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suits · 5 years ago

Text

closer to fine.

Can be read here on ao3

Words: 7.3k, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Relationship: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier

Fandom: IT 2017, IT 2019

Rating: Explicit

Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, Temporary Amnesia, Post-Break Up, Breaking Up & Making Up, Angst with a Happy Ending

Summary: Richie gets his heart broken on a Thursday.

Richie gets his heart broken on a Thursday. He can’t even say he’s surprised. Confused, maybe. Definitely dejected. But not surprised. He's always had a hard time holding on to the good things in his life, so why should Eddie be any different? That doesn't make it hurt any less, though.

He wishes he could say it starts out like any other day, but something like dread makes a home somewhere deep in his chest when he's woken up at noon by two text messages from Eddie.

12:14 - Baby: We need to talk. 12:14 - Baby: Can I come over?

Nobody likes a "we need to talk" text, but cryptic undertones aside, since they started dating all those years ago, Eddie has never once asked for permission to come over.

He tries to brush it off. “It’s probably nothing.” Richie thinks to himself, laughing at his inane ability to jump to the worst possible conclusions, ever. “There’s plenty of shit he could want to talk to me about in person. Maybe he wants a dog, a little Pomeranian or something cute like him, or maybe he wants to move in together, or maybe he’s ready to take our relationship to the next level, or maybe...”

Richie sends back a quick “of course. see u soon” before he forgets, then busies himself with taking a quick shower and making a breakfast smoothie for the two of them.

It's 12:47 when Eddie knocks on his door. Eddie never knocks anymore. Richie gave him a key years ago so that he didn’t have to.

He opens the door warily, stepping back to let Eddie inside. His Eds was wearing a knit cap, and scarf to combat the harsh winds, and Richie was pretty sure that those were mittens on his hands, God his boyfriend was the cutest. “Eds,” Richie greets, going in for a hug and kiss, but Eddie shakes his head, grimacing a little. He steps back to put a little bit of space between himself and Richie.

“Let me start off by saying that I love you.” Eddie mumbles, staring at the carpet.

“Okay?” Richie prompts, confused. His eyes search Eddie’s face. “Eds, come on, my floor isn’t that interesting. Please look at me.”

Eddie does, and his eyes are wet with tears that haven't yet spilled over. ”And I know that you love me,” He continues.

“Yes,” Richie nods emphatically, “more than anything.”

Eddie takes a deep, shuddering breath before soldiering on, “But this isn’t working out anymore. We’re,” He gestures between the two of them “not working out.” He doesn't say much more than that, doesn't try to explain himself. Richie wouldn't have wanted to hear it, anyway. “I’m sorry.”

It's one of the rare occasions that Richie Tozier has nothing to say. He nods slowly, mouth agape, like he wants to speak, but no words will come out.

They spend seconds or minutes, Richie has no idea, just looking at each other. Richie’s eyes were desperate and imploring, Eddie’s, glazed and distant. They're only standing a couple of feet apart but Richie's never felt further away.

Eventually, Richie breaks the silence, gesturing towards his kitchen. “Smoothie?” he offers weakly.

Eddie just looks at him some more. His eyes are sad, but his face is determined. He sighs once, and shakes his head ‘no’ before he turns on his heel and leaves. Richie can only stand there and watch, dumbfounded, as the love of his life walks out of his front door, and out of his life.

”But you love pineapple and spinach.” Richie whispers to the empty room.

He doesn't get a response.

Desolation and depression were old friends of Richie’s; in the sense that even if he could find a way to forget about them, ignore them, avoid them all together, all it took was one bad night and they were back in his life with an intensity like they missed him. They were good to him like that.

“ S' good to me. Than' you.” Richie slurs to his empty bedroom. “I missed you guys, too.”

He might’ve had too much to drink. It's been a while since he drank alcohol, and it's just really hard to keep track of how much you've drank when you’re not actually trying to keep track. The only thing Richie knows for sure right now is that he needs a lot more alcohol to make it through the night.

