#bummer of a story

[canisalbus]

When did Machete realize he was gay? Was it only when he met Vasco, or was it earlier and he just repressed it?

If you asked him, he might admit that in retrospect he must've had a vague inkling earlier (thinking of all the times he let his gaze linger on a painting of some handsome nobleman a little longer. Which almost makes it like... a 16th century equivalent of having a secret fictional crush). But I think it probably would've been more of a detached, aesthetic attraction than anything he recognized as distinctly gay, bad and worth of repressing. It's not a sin to quietly appreciate art and the beauty of the human form.

I'd say Vasco, his best friend at the time, was most likely the first real person he had actual feelings for. The realization was so distressing he stayed in denial about the whole thing for a good while.

[dontlookatmytmntcollection]

hello! I was wondering if you had any thoughts abt how our turtles would be with an s/o that's a bit of a microcelebrity. Think like a streamer or a youtuber someone with a large but niche following

I hope you have a good day/night! :3

Given that MOST of the turtles' human contacts are celebrities or people in power- it wouldn't be that crazy to them.

Micro-Celebrity x Bayverse Turtles

-Your friendship would be unaffected by it. But entering in a romantic relationship with him, the changes and challenges would take you BOTH by surpise.

-First of all, your turtle cares EXTREMLY deeply for you, and he wants very badly, to make you happy and keep you safe. He is constantly proud of you and he is always watching you thinking, 'Jesus, how the hell did I land this. How.'

-I think the biggest fight or difficulty would be that you would go days, even weeks without seeing each other. Between his schedule and how often you are in front of thousands if not millions of people- it would be difficult.

-Your turtle would also be fighting with feelings of inadequacy or paranoia, more so than he ever had with his other human contacts. Constantly on your case about safety.

-He'd feel as if he isn't enough, that you deserve more in a partner. Someone to be proud to show off, to be someone who could show YOU off. God knows he wants to. It would have been like that without your following but now it's even WORSE.

-To be with one of the turtles demands you sacrifice a LOT just out of the gate. And sometimes that's enough for your turtle to call the relationship into question. So you'd have to put a lot of effort in making it work. Even if you DIDN'T have a following.

-A lot of LITERALLY sacrificing and scheduling time weeky and regularly SPECIFICALLY to spend time and connect with him. At times, it's the only time you see him, and he needs that time just as desperately (if not more) than you do.

-Nosey fans or pesky followers or stalkers would be hard to deal with, even if they were nearly asking questions about your love life. Or picking out the extremely small details that hint that you are hiding something or someone from them. It will be exhausting.

-It will be exhausting to him too. Feeling stressed over April's safety, and leaving her safety to her team's during daytime hours is all one thing. You, though??? Even worse.

-Having someone so close him in such an exposing light all the time hurts his heart, and it would help to include him anyway you possibly can when it comes to keeping you safe.

-LET him walk you home. Let him pick you up or follow you around town, or let him help with the computers or house- it will ease his worry. And it kinda feels good no one can touch you.

[macksting]

