#childhood trauma is fun like that

[several-ravens]

horror podcast:

me: what's the worst you can do, claustrophobia? go on, i'm not scared

horror podcast: *someone yelling and slamming the table in anger*

me: ok i apologise

[haliaiii]

Boothill

[blue-eli]

Lost princess of a shadow broken kingdom.

[crimeronan]

I think "Belos fostering a sibling mentality in one of the kids for grooming/manipulation reasons while believing and treating the other one as if they're better than the other one (even if she doesn't and will never think that way her self)" is the most I've ever been "GET A JOB.... GET AWAY FROM THEM.... GROSS OLD MAN...." about him in this AU. Get a job gross old man....

GOD. yeah it really is Peak Awful Old Man.

i've been thinking about it lately because of the whole "maybe this will make him a true caleb" versus "she is The Answer and the grimwalkers were a mistake" dichotomy.

belos to hunter being like here's this little girl you need to take care of and protect and she'll be like a sister to you :) and then belos to luz like i don't care What you do with that thing. it's yours. have fun :)

ETERNALLY a miracle that the two of them ended up with the relationship they have.

luz grew up knowing hunter was the unfavorite without knowing why & was like "well, EYE want nice things for him. so i'll just ask for stuff he wants and pretend it's for me." while hunter was like can you PLEASE stop testing the emperor's patience i am going to puke from anxiety and i have enough to worry about. .....thank you though.

poor kiddos.

[cliveguy]

one of the hardest things to internalise as an adult after being bullied all through school is most people are making conversation not making fun

[nguyenfinity]

[slams this on the table] HAPPY MOTHERS’ DAY

Extra:

[kaelidascope]

I think I should clarify that when I say OOC behavior in Toxic Bees AU, I mean like they're still their basic skeletal designs as a whole (I'm not THAT bad of a writer) but they're OOC compared to the versions of them we know today As in I banked hard on certain aspects of their personalities like Yang's self-sacrificing tendencies, Ruby's immaturity, Weiss's arrogance, and Blake's flakiness Pretty much all these attributes are just amplified to shit and there's like no character growth until the final chapters NFJGFNGKF

Yang literally only thinks she's worth what she can physically offer to someone in the form of service (sexually, financially, or emotionally). Her untreated depression and anxiety causes her to internalize her abandonment issues so bad she's creating scenarios in her life that are doomed to set her up for failure from the start, and yet she doesn't understand why people keep leaving her when she can't stop being this disingenuous version of herself

Blake pretends her actions aren't the direct cause of her consequences and therefor justifies her actions because of her consequences. She desperately doesn't want to give a shit about anything but that act's only gonna get her so far before it blows up in her face. She wants to think that she deserves to be mistreated and can't stand the idea of forgiveness or compromise, so she'll sabotage her own life to get a result that's familiar

Ruby's age shows painfully hard in this and reflects on her thought process and maturity. She's 20 and doesn't have a clue, and up until this point has had Yang or her Dad do literally everything for her. Her growth's been stunted just as much as she doesn't actively try to get off her ass and do something about it

Weiss may seem put together, but she's been miserably sheltered her whole life. Home-schooled first and then immediately living with a romantic partner she's far too young for second, who ends up infantizing her more and she doesn't have the tools or communication skills to speak up for herself. She's better about it now, but her bad habits manifest in her inability to get a grasp on reality and treats people like objects because not once did she have a normal human bond in her house

Now take those versions of team RWBY and throw them into a college setting with their very first taste of freedom, absolutely NO proper job or life experience, and nobody to actively vibe-check them on fucked up, ill-intended, and misguided decision-making. THAT'S what makes this an OOC RWBY fic. Because we all were stupid in our 20s living out of the house for the first time

[ghost-proofbaby]

curling up in bed and just sobbing and not even knowing what i’m crying about at this point because today has just been hit after hit

[helpimstuckposting]