Richie checks his phone for the time, ignoring the unopened text alerts he’s been getting for the last two and a half weeks it’s been since Eddie dumped his ass out of the blue. It reads 1:17am, which means that he has about forty minutes until the dive bar closest to his place starts locking up.

It's a 15 minute walk, but he makes it there in 10.

“Richard.” His bartender (and sorta friend) Monty greets him when he stumbles through the door, limbs awkward and uncoordinated. “This is the fifth time I'm seeing you in as many days... and you look worse every single time I lay eyes on you. Anything you want to talk to me about? I can have this place cleared out in five minutes flat, just say the word.” A couple of people in the bar look up at that, but he pays them no mind.

Richie's touched. If he wasn't so fucking drunk already, he would've sat down and had a heart to heart with Monty about how the man he thought he’d marry someday just up and fucking walked out on him. But alas.

“Monty...Montague...Mont Everest... Mont-pel-er... You know like the capital of Virginia?”

“Vermont, but continue.” Monty corrects playfully, eyebrows raised in amusement.

“You say potato. Anyway, as much as I'd love to wax poetic about the five foot six inch cutie that broke my heart, I'd much rather forget that the last two weeks of my life even happened. What’ve you got for that?”

“Prayers, Richie. Lots and lots of prayers. But in the meantime,” he slides two glasses filled with something brown and strong towards Richie.

Had Richie not been such a fuck up, he never would’ve went to the bar that night. Had Richie not been so goddamn stupid, he probably would’ve noticed the group of men lurking in the alleyway across the street early enough to avoid them.

Had the alcohol not effected his judgement and sense of self-preservation, he wouldn’t have felt so tough, he wouldn’t have opened his mouth, he wouldn’t have started that fight.

Had Richie Tozier not been Richie Tozier for once in his life, he wouldn’t be laying on his back in a barely lit alley at 2:30 in the morning with at least a couple of cracked ribs, a possible punctured lung, and a head injury that was bleeding steadily.

Richie doesn't bother calling for help, wouldn’t be able to get the words out anyway.

He can't help thinking that if this is it for him, then there are worse ways to go.

“Worse than bleeding out in alley surrounded by trash and piss and shit and God knows what else? Richie that's disgusting.” a familiar voice in his head reprimands.

“Chill... Edward...Cullen,” Richie rasps, wincing in pain. It’s the last thing he remembers before the darkness overtook him.

Eddie makes the biggest mistake of his life on a Thursday. He never should’ve picked up his phone and texted Richie that morning, stressed off his ass, and mad at the world. He shouldn’t have put on his stupid coat, or got in his stupid car, waited in stupid traffic, to show up at boyfriend’s apartment to break up with him. And for what? Because Eddie was feeling insecure about how Richie felt about him? Because Eddie was worried (for whatever fucking reason) that Richie would get tired of him? He feels so fucking stupid.

People always assumed that Richie was the impulsive one in their relationship, acting before reacting. But Eddie knew firsthand that Richie is, and always has been, more calculated and levelheaded than he could ever dream of being. It took a lot to get Richie riled up, especially since he’d stopped drinking, but Eddie was constantly on a short fuse.

“Such a little ball of fury, you are.” Richie would tell him, pinching his cheeks. “Not enough room in your body to hold all your anger, Eds. So cute.”

“I’m not a little ball of fury and I'm not fucking cute, Richie!” He would yell back. And Richie would just smile at him like Eddie had just proved his point.

Eddie misses him the second he walks out of the door.

He decides to call Bill when he gets to his car.

"Hey Eddie, what's up?" His best friend greets, and the words come pouring out before Eddie has a chance to stop them. He talks until he's out of breath, and then he talks some more. He would've kept talking, too, if—

“I’m sorry,” Bill interrupts, “I must’ve misheard. You did what?”

“I broke up with Richie.” Eddie repeats, irritated.

“That son of a bitch—did he hurt you? Do you need me to—” But Eddie nips that one in the bud real quick.