It’s excellent art, they’re nice ships. Hell, everyone can do as they want, I just need to talk about this. So, a few years ago I was really into Pioneer. It’s a fun game, good design, scratches a lot of itches. I wanna talk about why I quit the community and haven’t touched or talked about it since. I'd been bughunting for them for about a year at that point and had found some real interesting doozies; I’m why there’s a limit on objects in a system, I kept crashing the game by how I did my mining. I also found a bug that would cause two space stations to be in the same space. That was kinda cool. So I was rather invested when I noticed some tutorial text that said, “I’m going to manifest my destiny,” or some such. It's in a personal log that I'd just never looked at before. So I popped into the IRC channel (or, more likely, alt-tabbed to it; I idled in there a lot) and suggested, as politely as I could, that a game called Pioneer having a reference to manifest destiny might set, uh, the wrong tone and be upsetting to some players, and they should really consider rephrasing it. The response started with "he's Eastern European, they don't know that phrase there" and ended in him being like "OH I BET YOU HATE THAT WE ONLY HAVE TWO SEXES TOO HUH WELL TOUGH SHIT." Like, I had sure noticed the "hrm, only male/female," but I didn't bring it up because whatever, I assumed it was ignorance, not a deliberate decision, so when he was like "OH I BET YOU HATE THAT TOO" I was like, "I mean, I had noticed it, but I didn't realize until just now it was with intent, so yeah, you could fix that too." And bear in mind this is IRC, I didn't exactly have my pronouns in my nick the way I do in Discord, due to character limits. He just pegged me as someone who'd be upset about the apparently deliberate choice to have only male and female options, and decided to use this as leverage to make me feel angry and sad and upset. Fuck me for picking my battles I guess. And then everyone circled their wagons around him and demanded I apologize. They demanded I apologize for him picking a transphobic fight with me, over me suggesting as politely as I could that a game called Pioneer maybe shouldn't set its tutorial tones by referencing *manifest destiny.* The art guy, don’t remember the spelling, a nice guy whose name kinda is a joke on nose-miner, talked to me in PMs vaguely apologetically and was like, "they've worked with him a long time," and I was like "y'know what just... never mind." and fucked off forever. Nice isn’t always good, I guess. I’m not sure what I’d’ve done differently in his circumstances. You work with someone a long time, and they suddenly spout hate, what you gonna do? I guess quarantine him until you can talk about it? It can be hard to make that stand when you know it’s you or him, and everyone else has already picked him. Maybe nose-miner would do something different now. Maybe not. I’m not unsympathetic, but I haven’t spoken to him since. What’d be the point? What would we have to say to each other anymore? Everyone else can fucking hang for all I care. Looking back, I'm almost certain (a) the writer guy never liked me but kept it to himself until I brought his phrasing into question, and (b) my "nope fuck this place" is simultaneously an example of BPD-style splitting on my part and also I wasn't wrong. That's an annoying thing about splitting, now that I have an idea what it means. Too often, it's actually pretty reasonable to write something or someone off forever. Do what you will with that information.

spaceship for a tabletop game, based loosely (almost entirely) on the malabar transport from pioneer space sim

done mostly as an exercise to see how quickly/cleanly i could put together a ship without fussing too much about perspective/accuracy

[forwhump]

a/n; YOU GUYS !!!!!!!!!!!!!! what the HELL you were all so fuckin’ nice to me about my last post it actually gave me chest pains :’) here’s some sad lobotomized silas monologuing as a token of my appreciation <3 I love you forever !!!!!! (depending on how you feel about silas this one is actually p sad)(he’s just really fucked up :(( poor little meow meow)

word count: 4.5k

tw/cw: lobotomies, captivity, isolation, psychological torture, amnesia, implied sexual violence, self harm, vomiting, blinding

living weapon whumpee

For a long time after the incident with the soldier, the one that remembered him, Seven is locked in his bland, grey room and left by himself. 

It gives him time to think, which is dangerous. He suspects they don’t know he can. He suspects they think he’s been hollowed out. 

He has, in a way, but not entirely, not like they think he’s been. He might not be able to articulate it, but he still thinks. He’s coherent. He doesn’t remember, but he isn’t sure, either, if he wants to. 

For a long time, he doesn’t remember the incident with the soldier, the one that remembered him. It comes back when Seven starts having nightmares. 

He’d never dreamt before, not for as short a time as he could remember, so when the nightmares start, they scare him. They’re disorienting and it’s new, flashes of things when he’s supposed to be sleeping, things that scare him, that hurt, that make him uncomfortable. Once they start, they’re relentless. He adapts. He has no choice. At first, it’s just flashes of things, bits of surgery so vivid he can feel the pain of the gloved hands reaching into the cavity they’d opened in his chest, a soldier with his finger on the trigger, the weight in his face as he empties his gun into Seven’s eye. 

When Seven wakes up, the first thing he does is push his fingers into the hollow of his empty eye socket. It hurts, he pushes his fingers into his eye socket, but it isn’t anything sharp, it isn’t a fresh wound. Seven had lost it long before the reaches of his memory. Could he have been shot? Was that nightmare a memory? 

Then he has a dream about the soldier, the one that remembered him. Seven still doesn’t remember his name, but beats of it come back to him in his nightmares, some of the sounds. Hat, or something. Seven dreams of the look on his face as he had wheezed out his name, looking up at Seven, Seven’s hand around his throat. He hadn’t been afraid of him. Had Silas killed him? He has this dream more than once, but he always wakes up before he does, before he can know for certain. He always wakes up sweaty, his sheets sticking to his back. 