TW: mentions of homophobia, brief f-slur mention More silly conversations and goofy friendship moments that Steve hasn't had in a while! I just love the Robin/Steve/Eddie dynamic, it's my favorite out of everything so I hope you like and I did it justice

I’m a ghost and you are a shadow

Part one | part two | part three | part four | part five | part six | part seven | part eight | part nine | part ten | part eleven

—

After their midnight talk, Steve couldn’t just go back to bed. There were too many thoughts, too many emotions, too much going on in the past day for his mind to quiet enough to let sleep take him. Instead, Eddie kept him company in the kitchen. They talked about the other Steve, Eddie hesitant at first, but Steve reassured him he wanted to know more about the man he could have been, the one everyone saw when they looked at him.

It was interesting, hearing all the differences of his life that appeared from the crossroads of his father living and dying. Apparently, Richard Harrington had died in some sort of travel accident when Steve was four. Eddie didn’t quite know the details, he’d never asked, but the rumor around town was that Mr Harrington had gone off on a business trip the morning of Steve’s fourth birthday. He came back in a casket.

Steve could vaguely recall begging his father to stay home for his birthday that year. He’d begged and begged until his father relented, it was probably the best birthday Steve could remember. And yet, because of that, the rest of Steve’s childhood suffered. Oh, the irony, Steve thought.

They went over some of the pictures hanging on the photo wall, Eddie dramatically re-enacting a few of them, though Steve could tell it was hard. If Eddie’s rings were his armor, Steve thought maybe his DM persona was a shield. Like it was easier to remain detached if he pretended they were campaigns and not memories.

Steve also noticed that since their talk outside, Eddie refrained from calling the other Steve ‘his Steve’. He just called him Steve, just like it was another person who happened to have the same name. It was nice, like Steve wasn’t a replacement or the same person or a mistake. He was just Steve, and so was this other guy. Two different people with the same name, like it was normal.

It was a relief, in those moments, to be someone new, someone separate from the other Steve. It made him feel a little less like he was taking up space he shouldn’t be in, and Steve thought maybe that was Eddie’s intention. He said Steve wasn’t taking someone else’s place, and he kept his word.

At some point, before the sun rose, the stairs creaked with footsteps. The two had been crouched over the counter with cups of coffee, legs too numb from sitting for hours. Robin swayed sleepily into the kitchen, blinking one eye at a time before rubbing at them with her balled up fists. She looked kind of like a toddler who was searching for her parents. Steve snorted into his mug, setting it down before he choked on the liquid inside. Robin’s eyes narrowed at him, before she rolled her eyes and lazily lifted two fingers up in a peace sign.

“Sup, Dingi,” she croaked, voice not quite awake yet.

Steve shared a look with Eddie, scrunching his nose up in a sneer and nodding silently toward Robin, what the hell did she just say?

Eddie snorted and took a gulp from his mug, a silent don’t ask me, sent back.

Robin sighed and pointed to Steve, “One dingus,” she said, then pointed to Eddie, “two dingi,” she concluded, before wandering over to Steve and stealing his mug of coffee. She clasped it in her hands and shuffled over to the other side of the counter island, plopping herself into a stool. “So what were you two lovely ladies talking about at four in the morning?”

“I was telling Stevie here about that one time Steve bet you couldn’t beat his track time and you sprinted so hard you threw up in your lunch bag before band.” Robin squawked, slamming the mug down on the counter and leaning threateningly toward Eddie.

She jabbed a finger at him, “Not cool Munson, we agreed that story went to the grave!”

Eddie laughed maniacally, bouncing in his place, “I lied, Buckley, tough shit!”

