#currently i live with parents so i am curious who else is in the same boat

[nekopuff]

a little poll because I'm curious how people are currently surviving.

[trikaranos]

TRIKARANOS CHAPTER I: S·T·T·L

TRIKARANOS is a comic about Crassus until it isn't. Intended for an adult audience.

⭐ Trikaranos will always be free to read. In the near future, you’ll have the option to support this comic & my ability to spend time making it (I Am Extremely Fucking Broke And Have Bills To Pay etc etc) through Patreon! currently, I have a tip jar!

⭐ There is no set update schedule (chapters vary in length and will be posted as I finish working on them)

⭐ alternative places to read it (coming soon!)

CREDITS all additional art used are in the public domain, and the specific images used are open access, etc

🍊the first collage panel is combination of: Plate 113: Greeks Battling the Trojans (from Ovid's Metamorphoses), Antonio Tempesta / The Trojans pulling the wooden horse into the city, Giulio Bonasone (after Francesco Primaticcio) / Terracotta hydria displaying Achilles waiting to ambush Triolos and Polyxena 🍊the second collage panel is: The Lictors bringing Brutus the bodies of his Sons, Jacques Louis David / the paint over of Brutus executing is own sons is my own work based on the composition of this relief of Brutus and condemning his sons to death. 🍊I also used my own art: a panel from the Prologue, and my own illustration of Brutus with the bodies of his sons

📖 PREVIOUS CHAPTER | START HERE | ToC (under construction!)

UNDER THE CUT creator’s commentary, ancient citations, whatever else seems relevant. ideally, this is optional! you shouldn’t need the citations for it to make sense as it unfolds since it’s a comic and a story first and foremost, but it’s here if you’re curious about something or want to see where the inspiration is coming from!

I'm so fucking normal about Crassus and his family (<<< this is a lie)

Marcus Crassus was the son of a man who had been censor and had enjoyed a triumph; but he was reared in a small house with two brothers. His brothers were married while their parents were still alive, and all shared the same table, which seems to have been the chief reason why Crassus was temperate and moderate in his manner of life. When one of his brothers died, Crassus took the widow to wife, and had his children by her, and in these relations also he lived as well-ordered a life as any Roman.

Plutarch, Crassus

like, it actively fucks me up that this is something that's survived about him for over 2,000 years. they all ate together at the same table. Jesus Christ.

so! Crassus' dad! Publius Licinius Crassus (consul 97) fought on the side of Cn. Octavius (consul 87) in the Bellum Octavianum, and it didn't go great for him.

Crassus: A Political Biography, B.A. Marshall

also. currently, if you look Publius Licinius Crassus up on wikipedia for an overview, his page lists his son (and also my main character for this comic) with the cognomen Dives, which is in-fucking-correct.

Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic, Allen Mason Ward

and to circle back to houses and meals shared with family, some citations that made me feel some kind of way when I read them

Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic, Allen Mason Ward

finally, there is discourse or whatever on the placement of the sons of Publius Licinius Crassus. Crassus is the baby brother here simply because I'm writing this story and I get to pick the themes, but also because no one has provided a solid enough argument for him being the second eldest son that I'm willing to buy into with enthusiasm, and I'm more inclined towards G. Sampson's conclusion on the matter.

Defeat of Rome: Crassus, Carrhae, and the Invasion of the East, Gareth C. Sampson

and while I'm just kind of talking about stuff that I read that I enjoyed, this article by Martin Stone lives in my head rent free

A Year of One's Own: Dating the Praetorship of Marcus Crassus, Martin Stone

[mystycalypso]

OKAY LETS TRY THIS AGAIN

Welcome To Ravenbrooks season 2 Theories before it comes out

Disclaimer uh- these are the ramblings of a mad man named Jack (me). Mainly so when it does eventually come out I can see what if anything I got right. Now lets get into it below the fold.

1. It's revealed that Jay Roth (Nicky's dad) is the one who died in Trinity's old house

We know in both the book and games and even the pilot, Nicky was the one living across from Mr. Peterson, but now it's Trinity's home. I think the grief of what happened in that house is why they moved

2. We'll get to see the rest of the Rescue Squad's parents

Pretty self-explanatory. I don't know what story purpose they'd serve exactly, aside from maybe how they react to their kids' shenanigans but it'd be really cool to see them. Especially Luanne Roth who I am currently head canoning to be neglectful in some manner (not necessarily on purpose) because of the lines about Nicky running away all the time and no one noticing he went missing.

3. We see a cultist in uniform

I think it'd be really interesting if specifically Trinity finds them mid ceremony or if bad things start happening to her family and she gets suspicious

4. The kids learn Mr. Peterson isn't "evil"

We know in the books that Theo is looking heavily into the cult, and he seems to be doing the same here. I think in Trinity's realization's she'll learn his real motivations for keeping them away, maybe even his side of the stories from episode 3

5. We learn what Trinity did

We have hints at what happened, obviously, but with the teaser image reusing the old photo of kid Trinity, l think we're going to learn what exactly happened and why it was so bad that they had to move towns

6. More nightmare sequences

From the hello neighbor franchise in general, we've learned that both Trinity and Nicky are prone to nightmares, and with the trauma they've gained from episode 6, I assume we'll get to see plenty other creepy cool nightmare scenes. (Seriously, just the maggots from episode 2 make me squirm physically when I see it. Every time)

7. Principle Abanante isn't dead

This might be clear to some, and yeah, it's far from the greatest stretch on this list but I think we'll see her again and maybe that she caused the school explosion

8. Delroy(and possibly Scout)'s investigations

I'm very curious about what Delroy was doing in the tunnels under the school, maybe doing his own investigations on the cult? Scout included to round out the Hello Neighbor hide and seek crew. Likely having to join forced with the current members of the rescue squad to stop a stronger force.

9. We see Theodore's brother in his "new form"

Not 100% sure if he became the Guest or the Thing, and I've seen good theories/evidence for both, but either way I think we'll get to see him with the knowledge that it's him.

10. We learn why Ivan acted the way he did in s1

He was more scared of just the mention of Peterson than anyone, and it's been bugging me since my first watch. I'd like to see if there's reason to his behavior or just general paranoia. Leaning towards the former, knowing this series.

11. Love triangle between Trinity, Nicky and Enzo

I'd really rather this doesn't happen. I hate love triangles so much. They're so dumb and useless and bad. But like I told kaydin during our third watch, I can feel it happening. It's breathing down my neck with the loud annoying sound of needless romantic tension.

12. The whole squad sits together at lunch

They escaped the basement together! The least they could do as friends is actually eat lunch together instead of Nicky and Trinity sitting seperate from everyone else

13. Nicky and Aaron's relationship is revealed

I'm really, REALLY hopeful that their friendship isn't retconned in the series. It was great motivation for Nicky to be investigating Mr. Peterson, and is also just generally sweet.

14. We see Aaron

Nicky was the basement for a couple of weeks. However, Aaron was in there for months! I'm eager to see how he is both mentally and physically. I feel like he's either gonna be much, much worse than Nicky or somehow way better.

15. Quentin becomes my favorite character

This is mostly on here as a joke. I'm not gonna lie, I know he'll be at least a favorite because he's my favorite Hello Neighbor game character. Like- the squeal I squealed when I saw his van and silly Hawaiian shirt was immense. I love him so much, and I hope he gets good screen time.

16. Nicky loses his bag

This is more just a- gut feeling? He's gained it as a sort of comfort item, it seems, and I feel like with the nature and badluck of Ravenbrooks, he's going to lose it. Bonus points if he has to choose between it or a member of the Rescue Squad

17. Mr. martaugh dies

Again, I have- no evidence for this. Yeah, he's in the teasers a lot, but like that doesn't imply he dies. Maybe I just really hope he dies because he's creepy /j, but yeah, uh- if it happens, I'll probably still be in shock even though it's on this list.

18. We see an on screen kiss

Tricky fans cross your fingers and pray, I know I will be. It'll probably just be a quick peck on the cheek, but I can just kind of feel it in my bones. Similar to the love triangle one.

And there you go! My predictions for Season 2!

As soon as it drops, you will probably see my reaction to it and a return to this list to see how close or far I was on these. (Spoiler tagged, of course) But until then, I will be patiently waiting, drawing, and rewatching the show too many times over (wonder if I can hit 50 watches before season 2 drops)

Cya!

- Jack

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

Lets goooooooo!!!! I’m back with oh so many emojis and oh so much gratitude to you for writing for them! It genuinely brings me a lot of joy and I really appreciate it!

⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️(im so loving this current era - like even when they’re talking logistics and eddie’s being hard on himself there’s still just so much love and happiness in the air!)

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨(that last chapter was fabulous! Here comes covid and potentially a buckley parents visit? Very curious what that looks like in this world)

🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸(on the edge of my seat!!! This story is everything to meeeee!!)

🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮🔮(baby bobby i’m sending you love!)

🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟(cant wait for maddie and eddie and chris to be there so they can all live through hell together 💖)

👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑(i love the name! And im so so excited to read this one!)

🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼🔼(the angst from these snippests is really getting to me!)

💐💐💐💐💐💐💐(MAY!!!!!)

🦮🦮🦮🦮🦮🦮🦮🦮🦮🦮🦮(MY BELOVED CRANBERRY IS BACK YAY!!!!!)

I so love all your work (in case I haven’t been clear about that :p) but one thing I’m currently so impressed by is that you have three separate wips where buddie is established and yet the stories all feel so distinct from each other - they all stand alone and feel in character and aren’t repetitive! It’s so impressive and you’re such a talented author!!!

Thank you so much for this! Lots of love from your biggest fan!!!

AHH THANK YOU! That makes me so very happy to hear. I am so glad they all feel distinct and not repetitive to you! YOU ARE SO KIND!!!!

51 for ⚡️ (AH THANKS! I am really just trying to get them to a place where I'd be happy to leave them, you know?):

---

Eddie laughs. “Watch out, Los Angeles.” 

“It’s okay if we don’t get it,” Buck says pragmatically. “We don’t have to get it.”

“There will be other places,” Eddie agrees. 

“But I could see us in this one,” Buck says. “I didn’t feel that anywhere else.”

“Same here,” Eddie says. “I have a gut feeling about it.”

“Hmm, a gut feeling,” Buck teases. “Like the universe?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Sure.”

Definitely the universe. 

☆☆☆

On their last shift before the wedding, Eddie knows he’s not exactly tuned into work. It’s not like he’s doing a bad job, but it would be fair to say his head is a little bit in the clouds. Maybe more than a little bit. 

In his defense, there’s obviously a lot going on. He’s only got his vows half written. They’re waiting to hear back about the house. Different family members are flying in on different days. Chris is unhappy with his haircut. His parents are flying in, but are of course not willing to stay anyway near each other, so he’s got all his family’s different travel plans on the brain. He has about a hundred emails in his inbox from the venue - a restaurant in a beautiful old, stone building who are also catering - and the tailors. Most of which, Buck answers. Thank god. It’s just a lot. A lot of noise. 

Not that Eddie is complaining. He’s over the moon. Life has never been this smooth or good for him, really. If there’s a bit of noise as a result, he’s welcoming it. 

But that doesn’t mean he’s welcoming it and focusing on work very well. 

At this particular moment, Eddie is trying to check fluid levels in the engine, and finding it rather hard to focus. He’s checked and rechecked three times, and keeps losing track of the numbers before he manages to write them down. He feels like his brain has atrophied. He’s finally managing to scribble the correct numbers on the sheet on the clipboard - really, is he the right person for the clipboard chore? - when he hears Buck calling him from the edge of the mezzanine.

Eddie shifts his body to a better position to look up at him. 

“What’s up?” He calls back. 

“Gianna’s calling,” Buck points at his phone. 

Gianna’s calling! About their house! Their maybe house?

Eddie tears away from the engine so quickly he nearly stumbles. He jogs to the stairs and takes them two at a time as Buck answers the call. 

“Hi, Gianna,” Eddie hears him say. “Yeah, I’m good. How are you?”

Eddie hurries to Buck’s side once he reaches the top of the stairs, resting a hand between his shoulder blades. 

“That’s… Wait, really?” Buck asks. 

---

30 for 🚨 (eeee thanks!!!! Excited to share my plans!)

---

Yeah, that would be insane. That would be torture. 

“She’s going to be so mad at you for not telling her,” Buck teases. 

Eddie makes a little sound of complaint. 

“You’ll be right there in trouble with me.” He warns. 

Buck guffaws. 

“No way. Not me. I’m not precious to them like you.”

“Precious?” 

“You heard me.”

“You’re crazy.”

Buck really hopes it doesn’t end up causing social conflict for Eddie. He really wants to avoid that. Eddie is having a hard enough time with everything, with Chris gone, to also be in a bad spot with one of his closest friends. He hopes they can simply keep it under wraps for another week, then politely come clean after Buck gets his shield. 

In his brain, it should be straightforward. 

Reality? Never quite so simple. 

iii.

They make it until the shift before Buck’s official probationary graduation. Really, so close. So tantalizingly close. Eddie feels like an idiot for not being able to hold it together better. 

The problem lies with Eddie. With Eddie’s emotional confusion lately. Maybe confusion isn’t the right word. Emotional scatterbrain? That. That feels better.

---

75 for 🩸(THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

---

He couldn’t even find it in himself to feel bad about it. The scent of his blood filled the air. Eddie couldn’t even feel that hungry for it, either. The twinge of want was there, but the desire to avoid death was stronger. 

The man screamed in agony, and presumably toppled forward. Presumably, because Eddie’s not sure what else would have caused his rifle to go off. Either way, an ear-splitting crack of the gun discharging filled the air. 

Eddie thought for a moment he must have accidentally shot himself in the head, because the screaming stopped. What an easy end to all of it that would have been. But after a moment of shock, his wailing started again. He shot himself, but not fatally. But he could still be holding the weapon. 

Eddie had to be careful. He couldn’t die there, after besting the asshole. After proving himself something more than a mindless monster. More than helpless prey. 

He crept as quietly as possible out from his hiding spot and craned his neck to see the man. He lay moaning in a sort of fetal position, shin snared by the animal trap, mangled and bloody. His right arm was more or less blown off. Something about the sight of it brought Eddie right back to Afghanistan. He’d seen so many limbs that ended up just like his. Three bullet wounds of his own over there, and it was a wonder none of his ended up the way. 

The important part, the crucial part, was that the rifle lay discarded, several feet away from the vampire hunter. In his state, the man couldn’t reach it before Eddie. 

Which meant Eddie was the hunter now. 

Or maybe not a hunter. Maybe that was the wrong word. Maybe Eddie was more like some sick scavenger bird. Picking at what was already practically a corpse.

He walked out, into view. Heard the man give a little moan. He bent down in front of the gun, removed the magazine and tossed it in one direction, then chucked the gun down the hill in the other. It rolled into the creek, lost. Good. When someone eventually found his body, the gun would be identifying. Registered to him. Better it be gone. 

“Please,” the man moaned.”Don’t kill me.”

The muscles in Eddie’s face had twitched with revulsion. 

“You would have killed me,” Eddie reminded him. “Came all the way back here to do it.”

“I’m a man,” he sobbed in response. “I’m a human. I’m a father.”

If Eddie hadn’t been resolved to let him die before then, that did it.

“So am I.” 

After that, he did what he had to. He knew he needed energy for what he had to do next, so he drank. Not everything. Not enough to drain him. Though maybe that would have been kinder. Eddie took only what he needed.He took his money and chucked his wallet into the stream, same as the gun. He stole his car keys. He wiped his blood from his mouth. He left the man dying on the forest floor, covered in dirt.

Later, he would change the plates on the car. Later, he would do all he could to separate himself from this crime. And when he heard about it in the news later, there were no suspects. 

He feels bad about it sometimes. In small, quiet pockets. 

He shouldn’t. 

The guy would have killed Eddie first. He wanted to kill Eddie first.

Kim did kill Eddie first.

She killed Eddie first. She lured him. She trapped him. She hunted him. She stopped his heart. She left him for dead. She infected him. She stole over six months of time from him and his son. 

She did it first.

So Eddie shouldn’t feel bad about this, either.

---

24 for 🔮 (I am putting them THROUGH it):

---

A still, tense air to it. Something that makes Buck want to turn around and walk the other way. 

Instead, he follows Bobby and his family inside the house. 

The first thing he notices is the burnt kitchen. Singed wallpaper and damaged appliances. All the tell tale signs of a small kitchen fire. One that hasn’t had a chance to be properly cleaned and repaired yet. 

Is that what happened? Is that how Timothy Nash died? Buck has responded to a lot of small blazes like this in the seven years he’s been a firefighter. Not one of them has ever been fatal. It’s possible, but it seems unlikely. 

Bobby walks purposefully towards a plainly decorated bedroom and closes himself inside. Buck follows him, ending up on the same side of the door as Bobby’s private grief. He watches as Bobby throws himself onto the bed, curls into a ball, and stares at the wall. Outside the bedroom, Buck can hear the muffled sounds of Bobby’s mother and brother having what sounds like a rather serious discussion. Bobby’s face twitches as his brother raises his voice, but otherwise, he seems to ignore it. 

Buck looks around the room. There’s a pair of ice skates in the open closet. Hockey trading cards on a bookshelf. A discarded walkman on the floor. Buck checks what Bobby was listening to last. Who Can It Be Now? By Men at Work. 