There’s flashes of other things, nightmares he wakes up from gasping, even if he doesn’t quite understand. Blood on grey tile, blood on grey sheets. Thigh high socks and bruised thighs. A medical bay that Seven doesn’t recognize, just as grey as everything else. 

There’s one that reoccurs. Seven doesn’t know if it counts as a nightmare, not really, because it isn’t as bloody or bleak as anything else that comes to him, it’s pretty mundane, in fact, in comparison, but it makes Seven feel worse than any of his other dreams, than anything else that’s woken him up in a cold sweat. The first time, Seven wakes up, the lights still turned off in his room, nighttime, and he makes a sound he’s never made before — he sobs. 

It surprises him out of his stupor, and he forgets, just as quickly, what the nightmare had even been about. But it comes back to him, and he doesn’t always sob with it but it always leaves him with this heavy, hollow pit in his chest that stays with him for hours into consciousness. He dreams of looking down to one of his hands, big and scarred and calloused. There’s a hand in his, small and pale. Sometimes, his nightmares are so vivid he can feel the way his skin splits around the scalpels or the heat of being shot, but he can never feel the touch of this hand. He just looks down, and there they are, hand in scarred hand. 

Time passes, his nightmares advance, and still, Seven is left alone in his grey room, and he’s left alone. That’s what makes him think they don’t know he thinks; why would they leave him alone with his thoughts? What choice does he have but to remember? 

He doesn’t know if he’s remembering, though, not for sure. The nightmares are always just weird bits of things, but how else would he have come up with these things? How else would he know? 

He dreams of that hand, and the dreams reoccur, until it’s all he dreams of, night after night. It doesn’t get easier. Once, he wakes up just soon enough to lean over the side of his bed and vomit onto the grey floor. 

The next night, he finally dreams of something else. He dreams of hair, white and shimmery, spilled across a grey pillow. For the second night in a row, he wakes up and vomits over the side of his bed. 

The dream doesn’t reoccur — the nightmares get odd again, splashes of colour, things he doesn’t recognize that still make him wake up in a cold sweat. A weird, tulle skirt soaked in blood. A bruised ankle. He dreams of looking down at his hands, and every time, there’s something new about them — blood on his hands, under his nails, a head, his fingers twisted tightly in its hair, his hands pulling a spinal cord out through the front of a soldier’s throat. He feels the blood as it splatters his face, and it’s hot. He wakes up sweating. 

After a while, he finds himself waking up from nightmares at odd times, not remembering ever having fallen asleep. He has flashes of things, like nightmares, while he’d swear he’s still awake, and they’re gone as quick as they come but they still come. Maybe they aren’t nightmares, and maybe they aren’t memories, either — maybe Seven is hallucinating. Could he hallucinate things he doesn’t know? Things he couldn’t have seen, not in the short stretch of time he remembers? 

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know much. That’s hard to escape. 

Sometimes, it’s hard to tell when it starts. Sometimes, he’s sitting in his bland, grey room, and something about it is just different. Something’s there, something that shouldn’t be. This time, it’s a desk. He’s pacing, for lack of something better to do, crossing the grey concrete floor, and one of the times that he turns back around, there’s a desk on the other side of the room. There’s a lamp on the surface, glowing yellow, but the light is shadowed by the stacks of books piled on the desktop. They look worn. Well loved. 

It isn’t familiar. Seven has no idea where he would’ve seen something like this. It has to be a memory, right? 

That night, he dreams about Hat, or whatever. He isn’t wearing the black uniform Seven had seen him in, but grey, like Seven wears now. In this dream, he holds out his fist, and Seven watches as he knocks his own against it. He feels the pressure of it. He wakes up, and he feels like shit. 

The desk comes back to haunt him. Sometimes he dreams about it; sometimes he wakes up and it’s still there. More time passes, lonely, before he finally gets to see the rest of that room. 

The desk is shoved up against one wall. The lamp glows yellow, the desktop is piled high with books. So is the chair pushed up against it, the floor on either side. Seven doesn’t recognize this room — he turns, and there’s a bed on the other side. There’s somebody on the bed. 

Seven hesitates. He doesn’t usually have autonomy in his dreams, and he doesn’t ever dream of people he doesn’t know, just things, bits of colour. He dreams of Hat ‘cause he’s haunted Seven since they met. He dreams of soldiers and doctors he’s seen. He hasn’t seen a face he doesn’t remember, hasn’t been able to dream one up yet. 