As Robin leapt from her stool to chase Eddie around the kitchen island, Steve silently stole his mug back to watch it all play out. He’d dreamed of this so many times, the casual teasing and horsing around just like the kids did. He’d never had a large group of genuine friends, just Tommy and Carol and whoever else they deemed cool enough to join them that week. It was never light hearted jokes and stupid faces, it was silent smoking and jabs that were too sharp, too mean spirited. Carol taught him how to hold himself, how to look intimidating and aloof. She’d never in a million years stoop down to make herself look stupid for a laugh or to cheer someone up. She was calculated, like his mother, but now he wondered if things had been different, would she have been happy too? Does a Carol or Tommy in this universe chase someone around a counter to make them laugh? Or any other universe?

After a couple laps around the kitchen island, Robin caught up to Eddie, tugging his back to her chest and lifting him off his feet. She looked like a wrestler trying to suplex Eddie into the ground but she couldn’t get him higher than a couple inches, tops. Steve snorted into his coffee again as Eddie shrieked, shards of pain stabbing through his nose as he coughed the liquid back out of his lungs and sinuses. There were tears in his eyes from the choking and the laughter and the tightness in his chest, and after hacking up the dredges of coffee in his lungs he kept watch as Eddie kicked and screeched and Robin struggled to keep him in her arms.

Eddie threw himself forward so his feet finally landed back on the ground, and it was Robin’s turn to yell as she was hoisted onto Eddie’s back from the sudden movement. She still refused to let go as Eddie rapidly stalked around the counter, squatting to keep Robin’s weight on his back as she kept his arms pinned to his side.

Steve could watch them fight it out for hours, if he were honest and it had been years since he’d laughed this hard. The rest of the party was going to show up eventually today and they’d have to start looking into the gates, but for now Steve watched and laughed and rolled his eyes as Robin finally gave up her hold and slid off Eddie’s back, pooling onto the floor like a sad little puddle.

“First you break our vow, then you try and murder me, and for what? For what, Munson? I know where you sleep!” She mumbled into the tile.

Eddie crouched down to lean over her, smug look plastered over his face. “I’m pretty sure you tried to murder me, this was purely self defense.”

“And I’m sure the cops would say you had it coming!” She said, lifting herself off the floor and sitting back in her stool. She snatched Steve’s mug up, took a sip and then squinted at him, slowly lowering the mug to the counter and pointing at it.

“Did you spit in this?”

“Not on purpose,” he replied, voice still a bit hoarse from the coughing fit. She gagged dramatically and shoved the cup back in his hands, standing to pour her own.

“It’s about time you learned how to be self-reliant,” Eddie teased, sitting down in the next stool over, across from Steve who remained leaning over the counter, elbows holding his weight on the shiny granite while his ankles were crossed behind him.

“Shut the whole fuck up, Munson, or I swear to god-,”

“How did you three meet, anyway?” Steve asked, cutting off whatever threat Robin was about to throw out. He looked back and forth between Eddie in front of him, and Robin behind him fixing her mug of coffee. He watched as the two shared a look, both a little sad at the reminder that their Steve was gone. Or at least, that’s what Steve assumed the look was, the droop to their smiles telling Steve maybe he shouldn’t have asked. However, before he could take it back, Robin sat back down in the stool next to Eddie and started to answer.

“We were all in band together,” she said as Eddie nodded and silently took a sip from his mug.

“Band?” Steve asked. He knew Eddie and Robin were in the high school band in his universe, but they hadn’t become friends as far as he knew.

“You and Eddie played sax,” she said. Steve tried to cover his flinch at the mention of ‘you’, the reminder that they all expected him to be someone he wasn’t sparking uncomfortably in his head.

“Steve and I sat right in front of Buckley here, who always had a penchant for playing just a little too close to my ear,” Eddie chimed in, shoving his shoulder against Robins.

“Well Eddie here was never a team player, always skipping ahead or pretending to play when he didn’t like the music,” she shoved right back.

“I never-,” Steve started, pausing when the two pairs of eyes locked onto him. “I never learned any instruments.” He sighed, fiddling with the mostly empty cup in his hands. Their eyes felt like lasers boring into his head. “Mom signed me up for piano classes when I was little, but my dad said the arts were for ‘females, fruits, and fags’ so I never got the chance to finish.”