Hmm.

---

33 for 🧟 (some of that here for you!)

---

“Like the radio!” Chris exclaims. 

Maddie scrunches her eyebrows. “The radio?”

“Maddie on the radio!” Chris insists. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” Maddie tells him.

Eddie chuckles. “I’ve been teaching Chris Morse Code. Something to pass the time as we travel, you know?”

Wow, what a really fun dad…

“Sure,” Maddie offers. 

“Some radio stations are still picking up transmissions. People putting out messages. Trying to reach people, spread info,” Eddie explains. 

Maddie nods. She’s heard a few of those. Never knew what they were saying though. 

“We came into range for one recently that uses the name Maddie.” Eddie says. 

Maddie raises her eyebrows. “Like the broadcaster?”

“No,” Eddie shakes his head. “The message. It’s just one phrase on loop.”

Maddie feels a little cold. 

“What phrase?”

“Maddie, I am alive,” Chris recites. “Sun. Books.”

The wind could not be more swiftly knocked out of Maddie if someone broke the rest of her ribs. 

“What?” She asks, barely a squeak.

---

36 for 👑 (Thanks! Islands in the Stream!):

--

The Buckley’s Beverly Hills mansion is very square. Very white and square and modern. Everything feels neat and sleek. It feels very Beverly Hills. Very new money. But, somehow, not very Maddie. Though, maybe he doesn’t know her well enough to say. 

A valet parks Chim’s car for him. He wonders if they notice the LAFD bag in the back stuffed with the clothes he’ll need to swiftly return to reality. 

When he walks into the elaborately decorated party, complete with waitstaff passing out trays of drinks and food, Chim feels like he’s in a strange fairy tale. Like he’s the thriving entrepreneur he once dreamed of being, invited to a party to network and schmooze. Like he’s the kind of son his father would have wanted. Would being at a party like this make him proud? The whole thing makes Chim feel a little dirty. A little out of place. In fact, a not insignificant part of his body is urging him to turn and walk the other way. 

But then he sees Maddie.

He sees Maddie, and he remembers why he came. Why he needs to be here. 

Maddie is standing across the wide, open foyer of her parents’ home, wearing a loose, knee length champagne colored dress that twinkles a little when she moves. She’s talking to someone. The man from the Christmas card. Her little brother. The one that was in Peru. They each have a half-full flute in hand. 

“Champagne?” A passing server asks Chim.They must see him eyeing Maddie and her brother and assume he wants what they have.

“No, thank you,” Chim mumbles. 

They keep walking.

Chim doesn’t quite know what to do. He doesn’t want to interrupt Maddie’s conversation. But he also doesn’t have any other reason to be here or anyone else to talk to. He feels a bit like a creep, standing there, staring at her. He must look entirely pathetic. 

After a moment, her brother notices.

---

18 for 🔼:

---

 “Well, uh… Alright then. I guess let me know if you need help building stuff?” 

They end up showering. Not the long shower she’d hoped for, but something quick and efficient. If Eddie comes over - and Buck doubts he will - he doesn’t want him to arrive in the middle of that. Actually, the thought sort of horrifies and embarrasses him. Though he can’t say why. 

And, as it turns out, not even five minutes after they’re done and dressed, there’s a knock on the door. Buck is genuinely floored by this.

“Guess that’s a no on needing help,” Ali mumbles as Buck heads downstairs to answer the door.

When he opens it to see Eddie standing before him, his first thought is that Eddie sort of looks like shit. This is not the sort of thought he’s used to having. He’s used to feeling a strange sort of jealousy he doesn’t quite comprehend regarding the opposite thought. But here Eddie stands. He’s unshaven. There are dark circles under his eyes, which look a little puffy. There are indents in his bottom lip from where he’s been anxiously chewing on it. 

“Eddie? Uh, are you okay?”

---

21 for 💐 (YEAH MAY!):

---

“I guess not,” May mumbles eventually.

She’s staring very hard at her mug of tea. 

“Hey, another question,” April says, stepping closer to her. She smells like eucalyptus. That’s fucking annoying. May likes the way eucalyptus smells. Cool and earthy.

“Sure,” May replies, voice suddenly an octave higher than she’d like it to be.

“Are you done your paper for Professor Kellerman yet?”

Ugh. And there it is. Reality check. Right, because April is a bit of a shark. May gets a ninety? April will get a ninety-one? May finishes a day early? April has been done for a week. Fucking typical she’s bringing this up, right after implying that May needed help at the paint night social.

“No,” May says. “I’ve got a few hundred words left. Some closing arguments.”

---

33 for 🦮 (SHE'S BACK!)

---

She is more hyper than ever. Pacing more than she usually does, like she had that first night in Buck’s apartment, when everything was unfamiliar. She’s blowing him off on his commands sometimes. It’s not like her at all not to listen. One time he caught her rifling through the trash. 

The dog is bored. Buck is bored. Chris is bored. And they’re all getting a little bit of cabin fever. 

There’s a lot Buck cannot fix about this situation. And, hell, a lot he can’t even complain about. Really, he and Chris are so, so lucky. They’re safe, housed, fed, and not really exposed to any illness. Buck doesn’t want to feel miserable, considering. But some days he does. Even if he loves Christopher and Cranberry immensely.

“We’ve got to do something,” Buck announces one day in early May. 

“Something?” Chris asks. 

“Yeah,” Buck nods. “We’re all bored. And getting a little frustrated with each other, right?”

Chris sighs. “Yeah. Sorry, Buck.”

“Don’t be sorry, bud. You’re not the only one. And it’s not your fault.”

Chris looks from where he’s seated at the kitchen table to where Cranberry is lying on the floor. 

“Sorry, Cranberry.”

Cranberry had picked up one of Christopher’s socks from the floor earlier that morning and he’d sort of lost it. Yelled at her. Then cried because he felt horrible for yelling at her.

[sentientgolfball]

Ghoulette Appreciation: Week 10

This one was later than I intended it to be

Read here or on Ao3

Pairing: Mistshine

Word Count: 1215

Summary: Mist and Sunny have a lazy day. Some new information is discovered.

It’s been boiling hot for the last few days and every resident of the Ministry seems to be at their limit. Even the infernal residents want to do nothing more than laze around trying to stay cool. Sunshine and Mist haven’t left their room all day. Mist’s room is always kept cold with a small amount of her magick. Being from the deeps means she is more susceptible to the heat than an average water ghoul, plus the cold brings her comfort. It’s been a perfectly lazy two for the two ghoulettes. 

“Can I ask you something?” 

Mist jumps ever so slightly at Sunny’s voice. The two had been sitting in comfortable silence for hours now, each doing their own thing while enjoying the company. Mist looks up from her sudoku. 

“Of course you can.” 

Sunny props herself up on her elbows from where she’s lounging on Mist’s bed “What was it like for you…in the Pits I mean.” 

“Is there a particular reason you wish to know this?” 

“Mmmmm no, just curious. You don’t have to answer though if it’s…too much.” 

“How familiar are you with Lord Leviathan’s domain?” 

“I’ve heard the big man talk about it but I’ve never actually seen it.” 

“I see. Well as you know I am from the deep sea, a completely different environment than other oceanic ghouls such as Rain, Delta, or Chain.” 

Mist starts her story by explaining the structure of deep sea ghoul society. They are mostly solitary, the only packs that get formed are very small and usually made up of family. There’s heavily focused on yourself alive before anyone else, even if that means sacrificing another. They are wary of other ghouls, always cautious of any games they might be playing. They are also typically the most devout of the oceanic water ghouls due to their proximity to Leviathan’s underwater home. 

Mist was in a small pack made up of her parents and two siblings. They were average, nothing outwardly fantastic about them. They lived their life simply yet happily. That was until The Storm. To this day no one knows what angered the great Leviathan, but whatever it was was severe. For three days the oceans of Hell were locked in a storm surge, churning wildly with Leviathan’s fury. The waves were so great even the deeps felt the effects. In the chaos Mist got separated from their family, swept away with the raging current. Once The Storm finally settled Mist had tried to look for them, but after a few days of no success she gave up and focused on keeping herself alive. She never did find out if any of them were still alive before getting summoned. 

“Oh wow Mist…I’m so sorry that must’ve been horrible.” 

“It’s quite alright Sunshine” Mist assures “I have made my peace with it long ago.” 

“Still” Sunny presses a quick kiss to the side of her head. 

“I do have my own question though.” 

“Hm?” Sunny tilts her head. 

“Earlier you said you have heard the big man talk about it in reference to my question about Lord Leviathan’s domain. What did you mean by that?” 

Sunshine laughs a little “Well you told me yours so it’s only fair I tell you mine. Back in the Pits I was a court jester for the Seven Lords plus Lucifer.” 