Except that isn’t true, not entirely, because Seven’s dreamed of this person before. Not really, not entirely, but in at least a single odd bit or piece. They’re laying in bed, their back to Seven, and they have long, shimmering hair spilled out across their grey pillows. Seven hesitates again, but despite himself, maybe carried there by the pressure of his unconsciousness, starts to take a step closer towards the bed. 

He wakes up as he’s falling out of his own. For some reason, he rolls onto his back, and in the privacy of the dark, sobs until he forgets about why. 

He doesn’t see that hair or that person again for a long time, for a long stretch of nightmares. When he does, it’s one of his weirder nightmares, hard to distinguish from waking, and it starts with him startling awake. He startles awake in a bed he doesn’t recognize, except — 

Except he does recognize it when he turns his head and he sees the desk pushed against the far wall, overcrowded with worn, loved books. Seven looks down, and that shimmery, white head is pillowed on his chest. He can’t see their face, tucked against his grey sweatshirt, but he watches one of his massive, scarred hands reach out towards them and cradle the back of their head. It makes his hand look weird, dull and rough against shiny, soft looking hair. He can’t feel it, not like he sometimes feels pain, not like he’d felt Hat’s touch. 

Then he says something. Not really, but he must’ve in this memory, back in time, and there’s a part of him that must remember that, because he says something. He can’t make out the words, not individually, but he hears the rumble of his own voice, he can feel it low in his chest. 

He recognizes it, and he wakes up making a weird groaning sound that rumbles the same in his chest. When he wakes, he doesn’t remember what his voice had sounded like, but he remembers that he had recognized it. His heart beats with it in his throat. 

He used to speak. To that thing with white hair, at least. 

A memory. A real one. He wants to feel good about it, but he can’t. Just like everything else. 

That thing and its white hair keeps coming back to Seven in his nightmares. Sometimes just for beats, its hand in Seven’s, its hair on grey sheets, but sometimes its head is leaned on Seven’s chest, sometimes it’s tucked against his side. He can never feel it, and he doesn’t know why, but there’s a long stretch of nightmares where it’s always there. Seven wakes up from every one with his sheets sticking to his back. 

It’s kind of fucked up because they aren’t usually bad dreams, not in comparison, at the very least they don’t physically hurt, but he always wakes up from these feeling the worst. Sometimes he wakes up and his throat is so tightly constricted he’s gasping for breath. 

Once, he wakes up, and he’d swear he wakes up, chest heaving, his sheets stuck to his bare back. Still, tucked under his arm, head against his chest, is that thing, long white hair spilled out around them. 

Seven can’t take a full breath in. He hears himself say, “what are you doing here?”, and startles awake, really awake to the sound of his own voice. He’s alone in his bed. His chest feels like it’s been hollowed out. 

It had never been odd bits and pieces. Never. 

What he had thought were odd flashes of colour, dredges from different memories, they weren’t, not at all. Not once. 

He was seeing pieces, chipped away from a single memory, something trying to surface that he thinks maybe he was trying to block out. Maybe he knew better than to want to remember this. 

It explains the cold sweats, the lingering dread. Maybe this was the horrible thing Seven did. Maybe this is why everybody looks at him the way that they do. 

It’s that little thing, impossibly long white hair, except it’s matted in places this time, crusted with blood. It’s curled up, small and sad, bleeding on the concrete, bruised everywhere that Seven can see. Socks are pulled up over its knees, soaked with blood. The dress is ripped, tulle and gingham, soaked with blood the same. Seven sees himself reaching out towards it, and there’s blood on his hands. 

He wakes up with a sound so hoarse he doesn’t recognize it. His heart beats too high in his chest. 

What did Seven do? What the fuck did he do? 

Seven did something horrible. 

He’d already known that, just kind of instinctively, a hard truth to escape given the way that everybody looks at him, wary. He did something horrible, and it’s coming back to him in his nightmares, in pieces of things he’s done, white hair and blood and bruised, pale skin. He doesn’t want to remember anymore — he doesn’t want to know. 

Why is it coming back to haunt him? Why won’t it leave him alone? 

What could it want with him now? 

