#but i wanted to go angsty

[ashyblondwaves]

the ily prompt - #39 with jancy

Prompt: “Don't cry." Pairing: Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler Rating: T Word Count: 408

"Hey."

With their forehead's pressed together, Jonathan's arm rose up, cupping Nancy's cheek as he tearfully looked at her face.

"Dont' cry."

"Why not? You are," Nancy said with a sniff.

Jonathan let out a mirthless laugh.

"You go me there," he said, moving his thumb is slow circles at the apple of Nancy's cheek. "Winter Break."

"Spring Break," Nancy volleyed.

"Summer Break," Jonathan added with a sad smile. "Then College."

"We'll get through this," Nancy declared bravely.

"We'll get through this."

Jonathan's other arm moved up, grabbing Nancy's face and bringing his lips to her's in a slow, desperate kiss. He was determined to remember everything about Nancy Wheeler's kisses. The way she always hungrily kissed him back, the sharp intake of breath when their lips met. The warmth and smoothness of her lips and the taste of the strawberry chapstick she always wore. He pulled away and watched as fat tears slipped down her cheeks.

"We'll write," Nancy reminded him with a hiccup.

"And call."

"It's only a year."

"A lot can happen in a year."

"Shhh," Nancy cooed, reaching up to brush her fingers across Jonathan's lips. "We'll get through this," she said again.

Jonathan nodded, hands shaking against Nancy's cheeks.

"Jonathan!" Joyce called out. "Time to go!"

With a sign, they broke apart, stepped backward and creating a hole that would only grow wider the further away Jonathan went.

"Gotta go."

Nancy's tears only came faster, dripping off the end of her nose and soaking her cheeks as Jonathan reluctantly walked to his car. Nancy followed him, standing back as he opened the driver's side door and slipped in behind the wheel.

"Call me as soon as you find a phone," she said. "No matter the time."

"I will."

"Be good to El," Nancy added. "She needs you."

Jonathan nodded and started the car; Nancy's cries turned to sobs as Will made his way to the passenger side of Jonathan's car and got in, his own tears coming in heaving waves.

Slowly, as if it'd buy them more time, Jonathan backed out of the driveway, his silent sobs drowned out by Will's weeping. He kept his eyes on Nancy the entire way to the street and as he kicked the car in drive and started to pull away, he watched her in his mirrors getting smaller and smaller with each yard put between them.

Those yards turned to miles and soon, she was gone.

[forgotmysword]

Doomed from the beginning

Unknown / Marguerite Duras / Blanca Varela / Ramona Ausubel / Anne Carson / Heather Havrilesky / Michael Cunningham / Lisel Mueller / Richard Siken x Dungeon Meshi by Ryoko Kui

[perpetualcontrolleddrowning]

Something something the way that Crowley introduced himself to Aziraphale the first time they met in the garden and reacted as if they had never met before. Something about him later behaving as if he did actually have those memories of their time in Heaven together and trying to pass it off as being someone different now. Something about Heaven's way of punishing angels that go against the plan by erasing their memories. Something about Crowley seeing Gabriel without his memory and saying "ask him properly." Something about "remember it now" "it hurts, to remember. my head isn't built for that" "I know. Do it anyway"

Something about "I know. Looking at where the furniture isn't"

Something about I know

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[factual-fantasy]

As soon as I got done drawing the refences for my Slime Rancher submas AU, I turned right around and got to work on Ingo's disappearance arc XDD

I'm thinking how the story goes is Ingo, Emmet and Elesa came to the far far range out of their love and interest in the slimes that live there. They truly had a passion for this planet and wanted to explore and learn everything about it.

Now Elesa was super invested in the gadgets and life on the ranch, while Ingo and Emmet were big on the exploration side of things..

One day while the brothers were out exploring they discovered a new area covered in curvy pink trees..

For a while they explored together, but at some point they split up. Looking back Emmet doesn't even remember why they separated.. he wishes he never left Ingo's side..

About an hour passed when Emmet started look for Ingo. When he couldn't find him right away he tracked him on his Rotom. Following the signal he found a hole in the ground leading to an enormous cave..

At the bottom of the cave laid Ingo's abandoned Rotom, and a trail of blood leading to an old broken teleporter.. Ingo was nowhere to be found..

...

I would love to draw more for this AU right away! Though it might be wise to take it easy somewhat. This was a lot more drawing and backgrounds than I'm use to.. 😅😅 Either way don't worry! An Ingo and Emmet reunion hug is on its way! XDD

[sualne]

sleeping & chatting

[mischefous]

Ayooo I saw you were doing whumpy LU requests? Would you be willing to do a thing with Hyrule and his blood curse? Idk how angsty you wanna go XD anyways thanks and hiiiiiiiii

Heyyyy! I know this is veeeery late but i still hope ya like it!