Sunshine begins her story with how far back she can remember. Her father had been a fire ghoul in one of the legions created specifically to guard Pandemonium, that’s part of the reason Ifrit and Sunny got along so well right off the bat because the two were in the same legion. Her mother had been an air ghoulette who created art in honor of the Lords. For a while Sunny had been following in her mother’s footsteps, but when her other elements manifested and it was discovered she was a multi-ghoul instead of a hybrid, everything changed. She had been brought before the Lords as a prodigy, her parents humbly asking they provide her with a better opportunity than they could ever hope to give her. Lucifer Himself took an immediate interest in her. To this day she doesn’t know why, but she assumes it was because of her likeness to the sun. 

She had always been a performer at heart. It was something she genuinely enjoyed, something she was good at without even trying. That’s how she became the jester. She was their favorite, always present when all Seven met at Pandemonium. It was stressful always having to come up with new and exciting things to please the Lords for thousands of years, but it was thrilling. Sometimes though she does wonder if she hadn’t done enough and that’s why despite being their favorite she was summoned. 

“It’s okay you can laugh,” Sunny assures “being a court jester is a hilarious gig.” 

“That is an amazing honor Sunshine. Being able to be in the presence of all seven lords and The Morning Star is noble.” 

“Aw shucks Mist you flatter me. Really it was nothing special. I was just there so they had something to point and laugh at, or diffuse the tension so they didn’t kill each other.” 

“You must have been well cared for if He sent you Topside.” 

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Sunny shrugs. 

“He must have known you would be perfect for the Ghost Project” Mist states. 

Sunny stares at her for a moment before a grin cracks her face. She grabs both sides of her head and pulls her in, kissing her softly. Sunny pulls back, but keeps their foreheads pressed together. She combs her hands through Mist’s hair. 

“I love you.” 

“I love you too” Mist whispers before ghosting her lips over Sunny’s. 

Mist still can’t quite believe Sunshine is hers. She can’t comprehend the feelings she has for her. She does know that she’d do anything for her though. Mist knows she’d be happy to spend all of eternity with her. She’d jump into the circle with her if she ever got banished back to Hell. She'd tear this whole Ministry apart to keep her happy if she had to. 

Sunshine can’t believe it either. She never would have guessed Mist would actually make room for her in heart. The moment Sunny saw her for the first she knew. She knew there was something about Mist she had to discover. She couldn’t tell you why, but those deep blue eyes felt like home. Not the home she had been raised in, but something different. Something that felt like soft goodbyes and see you laters. Something that felt like watching the snow fall from inside a bundle of blankets on a winter day. Sunny would do everything she could to make sure Mist knows nothing but peace and love for the rest of her existence. 

The rest of the day is quiet. The two exchange more stories of their time in the Pits, mundane things and fond memories. Mist even indulges Sunny and tells her all about her time Topside before she was summoned. As Sunny listens to her she can feel the tug in her chest, deep in bones. In that moment she knows that there really is nothing that will ever be able to separate them. 

[maisycoded]

This is a deviation from my usual posts, but I am genuinely curious if anyone else who was or is still in high school ever delt with problem of being someone with mental illnesses, behavioral issues or neurodiverse and the school suggested/ put you on a IEP ( individualized education plan, thought probably it’s called something else depending on where you currently live) and your parents think it’s a good idea for you or was instilled fear and worry so they agreed only to have it not be like what they say it was and kept referring to your condition with extremely dated language?

And not only that but when you where in individual class rooms with multiple people with the same or different issues as you they would just give you a calculator and not actually teach you the math because they use the “ it’s your accommodation “ as an excuse not to teach you because they only like to teach it one way to the “ normal” or “ regular “ students? And when you would have standardize testing to pass a grade or to eventually pass high school they didn’t want the scores to look bad so they would take all of the “ troubled” and “ unwell” students and lock or put them in a room with very little supervision making you feel like you couldn’t get far in education because they said there’s not much they can do to help?

And this system they have causes students to get kept back so they can “ teach them more” but it’s just to retain them until legally they can’t go to high school anymore? Because I delt with that, and while I passed due to switching schools in a semi better environment there are still people still dealing with a system/ plan that teachers wrong on purpose.

IEP’s are useful and help many, but when the teachers or schools just use it for selfish and harmful motives ( mostly since it’s people of color and other non white races who get this treatment as me and countless others have experienced this) it’s just really disheartening. Especially since many schools get away with it all the time.

If you are someone who deals with that, or are in a school or academic system that infantilizes you for being mentally ill, neurodivergent, having behavioral problems or maybe just lack the proper motivation and are of need of different teaching styles your not alone. And they always wonder why kids end up getting there ged’s or just drop out and decide to work, despite living in semi progressive times there is a lot of things that are behind. And that especially includes the miss use of accommodations/ phases to negatively impact students and isolation

Or to put it more bluntly, school sucks, here’s a life in hell comic that sums it up:

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

Can you expand on "Personally, my ideal solution is that actually private property as we currently understand it wouldn't exist, and we would all each have rights and responsibilities to the land and the environment that were proportional, in which case this scenario wouldn't have happened in the first place."?

I'm just a little confused on what u mean I guess. Do u think all houses should be state owned? How do people have places to live under this I think I'm missing something

Also I promise this is in good faith I'm actually curious on how u think it should work

Look, I don't have a manifesto locked and loaded or anything, but the values I'm alluding to here are: (1) housing is a human right and our rules and social systems should be adjusted accordingly, and (2) the entire concept of "property" as we currently relate to it? Is kinda batshit.

The first one has been talked about at length by people smarter and more learned in that area than me, so I'm just going to talk about the latter.

For the latter, the first step is to question what it means to "own" something. Generally people use it to mean that you have the right to do anything (legal) that you want with it, and no one else gets a say. The only person with any legal rights here that can be enforced are the owner(s), and rarely are there other voices considered. The ability to be owned is a total negation of the owned-thing's interests and voice.

Now the obvious stomach-churning worst historical example of this is chattel slavery. Obviously we rejected that as a society, even if we now have other forms of slavery/forced labor. But think about how that idea hasn't truly gone away in the underlying attitudes that many adults (especially but far from exclusively parents) have towards children. Children rarely have rights and typically the most they can legally demand are protection. And even that is frequently sadly lacking in comparison to the "right" of a parent to see and raise their child with or without regard to the child's consent.

Wives also faced similar issues until very recently in history, and there are still plenty of men who feel strongly about their "ownership" rights over a particular woman's sexuality, domestic labor, reproduction, etc.

Why am I talking about the shitty ways in which people claim power over one another through the schema of property rights? Because we have progressed just enough as a society to understand how patently absurd it is to think you can truly "own" a person or any aspect of their being. (Usually.) Because most people can appreciate that other human beings also have voices and independent thoughts and desires from you. It's the far end extreme example of an idea that is, frankly, inherently rather absurd, and that's why I lay it as an outer boundary.

Some people have moved on to also understanding how absurd it is to think we own non-human animals as well. There are unfortunately people who will then use this to anthropomorphize animals and argue for animals rights, etc. which is not what I'm arguing here. But I don't think you can ever really own the totality of an animal - it is never going to be an object, without its own will or desires. Anyone who has had a pet or livestock understands this from experience.

But can the same thing be said about land? I would argue: Yeah, Actually. People think that land is not alive, but they are wrong. Any gardener can tell you otherwise. The dirt is positively teeming with life, even if it is invisible to the naked eye. All things that live there depend on the health of the land they live on. People do get the idea that you can't just separate the effects a dump or radioactive waste treatment facility with an invisible legal line, but they don't apply that same idea to everyday activities such as, for example, pesticides. You want to grow an organic garden in your backyard or set up beehive? Too bad, your neighbor wants to use Roundup on her begonias and your other neighbor can't stop mowing his lawn within an inch of its life.

So the idea that our land (and water, and air) usage is atomized and individual, subject to the whims of whatever owner happens to perchance buy it is absurd for environmental reasons, obviously. (American individualism is a disease.) But even moving beyond that - I really don't understand how anyone thinks that you can truly "own" land. If anything, we are creatures of it, owned by it, rather than the other way around. In the Hebrew Bible, the first human was Adam, which comes from the word for soil: adamah. We are the beings of the earth, and we are set up as caretakers, stewards of it. But even moving on from a spiritual justification for this belief, have you tried to control a piece of land? A house is a constant battle against time, weather, erosion, and tectonic shifts to keep it stable and functional. The land and its living soil and living waters and living wind will beat down all human efforts to the contrary and grow wild over them given enough time without human intervention. That is the nature of things. The land is alive and we owe it to ourselves, our neighbors (human and not), and the land itself to be in relationship with the land rather than deluding ourselves that we have dominion over it like some kind of mini-gods. And that is true for water and air as well - both also living and essential aspects of our world that we need to be in relationship with rather than continuing to take and take and take without giving anything back. And we're starting to see the bad effects that has on us; if we injure our natural environment and fail to care for it, our health will also suffer and the land will not be able to provide for us.