“Well hey, I’m a female and a fruit,” Robin said.

“And I’m a fag!” Eddie said, turning to Robin for an enthusiastic high five. “Guess Mr Harrington was right, huh Stevie?” he said sarcastically. Steve swallowed nervously around the saliva pooling in his mouth. He actually didn’t know about Eddie, had maybe suspected sometimes but it had never been confirmed. It felt… weird that this seemed like something he should know, but he didn’t and now he does but Eddie never told him. Or, well, he did just tell him but he also didn’t and now he knew something that he wasn’t sure he was allowed to know.

“Oh shit,” Eddie mumbled, “did you… uh,” he glanced between Steve and Robin, “did you not know about us?”

Steve shook his head, “I uh, I knew about Robin, but not…”

Eddie winced. The giddy look in his eye from the playful banter was gone, and he seemed… sadder, like Steve had just tossed water over a campfire and killed the light. “Why does it feel like I just outed someone else?” Eddie mumbled to Robin. She grimaced and set a comforting hand on Eddie’s shoulder, sharing a warm look that Steve once again couldn’t read. Again, he felt like an outsider watching over two strangers. The side of the counter he was leaning against seemed cold and wide, a million miles away from where Robin and Eddie sat side by side.

“Well anyway,” Eddie scooted closer to the counter, clinking his empty mug against Steve’s, “regardless of the Eddie you know, I’m gay so… welcome to the Queer Closet of Hawkins, you’re officially on the guest list and it’s a very exclusive honor.”

Steve chuckled, awed by the way Eddie had just closed the chasm between them. The metalhead grinned, patting the stool on his left and closing that gap even more. Steve placed his cup in the sink behind him and walked around the counter to sit in the vacant seat, the gap completely shut with a final click as Eddie lightly patted Steve’s knee.

“So what about you?” He asked, “how did you meet Robin and Eddie?”

Steve laughed, “it’s uh… a much longer story.” Eddie nodded eagerly and Robin pulled a leg up to squish under her on the stool, leaning against the counter to look over Eddie and nod just as enthusiastically. Steve looked back and forth between the two, feeling more whole than he had even just a few hours ago.

He shook his head fondly and launched into the story of Scoops, Russians, Steve and Robin’s unfortunate drug-filled escapade through the mall, and Dustin’s weird ability to imprint on older teens. Eddie laughed at that, tossing his head back and almost falling backward out of his stool.

“I was so annoyed! Dustin wouldn’t shut up about his cool new friend Eddie who played D&D and understood all his references. Eddie who was ‘the best DM ever’, who was ‘so cool, you don’t get it, Steve’ the little shit.”

Robin was leaning against Eddie’s back now, arms thrown over his shoulders to keep him planted in his stool. “Oh, oh!” she exclaimed, smacking Eddie in the chest as she thought of something.

He grabbed her wrist, stopping her from hitting him again. “Jesus, Buckley, spit it out,” he grumbled, shooting eyes at Steve, who just smiled back at him.

“Does your Robin have any game? A girlfriend? Is she cooler than me?” She asked excitedly.

Steve snorted, “I don’t think any Robin Buckley has ever had game.”

“Hey!” Robin exclaimed, and then squinted at him, assessing something in her head. “No, yeah, that makes sense,” she conceded, bobbing her head back and forth.

“She did have a massive crush on this girl Vicky from band, though, and they got pretty close. I always told Robin to go for it, because Vicky? Not straight, not at all,” he swore to them, pointing back and forth as emphasis.

“Ah, Vicky,” Robin sighed dreamily, “she was so cute.” Eddie rolled his eyes, shaking his head at Steve like he’d heard way too much about Vicky for a lifetime. “I never did get the chance to see if Steve was right about that.”