Across the room, Seven paces. It’s been hours, maybe days. He’s wearing down the bottoms of his socks. Once, he turns, and there’s somebody on his bed. 

Of course there’s somebody on his fuckin’ bed. 

It’s pale and naked and bleeding, bruises and long white hair. It isn’t shimmery, like it usually is, but dull and tangled. It has its face pressed against Seven’s sheets, trembling as it sobs, trying to pull the thin blankets up around him with weak, shaking hands. 

Seven leans over. Vomits. When he lifts his head, his bed is empty again. 

Why won’t it leave him alone? Why does it need him to remember? 

He doesn’t dream of it again for days, only in those odd bits and pieces; blood shimmering on concrete, dark bruises on pale skin, bloody socks, bloody hair. Still, he’s alone, physically. It’s been a really long time. How long has Seven been alone? Why are they keeping him isolated? What could he have fucked up so badly by not killing Hat during that field test? 

His name wasn’t even fuckin’ Hat. What the fuck was it? 

After a night of dreams of bound wrists and bruises in the shape of boot prints, Seven spends most of his morning and afternoon on the floor killing time, doing pushups. He doesn’t count — he can’t. He just passes the time, he doesn’t even quite know how much. He just pushes himself up from the concrete and doesn’t lift his head when a voice he doesn’t recognize says from his bed, “what are you doing on the floor?” 

Seven’s shoulders get so tense so quickly his arms lock. The accent is strange, kind of syrupy. It’s not like any of the accents Seven’s been exposed to so far, all of them relatively the same. He knows who’s on his bed without looking, and he can’t lift his head. Doesn’t want to, but probably couldn’t, anyway. 

He doesn’t want to know what he did to them. He doesn’t want to see it. 

“Pushups,” he tells the concrete. 

“It’s the middle of the night,” the voice says. 

“What?” Seven says, and lifts his head. 

It’s dark. With the lights out, this far underground, it’s an impenetrable sort of darkness, a kind of darkness that Seven’s still not really gotten used to, not yet. He looks towards his bed instinctively, and he’s relieved he can’t see through the darkness. He would swear he can see it shimmer in some places, the shine of this thing’s satin hair. 

“Oh,” Seven says. 

“Come back to bed,” the voice tells him. 

“No,” Seven says. 

“What?” It replies, and it sounds hurt. “Why not?” 

“What do you want from me?” Seven asks it. 

“What are you talking about?” It answers, and reaches out through the darkness to grab Seven’s hand. 

For the first time, Seven feels its touch. It’s warm. Impossibly soft. More than human. 

He wrenches his hand away so quickly pain ripples through his shoulder. He launches himself backwards, and as the back of his head collides with the far wall he startles himself awake. The lights are still on. His bed is empty. 

Seven tips his head back and bellows at the ceiling. 

He screams himself hoarse. 

Seven doesn’t sleep the next night. It doesn’t fuckin’ matter. 

The nightmares find him anyway, even in his waking hours. It’s starting to feel that they’re with him more than they aren’t. The times he isn’t actively having nightmares, the time he’s safe, he spends tense and uncomfortable. Waiting. 

He tries, anyway, to keep that thing and it’s white hair, it’s soft hands away from him. He doesn’t sleep and he doesn’t look away from a grey spot on the grey wall across from him. If he doesn’t sleep, the dreams can’t control him. If he doesn’t look around, he doesn’t have to see the desk that’s pushed up against the far wall. He doesn’t have to see anything but the grey spot on the grey wall. Familiar. 

Except it doesn’t fuckin’ matter. He spends the night staring into the dark, and when day comes, when the lights are turned on, he stares at that spot on the wall and doesn’t look at anything. Thankfully, he has one eye and not much in the way of depth perception. He’s never been so grateful for it. 

Until that thing finds his blind spot. Seven doesn’t see it coming. It comes from his blind side and leans his head against the side of Seven’s arm. He can feel the pressure of it against his side, bleeding warmth through the grey of his clothing. 

Seven can’t remember ever being so tense. His shoulders ache with the strain. He holds his breath without really thinking about it or knowing why. He doesn’t turn his head. He can’t look at it. 

Seven can taste his heartbeat as he looks down. He thinks he’s trying to look away, but it’s hair is so long it’s pooling on the grey sheets around them and Seven can’t look away from it, despite how desperately he wants to. The thing reaches out to him, curls a hand around Seven’s forearm, and Seven can feel the pressure of its fingertips. 