So I would just as soon see this absurd idea of owning land abolished and replaced with some sort of system of responsibility and accountability towards the land in partnership with the idea of providing shelter to all people.

Do I have any ideas about how to accomplish this from a culture shift or administrative perspective? Absolutely not. That's why it's an ideal rather than a practical answer.

[justsomeoneintoomanyfandoms]

Hello! I honestly don't remember if I requested here, but if I didn't, then would it be okay for me to get a matchup for demon slayer, haikyuu, and one piece? the options for famdoms were really hard! you have good taste :)

pronouns: she/her

sexuality: bisexual

zodiac: virgo

appearance: 4'11. pear body shape. dark brown hair that reaches up to my chest. brown eyes. brown skin (i'm hispanic).

personality: from what others tell me, i am honest, sarcastic, patient, and too kind (like being respectful to the ones who give me attitude, saying sorry to a chair, etc). i like to follow the rules and will only break them if necessary. i'm the one who makes sure everything and everyone is alright (sane). i easily get flustered, and you will not notice it until you see my very red ears. i'm also a VERY curious person. It has gotten me in trouble or hurt here and there. i'm quite prideful, but i've been slowly learning to apologize and accept that i am not always right. i'm not the most observant person in the world, like the many times i get stared at and don't notice until someone points it out to me. but i do get observant (or at least i think) with the people i love. i always want to make sure they're okay. i can also be quite mischievous. i'm not a very good liar. i always have an aloof face when i'm being honest or joking around, so people never know which is which.

hobbies: collecting (anything really). discovering/listening to music. playing (any kind of) games. reading. researching/learning. sketching. stargazing.

likes: art. chilly temperature/weather. cute things. fashion. games. learning. music. rainy days.

dislikes: bugs. being alone. coffee. hot temperature/weather. horrible fashion.

other facts: i work with dogs. i'm the oldest of four. i don't have many friends, mainly cause i want to live a peaceful life, but i do wish to have more friends. someday, i want to be able to start a family. if, for some reason, i'm not able to have kids, i want to adopt dogs, and cats, and ferrets (animals in general. i definitely want a goat!).

i'm so sorry if this was too long T-T if you accept my request then thank you for taking your time to read this! once again, thank you and have a great day :)

Hi! Thank you for your request! Sorry it took so long. Please note I am currently up to episode 574 (the end of Fishman Island Arc) of One Piece. I hope you like your matchups!

In Demon Slayer, I match you with...

I feel like you and Kanao would get along both as friends and as a couple. And that’s a good thing since she needs to be close to someone before she even begins thinking about them romantically.

Loves watching you make art. Whether it’s drawing, painting, sculpting, or something else and whether you’re amazing at it or not, she just enjoys seeing the creative process.

She really appreciates your honesty. Kanao struggles with understanding people sometimes through her lack of understanding of her own emotions. Having someone around who is open is really helpful for her.

Kanao is still learning to have her own interests but she likes fashion and is more than willing to follow you lead to expand her knowledge of the field.

In the same way, Kanao also really likes cute things. She would love it if you each bring back little nick nacks after you’ve been away. They’re cute little reminders of each other.

In Haikyuu, I match you with...

Mom friends! You and Suga are officially the parents of the Karasuno team. Are you going to be able to control them? No. But will you at least have each other? Yes.

Study dates are an absolute must. He enjoys studying as much as you do but he also enjoys having company while he’s studying, especially if it’s you keeping him company.

There’s no need to worry about being alone with Suga around. He loves spending time with you and if for any reason he’s busy, there are a bunch of friendly volleyball players more than willing to step in temporarily to take his place.

I see Suga as someone who isn’t afraid of a bit of teasing from time to time. Unless you feel uncomfortable being flustered, he’s not going to hold back so be prepared.

I think Suga would like cold weather as well, partially because he gets to wear comfy cozy clothes and drink warm drinks but also because he has an excuse to hold your hands. It’s just so neither of you get cold hands, he swears.

In One Piece, I match you with...

You and Usopp are an amazing match. You have your similarities but you’re also very much your own people and that helps your relationship flourish.

Both of you have your shortfallings and when you’re together, you help fill in those gaps in skill or knowledge. You and Usopp are a power couple in that you support each other in everything you do.

Will get rid of bugs for you. He doesn’t mind them but since he knows you’re not fond of them, he’ll do his best to remove them before you see them. It’s a small thing but it’s something he can confidently do for you.

Art buddies! Usopp loves that you like art as well. He’d love to do some creative dates where you each recreate the other in your favourite medium and they reveal the results at the end.

I feel like Usopp would also really like stargazing with you. He finds it relaxing and takes the opportunity to gaze at you as well while you’re too distracted to notice.

[akariray]

#iwaoi #mafia

Oikawa Torū, a well known volleyball player encounters his childhood friend and past lover who just happens to be the leader of a dangerous mafia group.

Oikawa POV:

Hi there, I'm Oikawa Torū, currently 18 years old. As you all know I'm a famous volleyball player. I'm walking home back to my house after practice with my team. While walking I heard people talking near the alleyways. Wait what? People talking near the alleyways? There shouldn't be anyone here since these areas are close. Oh wait, I'm here but nevermind that. I got curious so I walk closer to the sounds of whispers.

"Oi, when are they supposed to arrive?" "I'm sorry boss, it seems they are in a traffic jam right now." "Tch tell them to hurry I'm getting impatient." "Yes boss!"

Geez bossy much? The man said boss, are they the people who killed those victims? I heard on the news that a group of mafia are now in town and were found killing people near alleyways. Omg, I'm scared. Mommy pick me up! Oikawa focus! They are mafias, get out of here first! As I was about to speed walk out of there I heard something unexpected that made me stop.

"Iwaizumi! Sorry we're late, there was a traffic jam." "Geez you're so loud, what if someone heard you, you idiot." "Sorry sorry. Anyways, are you heading to the base straight away or do you want to go somewhere else before we go back?" "I'm going to-" "Hm? What's wrong?" "Whose there! I know someone's behind the wall, come out before we drag you out!"

Shit! I need to get out of here. I put my jacket on and pull the hood over my jacket so they won't know who I am. I start running as I hear footsteps coming closer. I hear them yelling for me to stop but I keep running as my head keeps going back to what the other person said. "Iwaizumi? As in Iwaizumi Hajime?! You've got to be kidding!" I shout as I reach the beach since it was close. "Iwa-chan, my childhood best friend and my past lover is the leader of the mafia group?!" I shout in my head. I lay down on the sand, not caring if it was going to enter my clothes or not. I couldn't believe it, my best friend is in miyagi and a mafia leader.

Flashback: 3 years ago

"Oikawa, I'm going to the US for high school." Iwaizumi says to Oikawa leaving the older boy shocked. "Wha-what? What do you mean? What about me, us?! You promised that we're going to the same school right?!" Oikawa shouts as tears begin to fall to his cheeks. "I'm sorry, Kawa but I have no choice. My parents already arranged this for me so I can't tell them to just forget about it." Iwaizumi answers trying to calm Oikawa down. However, as he tries to go near his boyfriend to wipe the tears falling from his eyes, Oikawa kisses him and runs away leaving behind his "final" message "Fine, goodbye then, Hajime."

Flashback ends.

"Fuck, only now did you come back? You're so mean, Iwa-chan." I get up and brush off the sand and walk back home. "I'll think about this later, I guess." My parents are currently out of town for the whole month so I'm living alone at the house. I arrived at my doorstep, got my keys out of my pocket and entered the house. I locked the door behind me and started heading to my room. Once I entered, I quickly put my bag on my desk and went into the bathroom. After I took a bath, I went downstairs and into the kitchen.

I looked for something to cook in the cupboards and quickly chose the ramen. I started boiling the water when I heard a knock at my door. I went to the door and opened it slightly to see who it was.

"Atsumu?! What are you doing here?!" I say shocked that my best friend from Hyogo is here in Miyagi. "Hi, Kawa!! I'm staying the night here so open the door bestie." I open the door to let Atsumu in and he does "So, what's going on?" He asked while sitting down on the seat near the counter in the kitchen. As I turned off the boiling water and got another ramen for Atsumu, I answered back "Huh? What do you mean?" "Don't play with me, Kawa. My gut told me earlier that something happened while I was on the train." I chuckle at the thought that he really cares for me. I look him in the eyes and put the ramen in front of him. I told him about the incident, about Iwa-chan.

"Wait- hold on." He pauses and takes a deep breath before saying "Your childhood friend is a mafia leader?!". Ouch my ears hurt, but I guess I don't blame him. I just nod and there is an awkward silence that followed after. As I was about to speak, I heard a knock on the door, and went to open it but only to regret it after.

