#but i'm close with both of them

[blushweddinggowns]

His mind was such a mess, Eddie barely knew what he was thinking anymore. But he did know to be annoyed as fuck when his phone rang. He had kept the ringer on high, despite the fact that the only calls he got were from his inner circle asking what the hell was going on. He managed to ignore most of those. But on the off chance it was Chrissy stuck on her layover he didn’t want to miss it.

He didn’t bother checking who it was when he answered. He knew it wouldn’t be Steve. 

“Hello?” Eddie mumbled into the receiver, “Chris?”

“That better mean Chrissy,” Someone huffed, “If you’re seeing someone else already I think that gives me a legal right to kill you.”

Eddie jolted up at the sound of Steve’s voice, “S-Steve?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” He sighed on the other end, sounding way too casual for someone who just turned Eddie’s world upside down, “So how has Europe been? Or was it California?”

Eddie cringed, at a loss for what to say. It wasn’t helping that his heart was nearly pounding out of his chest, “Oh. I-I didn’t- I mean- I’m sorry.”

Steve snorted on the other end, “Yeah, you are. No social media my ass.”

“It’s - I don’t usually use it that much?” Eddie stammered out, “It’s uh, mostly managed by a team but I have the password and - and this is not helping me at all. Is it?”

“No,” Steve agreed, “No, it’s not.”

“Steve I- I know I can’t say anything to fix this. But I-I didn’t want things to turn out like this. I get it, I’m an asshole but you weren’t a joke Steve. I’m the joke. I’m the idiot-you- I mean- I,” he was rambling, badly. Trying and failing to get everything out. 

He had been too lost in the sauce of his own pity party to ever think about this point. Now he was blowing it.

Or so he thought.

Steve sighed again, “Okay, that’s enough of that. Come open the door. I’m outside.”

It took a second for that to compute, “Huh?”

“I’m outside of your door,” Steve said again, “Are you going to let me in or not?”

Holy shit. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. 

Eddie rushed to stand, almost instantly eating it when the blood didn’t catch up to his brain. He might have neglected a few bodily needs during the past few days. It just wasn’t enough to stop him from rushing to the door, knocking into every other thing on the way. 

But what was a broken lamp and a few bruises compared to true love?

He wretched the door open, his phone still stupidly at his ear. 

There Steve was, waiting for him. Eddie’s mind had decided to keep the idiot routine going because all he could really do was stare at him, at a total loss for what to do next. 

Steve frowned at him, “Jesus, Eddie. You look… not good.”

“I know,” Eddie agreed, running a hand through his greasy hair. He hadn’t exactly been checking any mirrors but he could do the math. No showers, barely any sleep, constant crying. Now that he thought about it he’s pretty sure he hadn’t even changed since their fight. It was bad. Only made worse by the fact Steve was here to see it.

Steve was still frowning as he stepped inside, closing the door behind him to lean on. 

They stared at each other while Eddie’s heart threatened to beat out of his chest. Is this what a heart attack fet like?

“I don’t really know what to do now,” Steve admitted after another beat of silence, “I kind of thought I would but… I don’t.”

“That’s okay,” Eddie tried, taking a cautious step forward. But Steve put a hand up, stopping him in his tracks.

He took a deep breathe, “Eddie, what I’m about to say isn’t to hurt you, okay? I’m not trying to make you feel bad.”

Eddie swallowed, his throat dry and his voice quiet when he answered, “Okay.”

“I think you should go take a shower,” Steve said gently, “Then we can talk.”

from the next chapter of this fic

[nenoname]

stan ignoring mysteries and weirdness for 30 years balancing out his family's innate curiosity and being why the blind eye ignored him for that long

[platoapproved]

And that's the end of it. There's nothing else.

[your-local-narc]

Did someone say teenage mutant ninja turtles

[saltpepperbeard]

I hope you find that. I think I have.

[fullscoreshenanigans]

Posuka Demizu’s New Year's Art for 2025

[thenationofzaun]

"Ekko lost everything in the end, his ideal timeline, his girlfriend, his mentor. He saved the world but was left with nothing😭"

The Firelights: ...

[mydarlinglaszlo]

never gonna stop losing my mind over this scene i fear

[ruporas]

green haired guy that has haunted my character types for 10+ years

[mayasdeluca]

MAYA AND CARINA STATION 19: 7x10 'One Last Time'

[alien-bluez]

Lark can't handle nice things, and as he says "always fucks it up."

Drew a scene from this fic here, please please go read it right now!