This time Steve rolled his eyes, "Of course I'm right, she was totally giving you eyes, like, constantly I can't believe you would doubt me!" he scoffed, missing for a second that he had slipped in and made himself her Steve, what he'd been trying to avoid this whole time. He had to remind himself constantly; he wasn't their Steve, he was an outsider, he was a different person. He remembered what Eddie had said by the pool; he's not a placeholder, he's not stealing someone's spot, he's his own person.

Still, with the jokes and banter and laughter, it was so so easy to just slip up and forget. He brushed it off, hoping they would too or even better that they wouldn't notice his mistake or the slight dim to his smile before catching himself. Luckily, Eddie and Robin were as close to reading his mind as possible it seemed and the three powered forward as if the slip never happened.

As it turns out, in this universe the Russian fiasco still happened, in nearly the same way. The only difference between Steve's story and Robin's story was that they'd already been friends for years, had applied to Scoops together, just like Family Video. Eddie had been working in the record store on the second floor, but was off with Wayne for a fishing trip at the time. Everything else was the same.

"I can't believe that was our first test of friendship, oh my god," Robin whined, smushing her face up with her hands and dragging them down, pulling her features with them.

"I'm still so mad I missed that, I was so useless and I had no idea until Wayne and I came back and everything was fucked. What if Samwise was on vacation and he just came back and Bilbo was suddenly a hero, missing a finger, traumatized from all this shit Sam had no idea about! I spent the rest of that summer feeling like I had missed your whole lives," Eddie said. Steve wasn't quite sure who the hell he was talking about, but there was something else in his eyes, something that Steve still hadn't translated and couldn't put his finger on. He wondered if Eddie would tell him, eventually, wondered if he'd ever be able to read those looks before they had to shove him back through the gate to his desolate wasteland of a universe.

He shoved that thought away from his mind, locked in a little box labelled 'for later', and trekked on through their morning. It would probably only be an hour now before the party showed up to finalize plans and start splitting up to put it in motion. He sighed and looked between Eddie and Robin, still going through random memories, teasing, poking, and laughing at each other. 'For Later' he whispered in the dark of his mind, joining back into the conversation as if he'd never left. He'd worry about it then, for now he was more content than ever to just sit here at the dark kitchen island as the sun kept up its rise over the horizon. He'd sit, and listen, and contribute, and laugh, and everything else could come later.

—

@devondespresso @weirdandabsurd42 @sirsnacksalot @space-invading-pigeon @aliea82 @goodolefashionedloverboi @emly03 @bestwifehaver @mentallyundone @13catastrophic-blues @estrellami-1 @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @likelylad @aellafreya @wxrmland @shunna @fangirltofangod @howincrediblysapphicofyou

[petrichor-moss-and-lightning]

“i don’t need to be liked. people pleasing and fawning served as a survival mechanism in the past but i’m an adult now i am capable of providing my own internal locus of validation. i dont have to fundamentally alter myself to fit each person,” i say thru gritted teeth, gripping the edge of the sink so hard it leaves claw marks

[acourtofquestions]

Chaol considered. "My father is a bastard," he said quietly. "He has been in my life from my conception. Yet he never once bothered to ask the questions you pose," Chaol said.

"He never once cared enough to do so. He never once worried. That will be the difference."

"If Aedion chooses to forgive me."

"He will," Chaol said. He'd make Aedion do it.

"Why are you so certain?"

Chaol considered his words carefully before he again met Gavriel's striking gaze.

"Because you are his father," he said. "And no matter what might lie between you, Aedion will always want to forgive you."

[dent-de-leon]

His sister bought him the clock!! For his birthday!! ; ; They tried to play a little game of it, "In a sham of a seance..."

Leo Amicus: "Has it all been a dream? Am I waking up for the first time? Am I still with my family? Am I not crumbling yet? It just isn't fair...Not just, not me--any of it. To anybody. It's just not fair. I can hear the sounds so much--it's so much louder now. I can hear it over everything. I can see it again. The machine. I remember her face. I remember too much. When did I start crumbling? When do you start growing and stop crumbling? I--I don't trust myself. And...it could be worse. I'll put that on my tombstone at that point."