[isalabells]

I am very curious why Ted going back to the US to be there for his son is him making the mistakes as his dad and a real tragedy. Or did I read your tags wrong and you didn’t mean it this way?

Anon, I never meant to insinuate that this is him making the same mistakes as his dad, nor do I think my tags suggests that. But it's Ted fearing he is making the same mistake as his dad that is the driving force for his ill-advised decision. (That being said, i've seen the Ted's gonna end up like his dad eventually take flying around here, and while -- even in the face of the final scenes -- this is too horrid and bleak a thought even for me I can't entirely refute it, so there's that.) As for your other question, hoo boi- I recommend going back to the post I reblogged and scrolling through some of the tags because there's a lot of people out there who've articulated it way more eloquently than I am currently capable of, and my answer is nothing but a potpourri of all these thoughts.

But let me ask you in return- Did Ted look happy to you? Did he? Did his constant dissociating throughout the episode and him being emotionally closed off and unresponsive to all the people who love and care for him so deeply, him forcefully shutting them all out so he could be A Good Dad and soldier on and do what must be done because he fears otherwise he will make Henry feel like his Dad made him feel (which in itself is a loaded thought, and I bet Sharon could dismantle it within two sessions) make you feel all warm and fuzzy? Him more or less being pushed into this decision because his mom was guilt tripping him and going through with it bc he is under the misguided impression that he has to break-the-cycle in order to prevent impending doom for Henry (guys pls this isn't Succession).

I know there's a post making rounds where people are being outraged bc how dare anyone say choosing to be a parent is the inferior choice here, why do you want Ted to abandon his child and like- I'm genuinely sorry if you feel that way.

The implication that Ted not living within close proximity to Henry renders him a bad father is just bonkers. Emotional availability and taking care of your kid, being involved in their life is not necessarily tied to local distance at all. In all those three years, Ted hasn't neglected Henry once? Hell, with all the constant facetiming and irregular visits and whatnot he's probably kept more up to date with his kid than a good chunk of parents do despite living under the same roof as their offsprings.

Emphasizing the importance of the nuclear family (one that technically doesn't even exist anymore in Ted's case) and telegraphing that this is the main if not only way to be A Good Father seems like such a shocking conservative and nearsighted move for this show, and, pardon me, a very US-American one as well. All of this seems quite tone deaf, but it wouldn't be the first time this season (maybe one day @hubba1892 will bless us all with the essay on TL taking a stand on defying Super League and pushing for 50+1 rule vs. City being a major advertising factor for the show.)

Obiously, this is strongly influenced by me being a firm believer that parenthood shouldn't swallow your whole identity. Playing at pretend happy family and, as someone else put it so nicely, sacrificing your happiness for the sake of your kid is not healthy, and it will gain your kid nothing in the end. Ted seeing himself as nothing but a vessel to fix other people's lives and help them become the best version of themselves only to remove himself from the situation, nay, the entire story (literally and metaphorically, cf him suggesting Trent change the title) once the job is done without a thought or care for his own wants and needs, let alone his happiness is just so deeply saddening. "But the second to last ep showed that they're all gonna be fine without him!!" Yes, that's exactly the point, he should stay because the wants to, not because they need him.

Now Ted 'ain't nobody in this room alone' Lasso is quite literally all alone in the big vast room that is Kansas, with his main people being Henry (a literal child), Michelle and his mom, two people who both make him fucking miserable. A less pointed take would be that he doesn't even have to stay at Richmond specifically. The opportunities that he now has at his disposal in the UK bc of his success story are endless; lots of possibilities for him to continue doing what he loves without being stuck in the depression show that is coaching little league for funsies, quenching all of his wants and needs and dreams and aspiration.

[buckleydiazmp4]

I'm not the original anon who asked about 911 but I am also curious about the Buddie situation? can you tell me abt them?

oh hi!

well here goes my attempt to explain.. them?? i guess?

(decided to put it under the cut bc it's long and i don't wanna disrupt anybody's dash)

i don't know where you stand in terms of supernatural/destiel, but since the last anon asked me abt buddie v destiel in terms of queerbait then i'll take that as a point of comparison

destiel was indeed the main queerbaiting method used by the cw to promote spn. they knew that most of the audience had been watching the show thanks to cas and dean's chemistry and wanted them to be together. however, for many reasons, mainly homophobia or probably chain of command etc etc, they were never gonna make them explicitly canon. so instead they kept.. "amping up"??? the chemistry and the romantic subtext between them enough to keep the audience engaged but keeping plausible deniability. obviously after the last season and the whole bury your gays where they killed off cas, ppl were angry. it was and still is a whole thing bc honestly the cw sucks.

tl:dr #1, destiel was queerbait and ppl who watched spn are now in fear of living through it again when watching other shows

anyways, onto buddie.

ppl who haven't watched 911 but see a lot of buddie content fear that the show is basically doing the same thing, adding little details and subtext between buck and eddie to engage queer viewers or buddie shippers in general and thus have a bigger audience.

what i don't know, but i think is pretty subjective, is if the previous anon would have 911 ruined for them if they started watching, shipping buddie, and then they never got together explicitly in the show.

911 is currently still running and imo there is definitely some amazing chemistry between buck and eddie, not to mention a romantic relationship between them would make total sense.

SPOILERS AHEAD! SKIP THIS PART IF YOU WANT

buck and eddie are pretty much the closest friendship in the show, veering strongly into romantic territory. buck has had a string of catastrophic relationships with women throughout the show, and it's always implied that they don't work because buck needs someone who really knows him, loves him and wants to commit to a serious relationship with him. (eg, a best friend or someone to form a family with).

this particular struggle of buck's is easy to parallel with his relationship with eddie, who has his own relationship problems (including a wife who he separated from, tried to get back together with, and then she died), since he hasn't had any stable love interests.

a crucial part in all of this is christopher, who is of course the person who eddie loves and cares for above all else. chris has had a big say on the way eddie's relationships turn out, because loving eddie means loving chris.

guess who loves chris with his whole heart and is pretty much a second parental figure to him? buck.

between that and the outrageous life-or-death (or psychological distress) situations they have lived through together, there's an unbreakable bond between them. they confide and rely on each other in nearly every aspect of their lives, both during good and bad times.

SPOILERS OVER!

i personally have fun and adore buck and eddie's relationship as it is currently, and yeah, i'd love for them to be canon as much as the next person. but i'd also be okay if they continued to give us the same buddie dynamic we have right now.

there are a lot of meaningful moments and scenes that basically reaffirm how truly close they are even outside the plot they show us on screen. i love that because it's like they're giving us little blank spaces to fill up with headcanons and fics and gifsets and that is so fun!!

but certain ppl are more adamant in their desire to see their relationship develop romantically on-screen. despite not being one of those people, i get why they want that and i sincerely hope they get it!!

but if it doesn't happen, i'll still happily watch the buck and eddie we've been given and cherish all of their interactions. that and of course as i said in the previous ask, i love 911 for a LOT more reasons than just buddie.

tl;dr #2, buddie isn't canon, whether or not it's queerbait depends on who's watching and how they're watching, but 911 is still worth it as a whole.

[tiredelirium]

D.1

Sometimes I want to write about how I feel.

Sometimes I want others to read it.

But most of the time I don’t actually know if I even want anything at all.

I wonder if people I know talk about me when they’re bored or even just making conversation. If they’re mean about me. If they’re curious about me.

I’ve never been very good at interacting with others in the long term. Currently relationships don’t exist for me really. There’ve been times I’ve tried with friendships and partners, but it never seems honest or real.

One sided might seem too harsh.

I know others have tried to reach out, but I’m bad at accepting that hand.

Even now, its 2 AM on a Wednesday, oh though I guess that makes it Thursday now, and here I am writing thoughts out loud on a Tumblr as if i’m making any sense.

To anyone reading this, don’t start to get the wrong idea about what i’m doing with this. (You know who you are and how you think.) I’m just airing out the hollows of my mind and heart.

People (hopefully plural) talk to themselves all the time, in different ways. Maybe their mind races a mile a minute and the only way they can think clearly is to speak out loud. Maybe they speak so that they can better visualise their thoughts as they do so. Maybe its easier to find answers if you speak out loud.

So thats what this is.

Me speaking out loud.

I don’t have anything going for me, that’s the truth from my own perspective.

Self doubt. Body dysmorphia. Introversion. Disappointment. Sadness. Regret. It’s all there, buried beneath a smile i maintain for my parents, sisters, nieces and nephews. Something I’d never show them because it would worry them.