[unpersoniverse]

Skén:nen sá:sewh

as promised, here's Precious boy™ getting kissed by Precious wife™ because he deserves all the love in the world :cc

translation: Get home safe

[wandixx]

"There is only so much you can for the dead" part 2

continuation to this, I should probably make an original title at some point

trigger warnings: graphic describtion of Danny's death

Moments of blissed, deadly stillness felt unfairly short. It was less than blink of an eye, less than a drop of darkness after he asked Team for the last time to leave and before he woke up, in exactly same state that he was when portal spat him out. He could barely perceive his limbs, and what he could, was consumed by agonising pain.

Fuck, he hated Death Days. Absolutely horrible experience.

His nerves were on fire, electricity dancing and burning across them. His veins and lungs and nostrils and ears and stomach and eyes and mouth and every little crevice of his body was filled with ectoplasm, like liquid fire and evaporated ice, drowning him at every attempted breath. He was crushed by an unimaginable weight, at the same time as his body exploded. He was just coherent enough to feel his bones breaking, cells bursting, his very molecules being rearranged and destroyed and rebuilt but not coherent enough to tell if his scream was anything louder than a whimper.

He was in the middle of the crowd that screamed louder than he could handle, as if every person who ever got to Ghost Zone used this exact moment to let out all of their anguish, hands dragging and pulling and squeezing and brushing at every inch of his skin. He was alone like no one was ever before, in silence that was deafening. He could be stomped to death any second without anyone turning his head, and so separate from everything that he could be only existing being.

He couldn’t help but wait for Death, merciless and brutal, whose twisted children invaded his bed time stories since he could understood words, whose corrupted children he was taught to hate. She was hideous and horrifying, but against everything, she was familiar and he wanted, needed, to see one intimate face in the situation that was so wrong, wrong, wrong. He waited for her to rip his last breath away so everything would stop.

If he had a scrap of himself that could feel worse, it’d cry when he felt her getting away from him, slipping between the fingers that were both tense and limp, impossible to control but possible to feel, broken and twitching. She was getting away but pain wasn’t lessening, maybe even getting worse, to the point where it was only thing that filled his brain.

And then it all stopped. No pain, not even any left over typical to how injuries worked, just a moment of weird pressure against his palm (just like the button), that soon stopped too.

He was in his human form, but in the hazmat he wore just before the accident. Something was wrong about it all. Something in his body made it feel like not his. Something in his chest was too light and too quiet and some intrusive thought made him want to claw on his rib cage until he ripped it open and realized what was missing.

Breathing seemed to easy, enough that he got lightheaded. It got a lot harder when he realized.

He couldn’t feel his core.

Before he managed to come to terms with that, there was a gentle pressure on his hand again.

And the pain returned.

*-*-*

Danny didn't wake up abruptly, with a choked scream and phantom burns. He also didn't wake up slowly, not in the nice, relaxed way at least, when the line between dream and reality is blurred beyond recognition. He woke up in pain, feeling like he wasn't even sleeping before, just… somewhere else while his body was destroying itself again for what felt like decades.

It took some effort to connect with his body after he woke up. To be able to move even a finger. Even longer, to open his eyes. Actual ages to sit up without urge to scream.

After seeing the absolute wreckage of the room, he kinda wished it took him longer. It looked like a warzone. Electrical burns on the walls and ceiling, random puddles of bubbling ectoplasm eating away anything they touched like an acid, and what little stuff there was before, was almost all broken beyond recognition, either by whatever force was doing its thing during his death day show or ecto. When he looked at it a bit more, it seemed to go in spiral around him.

It was kinda sad that the cookies went to waste like that. He was curious who brought them in though.

Thank fucking Ancients that Team listened to him and nobody was there when the whole mess was going down. They would probably join him on the other side of the veil otherwise.

He saw it all only because of his ghost enhanced in dark vision (thank Ancients he stayed in the ghost form) because apparently his Death Day shorted out both main electrical circuit and the emergency one. Thankfully, according to his ears, it only reached this and rooms next to him, instead of the whole Mountain.

Fuck. He really hoped Robin gave him some sort of back-up back-up room because otherwise he was dead. Or well, dead-er.

He rolled out of the bed, barely catching himself from smacking on the floor like a sack of potatoes. Though some would argue he didn’t catch himself if only his face didn’t fall to the floor like the sack of potatoes.

Only then he caught sight of big, ecto-green circle that embed itself into the wall right over the bed. It had familiar vibes. Really familiar…

He had to tell the Team about it yesterday.

