#even by my standards

[mollyjames]

I finally beat Midra

[ajokeformur-ray]

I had such a horrific dream last night. Not quite a nightmare, not quite too sad to talk about, it was somewhere in between.

I think I woke up from it in the night but then when I fell asleep again, the dream resumed where it left off.

It was awful.

I won't be forgetting about it for a while.

[ionlymadethissoicouldleaveanask]

John and Linda

The #5 response, it's John not actually wanting to acknowledge their relationship (or his yearning) and Linda being like u fight for everything else, fight for us just this once

From these writing prompts!

--

It had been building up for years. Every time she walked by, it seemed to set John on edge. Ever since they were kids he found himself practically entranced by her - her blood red hair, the sinuous grace of her movements, the way her green eyes sparkled on the rare occasion that she found something funny enough to laugh out loud...

It got bad enough that others began to notice.

Kelly and Sam were the first. They ridiculed him mercilessly. Kurt was the next to catch on. Then Fred. Sideways smirks tossed around whenever he was alone with her. Hasty excuses to go somewhere else whenever she arrived in a room he was in. Assumptions that he was going to spar with her. They were subtle.

Not as subtle as they thought they were being... but at least they tried.

It drove him crazy. So he fought against it. Refused to show her any favoritism. Refused to be around her. Refused to talk much with her, no matter how much he wanted to.

They were in their thirties when she finally confronted him about it.

"You're ridiculous," the sniper had said. Her voice was soft, but firm. Her tone brooked no argument. There was little invitation for comment, even. She was simply passing down a casual judgment.

John gave her a hard look. An NCO look. The kind he had learned from MCPO Mendez all those years ago. "You have something to say, Spartan?" he growled.

Linda just shrugged. "There's something here. You're avoiding it because you're embarrassed. It's ridiculous." She stepped closer to him. So close that they were almost touching. So close he could feel her breath press against his exposed skin. "You're fighting the wrong battle on this one," she breathed.

And then she walked out of the room. John's stomach fell and he felt like a joke - a clown whose painted on smile was fooling no one.

He didn't bring it up. Neither did she. They went back to business as usual.

It took five more years for their to be a change. Linda took a hit. A hard hit. John dragged her to the field hospital himself, her armor charred and smoking. He'd paced outside the surgery suite for hours while they worked to repair her. When the surgeons finally allowed him in, it had come with the warning that she wouldn't wake up for some time.

He didn't care. He waited. As she lay there unconscious, he even got up the nerve to place his hand over hers. Their fingers were still entwined when she woke up. Her eyes fluttered open, appraising the room around her. Then they drifted down to his hand on hers.

She didn't say anything. Just smirked.

John felt his cheeks warm. After several long minutes of painful silence, he finally cleared his throat. "You were right," he said, his voice raspy and rough with disuse. "I was fighting the wrong battle." He tightened his hold on her hand. "And I got tired of it. I'm going to fight for this... for us."

He ran out of words then. Just stared at her, breathing heavily like he'd just run a marathon. Linda stared back.

Then the corners of her mouth slowly curled up, and John felt all the tension leave his chest like a flood flowing through a breached dam. She gently rubbed her thumb over his knuckles.

"Good," she breathed. "It's about time."

[skrunksthatwunk]

i love really jarring media consumption combos. reading pride and prejudice with a baja blast in hand like austen intended. reading ulysses and skip beat switching between them every chapter. interrupting my political misery porn with exactly 4 minutes of a challenge speedrun video because i need to do the dishes and one of those feels more right for that. yea

[lilithpleasant]

[porgthespacepenguin]

I wish. It's become kind of a running joke on Discord that whatever word count I announce? You can safely double it.

Well, NEWTS just said, "hold my beer". I genuinely set out to write a long one-shot, which turned into a huge three-parter, which turned into a gigantic 24-chapter monster.

And I have proof of my idiocy. Behold, a penguin tragedy in three acts.

Act 1: Blind Optimism

(QE3 was the working title for NEWTS. Note the flicker of realism buried under all the optimism.)

Act 2: Copium

Yeah, at that point I was starting to realize that three parts weren't going to cut it.

Act 3: Acceptance

No comment.

The “oh I could definitely write this fanfic in under 5000 words and it really wouldn’t take me that long” voice in your head is actually the devil speaking

[friendsofabracadaver]

Livin' the dream

Resistin' the urge to scream

[littlemizzlinguistics]

Studying linguistics is actually so wonderful because when you explain youth slang to older professors, instead of complaining about how "your generation can't speak right/ you're butchering the language" they light up and go “really? That’s so wonderful! What an innovative construction! Isn't language wonderful?"