Its funny, I only really started to notice the fake smile I put on for others when I started work, which I was late to getting too. Most everyone would call that a fortune, not having to work for so long, but it stunted me I think. I mean, my lack of personal skills is clear as day to me anyway, though that could be the self doubt talking. Silences in communication drag on for so long. Others try to fill the void but all I can offer is an affirmation, a made up lie, or a smile that feels so fraudulent I want to down an entire beer just to see if that brings up something real. Inhibitions gone.

I don’t want to disappoint others, but trying feels false. And that leads to not trying at all. Which leads to relationships collapse, or a drift apart so long that no amount of bravery could see me reaching out to close that gap.

Around mid college, a foundation year, I started going out with a girl in my class. We were kinda forced together by other classmates we were close to, but it wouldn’t be a lie to say I liked her and I considered her a friend I got to know over a handful of months. We were into a lot of the same stuff, some bands, some games, some art. It made sense to try going out, but the first move was made when we were drunk. A kiss on a couch in a bar at 2AM with our friends watching us from around the corner.

Then university came. We went to different places, having already made decisions and had interviews long before we started dating. She asked me if I wanted us to keep dating, and I agreed. I liked her. It made sense, despite the distance between the places we’d go. And it was far.

University had its ups and downs, though I had far more downs. The course I chose was mostly because I had no interest in anything else and was uncertain. Art is subjective, it always will be, even if you produce something thats sympathetic to the masses doesn’t mean it’ll sell well or earn a living. My girlfriend was brilliant at art, and knew what she wanted to make. I was below average at best and though I had ideas nothing ever came out the way I intended it too.

Distance was hard. But it worked for us. We made time for eachother, perhaps too much time honestly. I don’t really know if she made any long lasting friends in her class outside of her flatmates. I know I didn’t, but thats a me condition I think. We visited each other during breaks, whether it was meeting up halfway or one of us visiting the other, it was always great to see her.

But.

I messed up.

After university, I struggled a lot with direction. My final grade was nowhere near good enough to guarantee any kind of role anywhere significant if I’d made connections. At the end of the day my lack of efforts weren’t even good enough to matter and I spent the majority of my second and third year playing catchup. I technically failed that course. Because of a single essay marked by someone who failed me by a single point and cost my entire second year grade. An essay i’d been told by the tutor who helped me write up and review it had said wouldn’t affect any final grade. I spent the first half of my third year making up that mistake with extra work and my third year work suffered for it.

I came home. So did she. And I spent some time looking for work. I applied for art-related jobs in our area at first. Screen printing, editing. But never got any responses back, because of how these processes go now and because they were scarce to begin with. I didn’t, and still don’t, believe I had the talent to be freelance in any way. It was disheartening and so I started to, little by little, reduce those aspirations.

She got a job within two months. A retail gig, but in a store she’d have a lot of knowledge on the products for. She could start saving. Meanwhile I was burning through the money I had left from university. By going so far away from home, my living grants were larger, and my third year place bad been significantly cheaper rent wise than my second year one, so I had about £500. After a year and a half that money was basically all gone. Spent on split-payment dates with my girlfriend, birthday presents for family, and stuff I just wanted.

And still I had no luck on job searching, to the point she didn’t believe I was looking. I sent out applications every week to different places. Got a video interview, a civil exam, and a slew of “we’re looking for other people” rejection emails.

I started giving up. I saw myself as a burden to this woman who could go and Do Things with the talent and work ethic she had.

Thats when I messed up.

My biggest regret, after five years together, I decided I needed to break up with her.

For weeks we’d started drifting apart, my own self doubt and inability to communicate properly at the fore. I messaged back less and less, and we’d arrange to meet up less. At first this was because I had no money left I could spend, but thats just an excuse. I loved her and I hurt her.

We broke up after she’d just got off work. I’d said we needed to talk and she’d intuited. She’d already mentioned a break up possibility not too long ago. But that might’ve been my mind making up another excuse. She asked me to bring some of her stuff from my parent’s place and I did.

We were in public, after I met her outside her work and we walked for a bit to a spot nearby. I wonder if passersby were curious what was going on when we sat down on a bench rarely used.

I lied.

I said I’d fallen out of love with her. Used little things from our past as fake reasons. Her lack of trust in me and any intentions toward other girls, because I was a guy from her point of view though that may have been grounded in something else. Her use of recreational drugs in the past multiple times without telling me, because i’d told her I wasn’t a fan of it.

I lied.

I still loved her.

But I couldn’t find work. And she wanted to move out of her parents place as soon as possible, and moving into my parents place wasn’t an option for her, and getting a place of our own wasn’t feasible without savings of any kind. I was an anchor who wanted to break the chain so the ship could go free.

Excuses.

I broke up with her and she got up and left with her things. I stayed for a second before standing up myself to leave. But then she came back, hugged me one last time. It was painfully tight. I didn’t cry, or protest. Because that would’ve given my lies away. I just accepted and reciprocated, and then she was gone.

I don’t doubt she cried on the way home and maybe through the night. Maybe she was mean about me. Maybe she was curious. Maybe she didn’t care at all.

I didn’t cry when we broke up, because I was in the wrong. She messaged me, maybe a few days after, asking if she was still allowed to talk to me. I couldn’t respond. Didn’t know how. Didn’t want to keep hurting her.

I cried later, when she thought I hated her.

Feelings are complicated and painful, and I hope if you read this up to now, yours aren’t too hard to bear. I know it hurts. My heart still aches in the quiet of every night. I hope you can find comfort in the words that you’ll be alright.

And I’m sorry.

[cyraelin]

first of all I am sorry. I'll no longer ask who won what year and how many Victor's does a District have I was just curious because between the 35th and 50th most of those years are already booked and if I did something we're one of those years I do not want to interfere with anyone else sims 4 hunger games caz how I see it all of the movies are in the same universe not counting the 66th and sorry for asking you what country are you from I was just curious I didn't know it would make you uncomfortable and from now on I'll only ask you two or three questions

Question 1 did Jewel ever got married and have kids and if she did did her kids ever volunteer

Question 2 what type of Arena was Ginny's

No worries, I understand your struggle. To be honest, I also don't know what the current state is because there are a lot of people who said they wanted to make movies, but I don't really know if they're still working on them or they abandoned them. So, no pressure.

1. Yes, she got married to Cobalt Silversmith, the grand-nephew of Tiffany from the 6th Hunger Games. When she visited Vesper — Vetiver's grandfather — she also met Cobalt, whose family was friends with Vesper's family. They became friends, but they only started dating many years after her Games because she needed time to recover from her grief. They had two kids, but Jewel refused to let them train or volunteer because she didn't want them to go through the trauma of the Games. Jewel saw the devastating consequences of parents pressuring children to live up to their legacy: Vetiver was pressured by his father to volunteer in order to reclaim his grandfather's lost wealth, and the District 1 Male from the 45th, whom she had to mentor, was also the son of a past victor. So after these experiences, she knew that she would never push her children to imitate her success.

2. Ginny's arena was a desert. It was among the more dangerous arenas, and the Games were rather short and anticlimactic, and as a result, the gamemakers decided to return to forest and vegetation-based arenas to allow for more action.

[xtrablak674]

Never asked for a thing

Noticing that there had been some manicuring of the landscape around the edge of the road that served as a bike, pedestrian and jogging path, I recalled my first Summer Youth Employment job where it seemed I was working under the Parks Department's purview.

We did similar kind of clearings of paths in this area in the Bronx near a roadway that headed towards the Bronx Botanical Gardens. But the early job wasn't on my mind, what was the monies I made that year and what had become of them. I am sure that my grandparents put those funds into the investments that would become my college dowery. The thing that struck me as sort of odd, was I don't recall asking for a penny of it.

This is something you may not know about growing up living below the poverty level, you learn very quickly not to ask because we you know we just don't have it. I learned this lesson in the Shop-Rite watching my younger brothers beg for the sweet sugary cereal that they had probably seen on television. I had grown out of that behavior I had learned that isn't what you do. Mom would get upset and sad and start talking about making ends meat, it would take me a lifetime to learn what she was really saying. I am sure as a single working parent taking care of three tender-aged boys was a task in itself just keeping them fed, clothed and sheltered.

We took hand-me-down toys from the whyte children who lived in some upper floor in our building never complaining, because second-hand toys were better than no toys at all. My home never looked like my friends Robert's house with posters on the walls, shelves, all the latest toys and his own furniture and desk in the room he shared with his older brother in his middle-class home where his mother was a homemaker.

Our room included our mom's six drawer dresser made from compressed wood, with a mirror and three steel-framed beds reclaimed from a closing nunnery. Other than the blue-green paint no other decoration adorned the room. This was something I always noticed about the households of the poor, they seem to alway lack personal expression or future expectation. These spaces always seemed to live in the current moment not knowing if they would actually ever survive, they lacked permanence. I guess that is what being poor is, living in the present, not being able to afford the past and forsaking a future which may have more of the same.