*-*-*

M'gann was sitting on the needles, just like everyone else. Sure, Phantom asked them to forget about him and essentially ignore whatever was happening to him, but there was no way they'd actually be able to do it. Case in point, first time alarms about shorting out of the electrical circuit in the room. They run there so fast that they had door open to see what was wrong before the absolute onslaught of electricity and ectoplasm and something else turned off the alarms thirty seconds later. Truth be told, they couldn’t do much, not without risking becoming second ghostly member of the Team, they’ve been there and ready. Conner tried to come in anyway, with his invulnerability and such, but they had to drag him out when despite extensive dodging he got hit five times by the time he got two steps into the room. Also, there wasn’t really anything he could do to help.

So they just spent last almost twenty hours alternating between different things to keep themselves occupied enough to not fall asleep and distract themselves from quilt but not enough to not be able to drop it at the moments notice if it was needed. First plan was to nap in shifts if it was necessary but it quickly became apparent that sleep was impossible with how worried everyone was and when M'gann proposed to just shut down their brains with her powers, everyone got really defensive. Well, no was no. So they just sat, at the moment in awkward silence because every topic that wasn't Phantom felt too inane and every topic that was Phantom felt too… just no. No name for why, just no.

M'gann was about to get up to make another batch of peanut butter and oatmeal snacks that took few minutes to make and could be dropped at any second, when Conner practically jumped in his seat, tilting his head to hear better. Robin perked up from whatever he was doing on his wrist computer at the same time.

"Phantom left the room!” they exclaimed at the same time, jumping out of their seats.

This head start didn’t matter by the time everyone ran or flew out to the corridor, racing against clock to the room where they left Phantom. It didn’t seems so before, but now M’gann just cursed their past selves for not waiting somewhere closer. There wasn’t really any place where they could stay instead, unless they set camp right outside his door, but it still. They should be there five minutes ago, like Wally, who obviously run off.

They heard Wally speaking before they’ve seen him.

“Hey, hey calm down. It’s fine, they’ll be there in a second, just chill. They’re right after me, whatever happened, we’ll help you in just a moment, you don’t have to run. You’re barely standing. Phantom, calm down”

M’gann barely made it around the corner and she thought she had seen Kaldur actually smacking into the wall. He brushed it off.

Phantom looked beyond rough. It seemed like Wally, who had ghost’s arm across his shoulders, was only thing holding him up. His feet were firmly on the ground, not in his usual way, when he looked just a breeze away from flying, but in this fully human way, which was unsettling. His face was gray instead of his usual almost tan, eyes wide and terrified.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he muttered, not looking at anyone in particular “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”

“Phantom, it’s fine. It’s fine, we know about the room, it’s fine,” Robin said, trying to placate him. It didn’t quite work. Ghost was on the verge of hyperventilating, which was a bit weird to see on someone for who breathing was voluntary.

“It’s not about room”

“I’m sure it’s fine anyway”

“It’s anything but. I’m sorry-”

“Shut up and tell us what happened if you’re so sure we will be pissed”

“Artemis!”

“Portal”

“What about it?”

“Portal is what killed me.”

M’gann didn’t like how the whole situation looked before, but it suddenly became much worse.

“My Death Day made another one”

[sysig]

Blind side (Patreon)

[baravaggio]

Nana x "Where is My Place in the World? Early Shōjo Manga Portrayals of Lesbianism" by Fujimoto Yukari (tr. Lucy Fraser)

[guqin-and-flute]

Something about the fact that these shots are all grouped together, one after another, visually giving them equal weight just gets me. The narrative knows what's going to happen between JGY and Huaisang at this point, knows how it's going to treat JGY at the end of everything. And it still takes time to show Meng Yao instinctively and immediately going in front of Huaisang and Huaisang instinctively and immediately hiding behind him. It takes the time--literally, showed it in the background and focused on it with the same general amount of time as the other shots--to show that this act of protection and trust are just as real and true as Jiang Cheng defending his sister, as Wen Qing defending her younger brother.

Like, I dunno! There are other Nie juniors there! They have swords and shit! Huaisang could have gone and hid behind the wall, but he hid behind Meng Yao! And Meng Yao could have moved back with Huaisang, but he steps directly in front of him!

There's a lot CQL did to JGY's character and narrative that I don't like and that flatten or just straight up erase his full complexity. But I really appreciate the lengths that it went to in Episode 4 to explicitly tell us that he does not hesitate to protect Huaisang, even though at this point he does not have a sword and definitely does not have anywhere near the same cultivation power (if any) as any of the rest of the people in the room.

Right now, after being publicly humiliated, unarmed and definitely outclassed, he is brave. Along with the rest of the characters, he's allowed to be uncomplicatedly young and loyal and just as innocent as any of the other students there.