“Are you okay?” It asks him softly. Its accent is sweet and syrupy, kind of rough around the edges. Bile rises up the back of Seven’s throat. 

He doesn’t say anything. Can’t. Watches the way its hair shimmers in the fluorescent light. Something about it is kind of hypnotizing, and something about that is so familiar it makes Seven’s palms ache, and he doesn’t know why. 

It squeezes his arm gently. Seven can feel it. “I make you nervous,” it says, and it sounds like it’s teasing, “don’t I?” 

“Yes,” Seven says. 

It laughs softly, and Seven can feel the rumble of it against his side. “Bless your heart,” it says. 

“What?” 

It might as well have reached through his chest and beneath his ribcage. Seven’s heart starts to beat out of time. He turns, an instinct completely outside of his own control. Drawn to it, almost. Pulled into it. 

Except it’s already gone and Seven is alone in his room. 

It hurts worse than anything else, and Seven doesn’t even understand it. It’s suffocating; he tries so hard to breathe around it he has to lean over the side of his bed as he wretches, vomits on the concrete with the force of it. 

It hurts in a way he’s unfamiliar with, it hurts from the inside, somewhere low, deep, somewhere he doesn’t know how to fix. It’s suffocating — crushing. Seven is strong but the weight of it is too much. Why does it hurt like this? How can he make it stop? 

What the hell did Seven do that thing? Does he deserve this? 

He can’t even think of it as a person, but that’s what it is, isn’t it? Or was, at least, before whatever happened. Before whatever Seven did to him. Maybe he deserves to hurt like this. Maybe he deserves worse. 

He leans into it. He lets it hurt, and he lets the hurt crush him, lets it drag him into the dredges of unconsciousness. He welcomes the nightmares. His sheets don’t smell like himself. 

It comes back to Seven while he sleeps. 

He comes back to Seven while he sleeps. 

Seven likes to think of it as that thing, because it’s easier. It’s easier to accept what he might have done to him, why he might haunt him, when he doesn’t think about him as a person, but an entity. Something not quite real. 

But he’s a person. Was a person, at least. And he was really small. 

Seven still can’t see his face, and why can’t Seven see his face? Why is he blocking it out? What did he do to it? But he can’t. Doesn’t think he wants to, at this point. 

He’s tired. For the first time, truly, that Seven can remember, he’s tired. He doesn’t quite know what he is, not really, and he doubts anybody will ever tell him depth, but he knows himself to an extent. He knows what he can do. He’s a freak fuckin’ fighting machine. He’s a monster. A weapon. He really doesn’t need to sleep much, or often. He can run without it for a long time if he needs to. He can crack a lot of consecutive heads before he even needs to stop for air. He can take a lot of bullets standing up. 

Seven can’t remember ever feeling tired like this. Heavy, like it’s settled into his bones, weighing him to his grey sheets, stained with sweat and vomit, and he just wants to sleep but all sleep brings him is sicker, heavier feelings. He’s so tired. How is he supposed to make this stop? What is he supposed to do? 

He doesn’t want dreams anymore. He doesn’t want to remember. He doesn’t want to know what he did. 

But he comes back to Seven while he sleeps, facing away from him. Seven is partway through braiding his impossibly long hair, and he can feel it, this time, the silk of it between his fingers. He doesn’t know how to braid hair, and he can’t imagine how he ever would’ve, but they’re his own hands he’s looking down at, scarred and woven in white hair. 

“You don’t have to do this,” that voice says, and it’s the same accent Seven hallucinates, strange. 

“I don’t care,” he hears himself say. 

He makes a series of strange, soft sounds and it takes a second before Seven realizes he’s sobbing. It makes pain burst in his hands, for some reason, sharp and sudden like his hair had turned from satin to razor wire. He wrenches his hands away and wakes himself up, chest heaving. 

He’d curled his hands into his fists so tight he’d cut open his palms with his fingernails. Blood seeps through his fingers and he vomits all over himself. 

For hours, Seven sits in bed, and beats his head back against the wall. Not especially hard — hard enough to hurt, sure, but not hard enough to do any lasting damage, not hard enough to crack his skull. 