Thinking about...how the through-line of all these little threads is every character agonizing over family. Malcolm wondering, "Was my family involved?" Edgar grappling with how much it hurts that he saved someone in Candela, "someone who wasn't my family," instead of finally chasing down the one lead on his sister he's had in years. Grimoria fearing what will happen the day she feels a spirit and it's her own family's. Leo wishing he could turn back time and forget that clock and just have his sister back--

The way Taliesin describes Leo's trauma as, "I can hear the sounds so much--it's so much louder now. I can hear it over everything." The way it so heartbreakingly parallels his description of love as, "And it makes the sound of whatever happened to you before quiet. At least for a moment--"

[blue-eli]

Ink October day twenty-five: Contexture

The act of weaving or assembling parts into a whole.

An arrangement of interconnected parts; a structure.

The arrangement and union of the constituent parts of a thing; a weaving together of parts; structural character of a thing; system; constitution; texture.

[beechaotic]

So, I don’t talk about my stories on here much. Maybe about different characters in passing, but nothing too in-depth. However, I wanted to share a story I wrote outlining how one of the main characters for my Sci-Fi story met her best friend (an alien) for a contest. I wanted to share it here to see if you guys like it, because I’m kind of proud of it.

Title: The Monster Who Saved Her

Word Count: 1,684 words

She was young, when she was taken.

She hardly remembers anything about Earth. Sure, she remembers bits and pieces of her language, her culture, things she learned; but she only remembers little things.

She doesn’t remember what different flowers were called, but she remembered that her favorite ones were multicolored (and likely genetically modified) with layering petals that curved around the center. She can’t remember any concrete or important words, but she does know how to say “Are you here to help me?” (because she said it too much on those ships; too many times she’d beg for help from anyone who would listen. They never helped). She also remembers the word “A-May”. She doesn’t remember her mother’s face, but she knows that her mother always sang to her when she had a nightmare. She had a beautiful voice. She doesn’t remember any common names from her homeworld, but she does remember that there was a girl she considered her best friend who was named “Estée”, which she said meant “Star”. She also remembered thinking it was fitting for the girl, as she had shown brightly and was always happy to shine light her on someone’s dark day. But she didn’t remember anything important about her life, her culture, her language.

She still remembers the night she was taken to the first ship.

She had been in her room, listening to her parents argue (she remembers that they did that often; that her father usually came home smelling gross and being clumsy, and that her mother would be mad every time). She couldn’t sleep because of the shouts and the banging of fists hitting counters. She curled up closer to her beloved toy, a little stuffed cat that her father had given her once when he wasn’t stumbling and his mood was light. She had named it Sarr-u, a suggestion from her mother. She remembered her parents joking that this was her first child, and that they would give all their money to the toy when they were gone.

She remembered hearing something break, and how footsteps echoed in the apartment. She remembered hearing her father shout in surprise, before hearing what she now knows as the shot of a High-Powered Plasma Shooter. Then, she heard her mother scream. She hid her head under the thin blanket. She stayed huddled there while she heard voices speak in an unfamiliar tongue. A tongue that she now speaks, that she knows better than her Homeworld’s.

She remembers hearing them slam her bedroom door open with such ferocity that she shuddered and tried to meld with Sarr-u. They ripped off her blanket, and she saw the horrors that had killed her parents.

She doesn’t remember what Humans look like, just vague features and skin tones; but she remembers knowing that these were not Humans. She remembers thinking that they were monsters, come to eat her soul and feed her bones to whatever monstrosities they called pets. She remembers screaming and clinging to Sarr-u as they picked her up roughly, how she squirmed and writhed in a vain attempt to get free. The monsters didn’t even react to her struggles beyond grumbling in their language. She remembers them taking her outside, where they were rounding up other children she knew from the apartment building. She remembers playing with them, their parents taking turns on who would watch the children each day. She remembers how they would all laugh and just be free.