All of this just made me more aware of my behavior in my grandparents home, I don't recall asking for anything, other than wanting my own phone line, which I was told the building couldn't support. I recall being hungry as a teenager and just got a job so I could just feed myself, and have money in my pocket that I earned. I never requested or asked for a Nintendo, a bubble goose coat or those fly new sneakers that everyone else was wearing.

I just accepted what I was given. Understanding when you don't have it makes no sense to even ask. I was now living in an upper middle-class household but I wasn't told this, my grandmother acted as if every penny was going to run away, making sure she never paid full price for anything, whether it be groceries or clothes for her ever growing grand-child.

I guess this is a good thing for future me, since I inherited her estate and have been living off of it for the last four years. I am very curious what kind of child would I have been if I had actually been able to want and need things like any other affluent child in a first world country. I am also curious about what kind of adult this makes me. And how does all of this still influence the kind of choices I make about the things that I purchase and the things that I want to purchase. How does depravity shape our identities and influence our future and present selves?

I can't say I have the answers to these questions, but will continue to ponder them. And feel blessed that I made it though, thank goddess I made it through.

[Photo by Brown Estate].

[homespun-stories]

Where Will The Baby Go?

For something that weighs around three kilos and measures in the region of 50cm, newborn babies sure do take up a lot of space. A little shy of three weeks ago, we brought our second baby back home—the same home we had brought back our first, just over four years ago. Many things have changed since then, not least the number of grey hairs on my head, but the one thing that has remained resolutely unchanged is the footprint of our apartment. 

The fact of this sat with me all through 2022 and 2023, as my husband and I journeyed down the path of growing our family and all the complexities (read: hope, loss, love) that kind of process often entails. But where will the baby go? I'd silently fret to myself before I was even sure I’d have a baby at all to hold in my arms again. Objectively speaking we live in a small apartment, with enough bedrooms for two-thirds of the current occupants, excusing our enormous house cat who cares not for doors or boundaries and considers any available surface her territory for a hard-earned nap. To be honest, I’d welcome that kind of laissez-faire approach to our sleeping arrangements, flopping from sofa to bed to rug, but social conditioning and my extremely Type A personality requires routines and structure. No, the baby would need a bed, just like the rest of us, and we would need to work out where that bed was going to go. 

It’s a profoundly modern and Western phenomenon, this suggestion that each individual requires their own bedroom or even their own bed. In the majority of countries around the world, co-sleeping and room sharing between parents and children is the standard practice of care, to the extent that it would be considered completely unreasonable to expect a child (let alone a baby) to sleep alone. In Japan, where co-sleeping ranks the highest in the world, sleep is described as a river, with the parents occupying the banks and the child as the flowing water held safely between. We co-slept with our daughter for the first six months of her life, although it wasn’t in the formation of a river but more like a motorbike (our bed) with a sidecar (her crib). Given the grunts, hoots and whistles she regularly emitted as she dozed, this analogy feels more apt than the backdrop of a babbling brook. In any instance, she was never more than an arm’s reach away during those thick, dark nights when every insane sound she made was heightened in the silence of a slumbering home. After that, we moved her into The Baby’s Room which we had decorated and furnished with playful odds and sods that said more about our whimsy of being parents than they did of any perceived personality trait of our child. It’s a curious thing, to decorate a room that someone else will occupy, without knowing a single thing about their tastes or interests.

The Baby’s Room had also been our study until that point, and when the time came to move the desk into the front room to make way for a changing table and crib, I felt slightly undone. I was ready to acknowledge that parenthood would come with an exchange of gains and losses, but there was something so bluntly literal about the act of becoming a mother that it necessitated my giving up a private place to write. I guess it’s a variation of that oft-debated line from Cyril Connelly: “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hallway." The irony is that it was only once my daughter was born that I found the capacity within myself to put pen to paper in a more expansive way, and during my maternity leave I wrote the first draft of a book proposal. Perhaps it’s an even greater irony that four years later I am writing these words whilst my son is wailing in the room next door, as my husband tries to rock him to sleep. Perhaps, like nature, art will always find a way. 

One of the consequences of giving up our study in place of The Baby’s Room, was the associated shame (entirely on my part) that came with living in a home that appeared too small for all our needs and wants. I come from a country that places a great deal of emphasis on the Family Home, variations of which most of my peers now live in and are currently extending, remodelling or digging out extensive basements underneath. Family Homes have a garden, enough bedrooms for everyone, a guest room, more than one bathroom, and the kinds of open plan kitchen-cum-dining rooms that are increasingly of a single aesthetic that populates all our Instagram feeds. Family Homes tend to come with their own social media accounts, so we can follow our friends’ #HomeReno updates and post fire emojis under pictures of construction sites. I have spent a good many years reflecting on what makes us feel good, mad and sad about home, and I can tell you that the insidious rise of interior design content which is beyond the skills and budget of the overwhelming majority is making a lot of us fucking miserable about our living situations. 

After a while, the question of where will the baby go stopped masquerading as a concern about where, practically, the baby will sleep, and revealed itself for what it was: a shameful desire to meet some kind of social norm as a Family of Four. This revelation came to me in the winter of 2022, after a shockingly awful year pockmarked by loss. During this time we had tried, and failed, to sell our apartment and buy a house. For nine long months our home sat on the market, and most weekends we spent our free time cleaning and decluttering so the estate agent could bring one or two people over for a viewing that never materialised into anything other than a pass. That weekend, in early December, when we pulled our home off the market and accepted our fate, I wept. It was another grief, of sorts—the ambiguous loss of a life I had imagined in our new house; one with enough potential to become a Family Home. 

These days, when I’m feeling a bit out of sorts at home and in need of a reset, I roam around the apartment and find things to fix or do—packing toys away in their rightful boxes, folding laundry, changing lightbulbs, that kind of thing. Invariably, I’ll end up standing in my daughter’s room gazing at all the things that make this space sing with her personality that we could never have anticipated when we picked out paint colours—the paintings bluetacked at a wonky angle on the wall, the rock and gravel collection, the basket of teddies, the plastic box stuffed with countless beaded bracelets she’s made for us all. I can’t even remember what it looked like when it was a study, and I don’t care any more. I didn’t lose anything when I moved my desk out, because it was never a trade to begin with. The day we turned that room into our daughter’s bedroom, we simply dialled up the joy in our lives. I couldn’t see it for a long time, but now I know that I’ve been living in a Family Home all along.

So where will the baby go now that we are four and our home is still, resolutely, the same size as before? He’ll go right here, of course—with us. 

[ramonaflowersflowers]

Love was such a curious thing for me before when I was really young. I thought it was just a part of the deal with family, when getting married, a promise, a type of commitment (it actually is, anyway) and whatsoever. I have never fathomed that it was a feeling or I may have felt it but I was too young to know that it's 'love'. I never really bothered understading why my mom does laundry for us when she gets home tired after work even in her work uniform. That sacrifices, my parents made was just out of their obligation for us. Stupid.young.me.

Love was such a curious thing for me before when I was really young. I thought it was just a part of the deal with family, when getting married, a promise, a type of commitment (it actually is, anyway) and whatsoever. I have never fathomed that it was a feeling or I may have felt it but I was too young to know that it's 'love'. I never really bothered understading why my mom does laundry for us when she gets home tired after work even in her work uniform. That sacrifices, my parents made was just out of their obligation for us. Stupid.young.me.

But growing up, luckily, I slowly comprehend what love truly is. There was one night when I was still young enough to sleep on my parents room (haha), my father noticed that I was rubbing my feet together to coax myself to sleep. He said that I have the same manerism as my mother. I realized later on that to notice such trivial thing on someone, you must really care to pay attention or you have orbitted closely around that person to know that miniscule detail from someone else's life. And for me, the effort or even the innate feeling of being familiar with someone, is one that could somehow describe 'love'. Knowing the simplest of things, knowing what they need for a particular instance, and so on. Because from there, you would know what you could offer to that person without exchange. (Boom! another definition or type of love/ the unconditional love haha) And that's how I have come to realized, my father really loves my mom even though it may not seem like it.. (He kinda looks cold before haha) 😅

For the bonus question, my first love deserve the spot for that encompassing love haha I was in HS and I was head over heels (secretly) in love with my bff (haha generic). She was the first one who have truly cared about me outside my family, the one who gifted my first TS album haha, and the first one to notice my potential, encouraged me to pursue my current career and inspired me to be passionate on whatever path I choose. She believed in my lazy ass before haha and I owe her for that. I think I would not be here without her. I met other people after her but I think no one can hold a candle to her, until to this day. I don't feel the same way for her though she will always have that special place in my heart. (So damn cheesy haha)

Ps. She's married now, living and working in a western country. And I am genuinely proud and happy for her. 😅 (disclaimer agad haha)

Kinda enjoying this discord channel. I love pouring my thoughts out.

_0313