room and continue his mopping.

"100913," Handler Schroeder called from behind as he stepped inside. 913 startled, dropping the water-filled bucket.

Fuck.

Handler Schroeder sighed, obviously irritated, which only made everything worse.

"I'm sorry, sir," 913 mumbled as the water spread over the floor. "Uh, you snuck up on me, so I just-"

913 cut himself off with a shriek as his collar activated, white-hot electricity arcing right into the side of his neck and setting his nerves alight. He fell to his knees, soaking his pants in the soapy water.

"Is that what you're going to do with your owner?" Handler Schroeder accused. "You mess up and blame it on them? Unbelievable. If that's the case, they'll return you right back here for refurbishing, you know. Maybe I should switch your program and make you a guard dog instead."

"I'm sorry, sir," 913 repeated, quieter this time, voice choked up with tears. His eyes bored down into the floor, too afraid to steal a glance at his handler. "Please- please- let me know how I can fix it. I wanna be better. Sir."

Handler Schroeder stomped over and grabbed him by the hair, rough fingers closing in his curls and yanking, forcing him to look up. "I will."

-

It had been a month since 913 got bought, and he was okay.

Master de Sang was miles better than the facility, it wasn't even close. Things were fine here. 913 had his own room, and he spent most of his time looking after the estate. Master liked the meals he cooked, the very thing he'd bought him for. It was fine.

It wasn't like they told him it would be, though. Master wasn't the loving owner he'd been promised. Master was strict. Master had a temper.

He was still better, far better than the handlers. He wasn't always bad. When he was in a good mood, Master could even be nice to be around, better than being alone. Master would play cards with him, or let him watch TV with him. 913 loved the TV, giving him a view into what a person's life was like.

But Master never replaced his collar, and the prongs still dug into his neck every second of every hour of every day, even though Master didn't use the shocks. Yet.

And when Master was irritated, which was almost all of the time, 913 couldn't help but get nervous.

Today was a good day so far, at least. He stole a moment to stand in front of the kitchen window, to feel the sun on his skin. He couldn't remember what it was like to be outside, but he knows he must have been outside at some point. Before. He wonders if the sun feels different when it's not filtered through the glass.

913 let himself have just a moment to bask in its warmth before he got back to cleaning up lunch, the water running over his wrist having no effect on the barcode and number permanently etched into his skin.

As he washed the dishes, he couldn't help but wince as he heard Master stomping around upstairs. He only did that when he was upset, and when he was upset...

He tried to shake it off. Master was just on the phone. That was all.

Master came downstairs just as 913 was finishing drying everything. "Welcome back, Master!" he said, chipper and friendly despite the dread building itself inside him.

Master just scowled at him, as though the greeting had made everything worse. 913 wanted to pull his hair out and scream. He wished he'd gotten a little training in what the platonics do, complex conversations with their owners besides the basic respect and obedience. Maybe he could help Master if he did. But better a domestic than either of the other two.

"Hi," Master said flatly. He leaned against the counter, tapping his fingers against it restlessly.

"Can I get you anything?" 913 asked.

"We just had lunch," Master pointed out. He wasn't looking at 913, but he wasn't sure if that was good or bad. He was staring off into space like he always did when he had family troubles.

He remembered talking to one of the platonics once back in training, 418512. 512 was talking about how they were trained to sometimes be a little more casual, something that might sometimes be interpreted as disrespect. How if they stayed fully respectful all the time, it could come off as cold. Maybe that was why Master was irritated with him.

913 was pretty sure he knew what Master was upset about. It was a risk, but he decided to go for it. He made his voice as soft and sympathetic as he could.

"Is it your father, Master?" he asked quietly.

The slap rang so hard across 913's face that his ears rang. He dropped the mug he was holding, the ceramic shattering against the floor.

Master grabbed 913 by the chin as pain bloomed over his cheek. "Don't you fucking talk about my father. Don't even mention him. Got it?"

"Yes, Master," 913 squeaked, trembling in his grip.

Master threw him to the floor over the jagged pieces. "Clean this up."

He stayed down, not moving from where he was tossed even as the edges cut into his palms. "Yes, Master."

913 stayed completely still until Master left in a huff. Once he could hear the sound of his footsteps fade away, he began picking shards out of his skin, failing not to cry.

-

expect two more of these :)

taglist in reblog

[psalm40speakstome]

[potofsoup]

Oh look, it seems like there's a Republican-led movement to purge voter rolls in the lead-up to the election! It's almost as if your vote matters and they don't want you to vote! Anyway, I whipped up a quick map (based on this) that shows when the voter registration deadline is in each state. There are a few deadlines coming up in the next week or so.

If you live in a state that regularly purges voter rolls for infrequent voters (the orange ones in the first map), or if you moved recently, it's good to check if you're still registered to vote.

Vote.org makes it super easy to check your registration: https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/

Just put in your address and DOB and they'll tell you whether you're registered. (And they give you a quick link to register online if it turns out that you're not! Only the 9 states in white on my map don't have online registration, and for those they provide instructions on how to do it via mail or in person.) If you want an extra verification, find your state's election website and double-check there.

So yeah, give yourself peace of mind -- do a quick check. :)

[eastgaysian]

[liones-s]

a big lesson for me was learning that most things are not as fragile as I’d believed. missing a class, or turning in a bad assignment, won’t instantly destroy your professor’s opinion of you. accidentally saying something harsh won’t make your friend want to end the friendship. it takes work to repair these things - it takes effort and research and sometimes a sincere apology - but you can do that because they’re not irreparably broken. what you’ve worked to build, in academia and in relationships and in life, is stronger and more enduring that your mind may teach you to believe. don’t let imagined fragility lead you to giving up

[catball]

[emeryleewho]

People on here are always like "fuck capitalism, why can't things be weird anymore" and then write up a whole dissertation about how the biggest IPs need to change to be weirder.

Like, you are so close. You are so close to getting the point. "Big" IPs *can only exist because they are normal*. They will *never* be weird. They will *never* do what you want. Go find some smaller IPs. Bring back discovery. Bring back never having heard of a book before you buy it. Bring back watching obscure anime online that none of your friends know about. Bring back trying new things, even if they're bad or cheaply made. That is how you get *weird*.

[secretmellowblog]

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[anna-scribbles]

emma dupain cheng on the brain😽🎀

more:

[spoopdeedoop]

WYD WHEN MY GANG PULL UP !!!

[bigfatbreak]

Birds of a Feather previous / next

trigger warning: blood

[chloesimaginationthings]

This is basically FNAF Ruin…

[taviamoth]

Irish MP: 'I hope benjamin netanyahu burns in hell'

Irish Member of Parliament, Thomas Gould, became emotional over the death of children in Gaza following israel's attacks on Rafah last weekend. 'I hope [israeli Prime Minister] benjamin netanyahu burns in hell in the same way those children burned', he told Parliament.

[ellilyre]

Do you think that Odysseus has become a kind of running joke among the gods, like when we joke about cockroachs' survivability?

For example some mortal is surviving stuff that rly should've killed him, and someone on Olympus says "is he pulling an Odysseus on us?" and everyone laughs

[hinamie]

I'm always pushing you away from me / but you come back with gravity / and when I call, you come home

[wanderer-clarisse]

early morning sunlight at Bag End