Some of the children were crying, some were also fighting, but most were frozen in terror. She could tell now which ones had been with their parents when the “monsters” had barged in, which ones had watched the fatal blow. Those were the children that looked empty, like they weren’t even alive anymore. Like they were floating out of their body, far away from what was happening, where everything was safe.

The “monster” shoved them into cells with clear doors. She remembers trying to touch the barrier, only to get a jolt of pain through her hand. She remembers how she had pulled it away only to find charred flesh where limb had met with barrier. She remembers sitting in the corner of her cell and crying in fear. She remembers screaming for her “A-May” over and over again.

They were in those cells for what felt like decades, though it probably was no more than a year. The older kids would try to reassure the others by saying that they would make sure nothing bad would happen, that they would all get back home soon. She remembers believing them. That this would all end with a heroic soldier coming in and opening their cell doors, killing all of the “monsters” in their wake. The monsters always came back, usually bringing strange food with them. The food tasted like nothing and was always dry. It was also never enough to fully satiate them. And the water that they got was always warm, and they could only drink small mouthfuls at a time to save it. They never knew when they would next be fed.

Then, the monsters came back, not with food, but with cages. They began opening cells and loading children into the cages, even as the older ones screamed at them and the little ones cried in fear. Some of the older children even tried ramming themselves into the invisible barrier, and she watched as their skin and clothes got charred like her palm had been.

When they got to her, she didn’t fight back. She tried to hide away, to make herself too small to be seen. But it didn’t work, because they grabbed her anyway and shoved her into a tight cage without remorse.

When everyone was loaded into their cages, the monsters began to walk them out of the ship. They were put into a dark area where they couldn’t see. Some of the children cried, while others whispered reassurances. One even began to sing, soon joined by the other children held captive there. She remembers the song they sung vividly, how the childlike voices made it more haunting with the fear etched in every word.

“What do we do when we’re half-starved and mad?

We fight till we’re dead,

Fight ‘till we’re dead

What do we do when our enemies hound us?

We fight ‘till we’re dead,

Fight ‘till we’re dead

What do we do when the mob surrounds us?

We fight ‘till we’re dead,

Fight ‘till we’re dead!”

Now, whenever she hears someone singing a tune vaguely similar, she gets a jolt of peace. It was the only moment of true safety she would feel for a long time. Yes, she was in a cage and shrouded by darkness, but she also had people with her that she considered to be her friends. Estée was there, too. She kept trying to make everyone laugh, just like she used to.

She wondered sometimes where Estée was, and if she was safe. Was she still on one of the ships? Was Estée being tortured, like she had been? She could only hope that she was on one of the ships that actually care about Humans.

One by one, the cages were grabbed and taken into another room. As they were taken, the younger children would scream and wail, and the older children would try and shout platitudes. Eventually, she was taken into the room.

The room was a stage, with thousands of monsters staring at it from the stands. Her cage was roughly placed on the ground, and the monster at the podium she had glimpsed began talking. Monsters began shouting and raising their appendages. And with a chill, she realized that this was an auction. She was being sold.

She had heard of Humans doing this to other Humans in the past, but she never expected it to happen to her. She curled in on herself, desperate to disappear.

She was dragged onto a new ship, to a new cell. She was tortured and experimented on day in and day out. Eventually, they got bored of her, and sold her to another ship. This happened over and over again, until she became numb to the process.

Then, one day, after a long session of pain, she heard blaring alarms go off on the ship. Pounding resounded through the halls, along with the inhuman language she had grown accustomed to. Shots rang out from their weird guns, and she heard bodies hit the floor as shrieks filled the air. Soon, a new monster appeared at her cell door.

He was tall and very heavy-set. Not with hulking muscles, but with a broad body that years of hard labor would give you. But that wasn’t what caught her attention; no, it was that he looked like a pig.