[icantbotherwithusernames]

another (relatively) old gf comic i did.

[here-there-were-dragons]

.... our fridge fucking died and took all of our meat with it

[idontmindifuforgetme]

friend wanted to see my tumblr, and when i told him i can’t show it to him bc it’s basically my personal diary he went “oh so I can’t see it but a bunch of strangers on tumblr can??” he literally does not get me. no one will get me like the people in my phone get me

[lilislegacy]

i’m just gonna come out and say it

if luke comes back in a future book, i hope percy is taller than him now.

[aquanutart]

I was talking and I mentioned that I have my old Game Boy and original Pokemon cartridge. I said, "I think they still work."

I was told, "The internal batteries on the Game Boy cartridges have run out. They're all dead."

"Oh," I said, trying not to show how crestfallen I was. I felt like I was losing nerd cred for not knowing that, although I never kept up with that type of info anyway. I'm here for the fantasy and imaginative aspects of games, and tend not to follow the competitive or technical details.

I tried not to feel anything as I went home. If they were real animals, I reminded myself, I would have had to say goodbye long ago.

But like so many other people, Pokemon was my childhood. It was all I thought about and dreamed about, and the closest thing I could imagine to heartbreak was the knowledge that they weren't real. I spent nearly all my time writing longhand self-insert Pokemon fanfiction--far more than I spent actually playing the game. My Pokemon were with me in my imagination wherever I went. I started playing Pokemon Blue when I was 5, and the last time I had played it was probably when I was 9 or 10. I remembered I had turned it on again one more time after that, not to play it, but to look at my childhood Pokemon.

It was during high school, after a move overseas that completely upended my life, and I was struggling with the crushing blow of being taken away from everything I knew and trying to make sense of anything (least of all adolescence) in another language. All I wanted was to go back to childhood and have everything go back to how it was before.

Seeing my Pokemon, just as I'd left them, had comforted me. I had looked at their stats pages, taken photos of them with my digital camera (that I don't even know if I still have), and then turned it off without doing anything.

That was probably 9 or 10 years after the games came out. It had been a long time since then. I had long since taken the AA batteries out of my Game Boy Color and left it untouched. I didn't even have AA batteries anymore.

It had worked then. But now it had been 27 years... I thought about not trying to turn my cartridge back on. As long as I didn't turn it on, I could believe my Pokemon were still there, the way I remembered them.

On my day off, which happened to be Pokemon Day, I googled and read that some people on forums and Reddit were still able to play their original Pokemon games.

Then... it was possible. I went out to buy toothpaste. At the store, I asked where I could find AA batteries.

It was a big thing for me to be able to go to the store and buy things myself. When I moved at age 13, I felt like something went wrong with growing up. It was difficult to follow what people were saying, and people didn't always understand what I said either. I had been introverted even in English, but now I had enough negative experiences that I became afraid and stopped trying to talk to people altogether.

I threw myself into video games and reliving childhood memories. The internet was where I could communicate in my first language and understand. I lived online and didn't interact with the real world. On the internet I felt like I was understood and could find people who shared my interests the way I did, but in the real world it always felt like I could get hurt if anyone knew me.

I realize now that I could have had a better experience overseas if I'd known how to adapt and socialize, but this was not something I knew even in English, and trying to learn in another language made it ten times harder. I'm sorry now for missing out on interactions that I know I could have had, but I just didn't know how. I wouldn't know how until I learned, and it took me a long time to learn.

I grew up online, in the company of others who had trouble fitting in with the real world, even in their own language. Those experiences shaped me, and the friendships I've made and support I've received online are invaluable to me. The internet gave me a way to live, and through it I learned how to interact with others. But in many ways, for many years, it felt like my life was put on hold and I stopped growing up.

Several years ago I moved back, to not far from where I was born, and I was able to work for the first time. I began to interact with people and feel like I had a place in the real world.

After shutting myself away for so many years, every little step I made out in the world felt terrifying. But every little thing I did on my own made me feel like I was living for the first time.

Even something as little as going to the store and buying a pack of batteries.

I was directed to a shelf at the end of an aisle, and found myself looking at a rack of lithium AA batteries. Did they not sell the old kind anymore?

I walked around to the other side and was relieved to find the familiar black and brown Duracell batteries I'd known from my childhood. I felt more confident about putting in a battery that looked the same as I remembered. The smallest pack they sold was an 8-pack for $12.99. I really didn't need 8 batteries. I didn't have any other devices that used them.