For hours, he hits his head, and he tries not to think, and he tries not to remember, and still, he finds him again, and catches Seven by the back of the head before he can knock it against the concrete again. “What are you doing?” That strange accent asks, and Seven closes his eyes. Fuck, he thinks, and he can feel its hand at the back of his head. He can feel his hand at the back of his head. 

“What do you want?” Seven asks. 

“What?” He asks, and he sounds hurt. “I want you to stop hitting your head.” 

“Why?” 

“Why?” He repeats. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” 

“Why?” 

He makes a sound like he sighs. “Silas,” he says softly. 

It triggers something. Not a memory, not from before, but from Hat. He hadn’t called him Seven, he’d kept calling him Silas. Silas, it’s me. 

Seven turns, part surprise and part instinct, maybe. For the first time, it doesn’t vanish. It doesn’t turn away. 

For the first time, Seven sees his face. 

He inhales so sharply he almost chokes on it. It’s like staring directly into bright light, so bright Seven finds himself squinting, lifting a hand to kind of shield his face. He was right before, that first time, before he thought this thing was human — it can’t be. It’s impossible. It’s too — 

It isn’t familiar, but the way his chest tightens feels like it might be. His heart starts to beat irregularly, and the beat of it feels familiar, too. 

It’s so beautiful, whatever it is. Shimmery and light and hard to look at. It has really dark eyes, and it doesn’t look at Seven like anybody else has ever looked at Seven, not even Hat. He smiles at him. His mouth is pretty. 

What did Seven do to him? Why? 

Nausea rises in the back of Seven’s throat and he stops smiling. He thumbs gently across the bruised back of Seven’s head and Seven can feel his touch. “What’s wrong with you?” He asks softly. 

Seven wants to look away from him and he can’t. “What do you want from me?” He asks helplessly. 

From his feet, something sobs. 

Quickly, Seven looks away, down towards the concrete, over the side of the bed, and he’s there, trying to pull himself up off the concrete, small and bleeding. His warmth is gone from Seven’s side — he feels cold all over now. He’s wearing nothing but socks, soaked with blood. He’s shaking so hard he can’t hold himself up. For the second time, Seven can see his face, and he wishes he couldn’t. His mouth is swollen. His tears had cleared tracks in the blood dried on his face. 

Something in Seven breaks. Something that had been threatening to give for a long time. 

With a roar, he launches himself out of bed and over the bleeding body. He slams his weight into the armoured door. Bangs his fists into it so hard he dents the steel. 

Finally, a slot opens, partway up. Eyes peer up at him, crinkled in amusement. “What do you need, Seventy Seven?” 

He can’t say. He tries, he tries to talk to those eyes the way he can talk to that dream but he can’t, no words come out. He roars in frustration. 

The soldier says, “use your words.” 

Seven leans down to roar again, slamming his fist into the door. The eyes crinkle again. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you need.”  

Seven shoots his hand out through the slot and shoves his fingertips through the soldier’s eyes, digging his fingernails into his eye sockets. His eyeballs burst around Seven’s fingers, and the soldier shrieks, dropping out of view. All Seven gets is a flash of a concrete corridor, a black uniform, and the slot slides shut again. There’s blood on Seven’s hand. 

A small hand curls around his ankle. The warmth of its touch bleeds through Seven’s joggers. 

Seven slams his fist into the concrete so hard his knuckles split. Not for the first time, he screams himself hoarse. 

[francesderwent]

Most ashamed?

the obvious answer would be Back To December but while it’s genuinely apologetic I don’t know that it’s ashamed! shame is not a typical mode for Taylor, for sure; even when she’s admitting wrongdoing she’s sort of unflinching about it, or wry.

so the most ashamed song I think she’s ever written…is The Prophecy. over and over she refers to what a greater woman would do in her place—and what she can’t do, no matter how she tries to be calm and confident about this. she’s not cool, she’s not faithful, she’s on her knees pleading just for someone who wants her company. and then you add the horribly personal admission “I’m so afraid I’ve sealed my fate”! she wants something she can’t get and she’s afraid it’s her fault she can’t have it.

JPII said that shame was ultimately about the fear that when someone sees us as who we are that will open up the door for them to use us, instead of love us like we want. and I think that’s the undercurrent of The Prophecy. it somehow says exactly what we all knew about Taylor Swift—she wants true love—but in saying it so simply she’s opening herself up in a new way, she’s vulnerable in a way that comes out as shame.