Thank you for your request @hotcheetohatredwastaken 💙

CW! Blood, head owchie

[artsymeeshee]

I had this idea that’s been stewing in my head for a long while now that I’ve slowly been trying to draw out. I can’t really explain it, I was thinking about future events after the summer when the show ended and what could be a continuation of sorts. Just wanted to show a small preview of a small comic I had in mind that will maybe be done one day…!

[starry-bi-sky]

"Stillborn? No, no, still born." -- DPXDC AU

Based off a comment I saw where Bruce knew about Talia's pregnancy in the earlier comivs, and was ecstatic to be a father. So much so that Talia feared he'd give up being Batman for it, so when she gave birth she put the baby (Damian) on a doorstep and (seemingly) told Bruce that the baby was stillborn.

Instead of Damian, that baby was Danny! Meet Daniel Brown, the 14 year old foster kid whose been living with the Fenton family for the last two years. He's about two years older than Damian.

His last name, "Brown", was a generic surname given to him because the note he came with didn't have one on it. It just had the name "Danyal" on it, but albeit 'Daniel' was the one that had been put into the system for, I'll be totally frank here, racism reasons.

(I looked it up to make sure, and it's generally not permissible for foster parents to change the names of their foster kids even if it's a permanent residency, and for that reason Danny doesn't have the last name "Fenton".)

Danny's got ✨~issues!~✨ He's been through a handful of homes growing up, most of them terrible for a variety of reasons. Which has, as a result, left lasting scars. He's generally a very sweet kid, just very distrustful and jumpy. He's got the signs of a kid suffering from PTSD, and a handful of other issues including attachment and insomnia. His inferiority complex could rival Damian's, and that's going to make for an interesting mutual hatred for when they finally meet.

(something I'll get into later)

He still has the blanket he was found in. It's made of a very high quality material and is a beautiful emerald green with little golden thread accents, it's high quality as a result has Danny clinging onto a desperate hope that his bio family might be out there, and the only reason they gave him up was because of some outside factor. It's been taken a few times in old foster homes, and he's flipped out each time.

While he still calls Jack and Maddie by their names, he likes them well enough. The bar isn't that high though, and while they're some of the better foster parents he's had, "better" doesn't equal "safest". Their laboratory malpractice. Basically, C- Fenton Parents. They're negligent by virtue of being engrossed in their work, but they do care equally about Jazz and Danny. So he doesn't hold it against them that much.

He kinda prefers it that way, their loud affection is overwhelming and Danny doesn't know what to do with their attention, even if he craves it. It's a bit of a complicated situation.

They took in Danny because they genuinely wanted another child, but didn't want a big age gap between them and Jazz. It was actually Jack's idea to foster, and they discussed it with Jazz beforehand. She was all for the idea. Thus, a handful of weeks later, a ton of paperwork, and inspection later, and Daniel Brown entered their household with a trash bag in one hand and eyes like shards of stained glass.

His relationship with Jazz is kinda strained, but that's by virtue of her constant psychoanalyzing and helicoptering. Like with the parents, Danny's overwhelmed by the attention and also just, straight up doesn't like the fact that she's telling him that there's something wrong with him. He knows that, thank you. He pushes her away when she does this.

Other than that though? When Jazz isn't smothering him and is acting like an actual sibling and not a third parent, they're pretty close, and Danny really likes her. They've hung out a few times on their own volition, and Jazz showed him how to take better care of his long hair.

His school situation,, pretty similar to canon with the bullying, albeit with a few more instances of him blowing a fuse and lashing out against his attackers. He's a rather angry kid, but it's quiet. It builds up, piles on top of itself, until eventually, like a volcano, it erupts and burns everyone within radius.

Danny's got a fire core, not an ice core. Phantom's hair is made of white magma; thick and heavy, setting itself on fire when his anger runs hot. When he gets angry, his skin begins to char and split open to reveal pulsating lava underneath, and he crackles and pops like a raging forest fire.

I haven't decided yet on how he meets the batfam -- i've got two ideas but they're both in opposition to each other, and drastically alter how the rest of the plot goes. But I do know that him and Damian hate each other in the beginning. And it has nothing to do with inheritance or "being the blood son" -- although their blood relation absolutely plays the major role in their disdain for each other.

Simply put, they're jealous of each other for the same thing: thinking that the other was wanted.

Damian hates Danny because, unlike Damian, Bruce knew about Danny since conception and wanted him from the moment he heard about him. He had a whole nursery set up, and still does. He never took it down -- just locked the door. Damian was thrust upon Bruce without warning, and he feels like he forced himself into the family. And while on some level Damian knows and understands that Bruce wants him and loves him as much as his other children, that doubt and feeling of inferiority still remains. He looks at Danny and sees him with what Damian always feels he needs reaffirmed.