I thought, what if I turn it on and it doesn't work and I'll have wasted $12.99?

I also thought we might already have batteries. I might be able to say, "Mom, do we have any batteries?" and she'd pull out two AAs from a drawer somewhere and I'd save my money.

But somehow I felt like part of what was important about this was being an adult and being able to buy my own batteries.

Yet... what if it just ended up making me sad? Was it better not to know?

I went to the checkout with just the toothpaste and stood hesitating at the edge of the checkout line.

If I didn't get the batteries now, and it turned out we didn't have any batteries, I wouldn't try it. I knew I would just put it off until even more time passed, and then... "Are you in line?" someone asked me.

"No," I said, and I turned around and went back to the shelf.

I bought the batteries.

At home, I took out my original Game Boy Color from the drawer where I left it, the one my dad had surprised me with when I was 5 years old and that I had brought overseas and back.

I put the batteries in and turned it on without a cartridge first to make sure the batteries were inserted correctly. The Game Boy logo scrolled across the screen and it made the familiar blinging Game Boy startup noise. I turned it off again, satisfied.

I took out my original Pokemon Blue cartridge, momentarily having to remember which way it went in, and slotted it in.

I turned it on, watched the whole Pokemon Blue intro out of nostalgia, and then pressed START.

My heart leaped for joy.

MY POKEMON!!!! MY POKEMON ARE ALIVE!!! 🥺🥺🥺

My original Pokemon, that were with me in 1998 when I was 5-6 years old, are still with me 27 years later. I want to cry!!! I love the old sprites, I'm SO happy to see them again 😭😭😭 the Pokemon look so little and cheerful at the same time, which I love 🥺🥺🥺 I know there are people with many more hours on their games, who have leveled all their Pokemon to 100. But these are my Pokemon who were with me through my childhood, and I spent many more hours making up stories about them than actually playing the game. I'm so happy to see them again 😭😭😭

All I want is to see my Pokemon. My other Pokemon are in boxes. Now, how do I get to the nearest PC? Where am I?

Oh... Oh. I have to confess something. When I was a kid, I was scared of the dark cave areas, and whenever I got to them, I stopped playing for a while. (I was stuck at Mt. Moon until I was like, 7.) So I never actually beat the game.

And here I am on Victory Road, with the team of Pokemon I was taking to the Elite Four, without an Escape Rope.

The only way for me to see my other Pokemon is... to finally make it through Victory Road, after 27 years?!

[rorydrawsandwrites]

Hee hee hee... it has been finally done

Not the first to be inspired by this fic (and definitely not the last, especially once it continues) by @wakebymoonsleepbysun, but I just had to sketch some of the moments in it

Don't mind the fact that he looks different on every one of these... I was still uh... figuring him out ^^"

I could just envision every scene so clearly, no doubt thanks to the vivid writing!! I was very charmed!! And I love AUs where we get to save him in some way, he (they) deserved so much better. Doey being so small is of course adorable, 10/10 would store him in my shirt pocket and feed him whatever he'd like

Though I saw he'll return to big boy size eventually... ah well

And oh yeah here are the paragraphs these are referencing, in order:

[sherrymagic]

Wake up. I told you last night, didn't I?

Joong Archen as FADEL and Dunk Natachai as STYLE THE HEART KILLERS | EP. 6

[lgbtlunaverse]

"Marcille hates all of Laios' freak traits but loves them in Falin" is honestly a really good joke but... you guys do know it's a joke right?

It's such a funny one I honestly find it impossible to get mad at even when people mistake it for an actual truth about the characters but JUST TO MAKE IT CLEAR

THIS is how marcille reacts when Falin is predictably just as enthusiastic about eating monsters as her brother was.

That is not the face of a woman who thinks this trait is lovely and endearing as long as it's exhibited by the girl she loves. That is the face of a woman who is taking 7d8 psychic damage and yet knows deep in her heart she won't like Falin any less for it.

The way young Marcille reacts to Falin eating berries Marcille can't recognize but Falin knows are safe is pretty similar to how she reacts to eating monsters years later, albeit with more fear than disgust. The difference in her relationships with Laios and Falin isn't just that she's attracted to Falin, it's because the Touden siblings, while similar, are in fact different people. Not just genderswaps of each other.

Also, I think you all already know this, but just to say it: she doesn't actually hate Laios for any of his freak tendencies either. He's one of her best friends. She's just a lot quicker to be outwardly exasperated with him while she's quieter about it with Falin.