[deepseaspriteblog]

Happy Friday, it's fankid time! My personal favorite is the first white haired kid, if only because he makes me think of part 1 Dio. I'm thinking next week I'm gonna make some fusion/ectobio kids for adopts, but that depends on how motivated I am. Alternatively, I could make some occupation themed kids/trolls.

As always, if you're interested in any of these cool dudes, you can find them on my ko-fi through the links below!

1/2/3/4/5/6

7/8/9/10/11/12

[xovera-toz]

Timeloop that resets every time someone's responsibility is evaded. The brothers have to go about figuring it out on their own

First loop: Greg can't find the correct name for his frog, it all restarts once they fall asleep in the hospital.

Second loop: Wirt blows out the lantern instead of the Woodsman- instant retake.

Third loop: the Woodsman protects the children from the Beast. Best intentions, but protecting Greg is Wirt's job.

Fourth loop: at this point Wirt goes full speedrunner and stomps out into the woods to find the Beast himself. Doesn't go well.

So on and so forth

[mirror-to-the-past]

Keeping my saltyness out of the tags outside of spoiler tagging so I don't rain on other people's parades, but oooogh the new Sonic movie did not meet my tentative expectations. That was a Jim Carrey dick stroking fest to an uncomfortable degree. Really didn't want Gerald's character to be done by him for a reason. The lack of attention on Shadow despite it being the Shadow movie was so frustrating, summarized perfectly by Shadow's final scene still being overshadowed by Carrey. I don't think Maria even got the fact that she was disabled mentioned whatsoever? Very strange. I had fun, had some laughs, enjoyed with fellow longtime Sonic dorks that were just as excited to see it as me, but we all went out disappointed. :/

[lurkingshan]

One of my biggest Only Friends grievances that I did not actually post about much is how sad I was that we didn’t get the cynical and jaded, done with your shit, baseball bat-wielding version of Sand. I was so excited for that guy but he evaporated off my screen in favor of a people pleasing simp who sees himself as an actual dog begging for scraps of affection. Truly a sad turn of events that I’m still low key mad about.

[hamspamandjamsandwich]

Biggest fic writing challenge for me right now: fixing the Mukuro shit because tbqh I hate how it’s handled in the show and I think it makes very little sense from a writing perspective

✨no Mukuro hate here okay she’s a bad bitch✨

But man I could endlessly bitch about how much I hate the handling of Hiei in the 3 Kings Saga. Maybe one day I’ll actually write it out in some dumb meta posting shit but. Ughh.

Like I find it so dissatisfying and poorly executed that I, someone for whom Hiei x Mukuro borders on a NOTP, have considered writing fix-it fic for them. I HATE THIS SHIP AND I STILL THINK ITS SHIPPERS DESERVE BETTER.

3 Kings Saga should just be called 3 Missed Opportunities Saga lmao

pictured: me thinking about writing this post

[g0negrll]

cant wait for summer🧋🌺

[au-where-spn-is-good]

i genuinely don’t get ppl who like supernatural but reduce either sam or dean to being just good or bad like to me the most interesting thing abt the show is their dynamic as two fucked up people who do both good and bad things and can’t let go of each other i just really don’t see the appeal in “one brother is good the other is bad”. and that goes both ways im a sam lover but i don’t agree with ppl who think dean is evil and sam is a perfect innocent baby boy ! i mean if nothing else they both kill people LMAO like a lot !

[ghosty-schnibibit]

on the one hand i knew from the get go that realistically they were going to have to cut things from both the suffering game and lunar interludes IV and V if they were going to attempt to fit all three into one graphic novel, especially since reunion tour was a two parter

but, with all of that in mind, i did not think those cuts would include pivotal character developing moments for multiple main and side characters, so many fan favorite lines that at some point i gave up keeping track, key pieces of foreshadowing and themes that come into play during the finale, and literally every side character introduced in the original arc are you fucking kidding me

[fvckw4d]

I do not have anything against people just having a good time or shipping stuff I don't like or that is fucked up in the story or whatever, but sometimes I see people's read on the situation and go "I don't think this is a matter of morals or taste, I think you just need to get better critical thinking skills."

[szkicel]

btw guess who got into Arcana for the very first time, in the year of 2024

[overbearingstruggles]