Even then, her memories of Earth had begun to fade. But she remembers distinctly thinking “Wow, it’s like a pig on two feet”. He looked at her for a moment, before clicking some buttons on the keypad. The door opened, and he stepped inside. Weakly, she growled (a sound she had heard the monsters make to scare her), but he didn’t move away. Instead, he just held up his-hands? Hooves?-in a placating way. In a way that was so achingly Human, she couldn’t help but pause for a moment. He stepped closer, and she began to growl weakly again, curling around Sarr-u for comfort.

He kept his hands slightly raised as he approached, always in her view. He kept his movements slow and predictable, so as to not startle her. Slowly, he knelt down in front of her. Her growls petered out as she took in the kindness his eyes held. He made a strange cough-like noise, probably to try and calm her. Surprisingly, it worked.

He took her to his ship and showed her a room she could stay in. He taught her Galactic Common. And when the time came, he asked for her name.

She looked at him, her protector, her savior.

“My name is Burma, thank you for saving me.”

There you go, the story of a future Spaceship Captain, Burma! She actually has a stutter, but I imagine that that happens due to a head injury after she meets this guy.

Also, I have no idea what to name her alien friend. You guys have any suggestions? I would rather have non-European names, because in the Lore of this world, the aliens used to occasionally come to Earth and teach/talk to Humans. His species settled in like, the Caribbean. Don’t ask me what island, I haven’t thought that far ahead. However, I think it would be somewhere like Cuba, the Dominican Republic, or Haiti. So they picked up pieces of each other’s cultures.

Also, yes, Burma’s family is from Burma. However, she isn’t. She was born in America, since her family immigrated there before she was born. That’s why she said some things in Burmese, rather than in English. Like Sarr-u. It’s the Latin Alphabet version of the Burmese word for “First Born”. (Y’know how I put in the jokes her parents made? That was why).

Side note, I wanted to imply that her father was an alcoholic without directly saying it. I hope that came across in the text.

Anyway, yeah, that’s the origin story for my Ship Captain Burma! She learns Galactic Common AND her friend’s native language, which is comprised of grunts and chuffs.

Tell me what you think!!

Ps: I made up the song they sing, and I imagine it to a similar tune as “What should we do with a drunken sailor?” Because the contest wouldn’t let me use preexisting songs and I still wanted to show them singing.

PPS: None of the characters are white!! I didn’t decide the races/ethnicities for most of them, except for Burma and her best friend from Earth, Esteé. Esteé is Haitian and is very much not white. I imagine her having a VERY dark complexion. Not like those influencers social media pushes on you, darker than that. Like, Oh-Fuck-I-Can’t-Find-Makeup-In-The-Right-Shade-That’s-In-My-Budget kind of dark. Why did I come up with all this information about her AND MORE? Because I have no life. 🙃

[hassianlovebot]

disregard entire fucking post im stupid as fuck bro

[buccellato]

Thinking about the train hostage arc in the first Trimax book....and I have some thoughts on some of the takeaways I've seen (in other places).........

I'm ngl it kinda bothers me when people read into the train hostage arc in trimax as "Vash is 100% in the wrong, just like his brother", because that was very much not the intended reading...it wasn't just supposed to be a "look how flawed Vash's ideology is in practice" moment (that's the hospital yuri arc ❤), it was supposed to be a "look how hard it is in this world for Vash to abide to his moral code, and yet he still does it despite the negatives" moment. He wasn't exactly happy with the end solution and wasn't exactly fighting super hard to stop the father from shooting the accused killer—he almost let him do it, even—but he wanted to ultimately stop the cycle of bloodshed and was willing to make himself look like a jackass doing so. The arc is a narrative set-up for the penultimate conflict of the series; it's not so much about the merits of righteous violence vs. pacifism but rather setting the stage for a showdown between vengeance vs. absolution.

Now, would I do the same if I were in Vash's thigh-high boots? No of course not, fuck that one dude in particular lmao. But I don't exactly think Vash is weaker or unprincipled for choosing the option he did, either.