Meanwhile, Danny hates Damian because he looks at him and sees him with everything Danny's ever wanted. He hates him because Damian grew up knowing both of their parents, with one of them for most of his life, and then moved over to the other. There was never a moment where Damian was (seemingly) left to doubt his place within the family. Damian was raised with the very same woman who left Danny on a doorstep, with no clue to his identity beyond a little green blanket and a note with only a first name. Damian was wanted everywhere, and Danny was wanted nowhere. Damian is Danny's replacement in his eyes.

(It's the little revelation that Damian grew up with their mother that elevates Danny from being quietly envious of Damian to downright despising him. What did Damian do, that Danny didn't? He could live with Damian living with Bruce -- Bruce didn't know Danny was even alive. But him living with their mom? Are you fucking kidding him?)

Damian never outright attacks Danny physically, but it's not like he hides that he didn't like Danny. Meanwhile, Danny, in all his repressive anger, quietly despised him from a distance until finally one wrong snide side-comment has him blowing up and it becomes a screaming match. They're both just enough similar to each other that when they look at each other they really just see a mirror.

They'll work it out together, eventually. But it'll be ugly and cruel and explosive, and they'll start mending the bridge to become brothers in more than just blood relation in the end.

But yeah, stillborn Danny has... a lot going for him.

[demigods-posts]

whatever you do. don't think about how percy and annabeth held the sky. and both of them earned grey streaks. that likely lasted for a couple of years. so during the year before the prophecy. when percy and annabeth weren't on speaking terms. one look in the mirror was enough to remind them what could be if they had time.

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

Can you teach me one more time?

The Time of Fever

[beanghostprincess]

Okay, so I haven't watched all of FMAB yet, but I love how Ed is so fucking oblivious. He got a gorgeous girl, way smarter than him and out of everybody's league, who plays with the cord of the telephone when they speak together because she's down bad and laughs softly when he talks. And he's like "yeah, yeah, well, I am glad you're alive haha I thought they were going to brutally fucking murder you today. So that's a relief. Bye, super best friend in the world" and hangs up like the moron he is. But not only that, because well, they can't see each other so I get he doesn't notice the crush in Winry's voice, BUT LING?????? Dude has been with that prince inside a guy's stomach and has carried him around and cooked him his boot and yelled at him for giving up because he can't leave somebody as ambitious as him there without accomplishing what he wants, and then he says some gay bullshit like "Ling is still in there" after looking at Greed's eyes ONCE. One thing is not realizing a girl is crushing on you but Oh my God Edward for fuck's sake get a clue and realize you like men-

[tending-the-hearth]

thinking about how canonically the pevensie siblings are 13, 12, 10, and 8 in "the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe"

thinking about how lucy needed a stool to be able to get up onto her throne, how peter's sword is a little too large for him, how susan's bow is a little too difficult for her to pull back, how edmund's shield nearly covers his entire body.

thinking about the pevensie siblings and their first few months in narnia, getting to know their new people, and half the narnians sitting there horrified because WHAT have these literal babies been through to give them such traumatized, old eyes, and the other half of the narnians are preparing to adopt them, no it doesn't matter that they're the rules, they're children who are being put in charge of too many things, and if peter looks at the old man council long enough he's going to cry, so someone needs to give him paternal support while aslan is off doing Lion Jesus Stuff™️ and whoops oreius is being nice and encouraging and now he's adopted his kings and queens they're his kids now he doesn't make the rules.

just the narnians and the pevensies being thrown into it together, and just as the pevensies will do anything to protect their new kingdom, the narnians will do anything to protect their rules, because let's be honest, these children have no sense of self-preservation, and are far too overprotective of each other and their people to take into account their own safety, so a lot of battles it's just one of the pevensie siblings running headfirst into danger with oreius running after them because his kids are feral and don't know proper royalty manners and won't threatening old kings from different countries because they're being assholes and the last time one of them tried undermining the queens susan called him a self-righteous asshole and lucy tried to stab him SOMEONE help him corral his children please

[calciumdreams]

.

[xxcherrycherixx]

(　o=^•ェ•)o　

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I've seen the last '"g-d made you perfect" that I can handle, and it's led me to a realization about how I think of g-d.

I don't think we were made perfect. We were made human. And, if I'm honest, the only perfection in my mind is g-d, and that sense of perfection is what differentiates humans from g-d. If humans were as perfectly-made as g-d, I for one wouldn't see the point in following, believing, trusting, caring for, or loving g-d.

I guess for me, I see the ways in which humans alter the Way We Were Created that I really don't think it's right to speculate as to if there's a limit to altering our abilities or bodies. For instance, as a trans person, I've definitely been inundated with this idea that because g-d made my body "perfect" that I shouldn't alter it ever, but isn't that a dangerous precedent? Is it really so, that our bodies are magically made perfect, as g-d that to even tamper with the idea of change would be the same as cursing g-d? I really don't think that's compelling.

I love thinking about just how much g-d is placed into people, but I don't think it warrants restricting the ability to learn, create, grow, or change. Thank g-d that He created the ability to change!