“No, Bill, he didn’t hurt me. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

Bill’s voice sounds confused, “Then why?”

Because I’m a mess with chronic anxiety and self esteem issues and twenty-four years worth of emotional baggage and Richie deserves so much better than me? He thinks but doesn’t say.

“I don’t know, Billy. I really fucked up this time.”

Bill doesn't agree nor disagree with that statement. Instead he says, “It’s okay. You just need to figure yourself out, Eddie. Take some time to think about what you want, that's the most important thing. You have to be your first priority, or you'll never really be happy.”

“How’d you get so smart, huh, Big Bill?” Eddie asks, genuinely grateful that he has such a patient and protective best friend.

“Someone in this group has to be.” He chuckles, and Eddie curses him playfully.

They talk for a little while longer; about school, and work, and Bill’s upcoming date with Stan. After saying their goodbyes, Eddie's surprised to see that he feels a little bit better.

Bill's right; Eddie needs to figure himself out, get his head right. He knows it's gonna take a long time but he owes it to himself (and hopefully, someday again, to Richie) to be the best version of himself.

After a couple of days of moping and self-pity, things are starting to look up for Eddie. He isn’t necessarily enjoying “single life” but he's beginning to relish spending time on himself. He even takes a couple of days off from work to focus on his self care. He buys ginger tea and detoxifying face-masks and everything.

It's been two weeks and three days since their break up when a call wakes Eddie up out of a restless sleep.

“What?” he grouses at the unknown heathen who likes to call people at — he squints at his phone screen — 4:16 in the morning.

“Edward Kaspbrak?” A female voice intones.

“Speaking. Who is this?” He asks, immediately more alert.

“Marianne Nelson from Silver Lakes Hospital. There’s been an accident involving a Richard Tozier, and he has you listed as his emergency contact. How soon can you be here?”

Gays can’t drive, my ass Eddie thought as he pulls into a parking spot. He makes it to the hospital in record time and barely breaks any traffic laws to get there. No use to Richie if we both end up in the ER, he reminds himself.

Let it be known that Eddie Kaspbrak hates hospitals. Has ever since he was a kid. It's 100% due to the fact that his mother made him spend more time in emergency rooms and clinics than he did at school or with his friends.

That’s all behind him, though, at least for the moment, because the only thing on his mind right now is getting to Richie quick as possible. Marianne wouldn’t tell him anything over the phone, so he's completely in the dark, has no idea what kind of condition Richie is in.

“Edward Kaspbrak.” He announces when he reaches the receptionist's desk. “I’m here to see Richie Tozier. He’s my b—” Eddie cuts himself off. “I’m his emergency contact.” After his identification is verified, the receptionist politely gives him directions to Richie’s room.

Eddie doesn't exactly jog there, but it's a close thing.

He’s seen Richie sleeping in the past, countless times, but he's never looked so small before. And so pale. Richie's hooked up to all types of IVs and machines, he has cuts and bruises littering his face, and part of his head is shaved—but despite it all, he still looks very much like the boy that Eddie fell in love with so many years ago. He'd be reminiscing if he weren't so fucking scared.

“You can go in.” Calls a kind voice from behind him. Eddie nods without even looking to see who the voice belongs to, before he steps into the room and shuts the door softly behind him.

Eddie’s heart was going to beat out of his chest. Is that even possible? He thinks hysterically, then laughs a little, completely on edge. At least I’m in a hospital and they’ll be able to fix me right up. Good as new.

He makes himself as comfortable as possible, folding like a pretzel in the hospital chair. The room has magazines and a TV—for entertainment or distraction, he isn't sure—and there's coffee right outside the door if he needs it, but Eddie isn't planning on leaving any time soon. He stares at Richie’s sleeping face and hopes to God that he's resting well. “I’ll stay with you forever if you’ll let me." Eddie says, barely loud enough to be heard over the ventilators. “I'm so sorry, I won’t ever leave you again.”

He doesn’t get a response.

The first time Richie wakes up, he notices the lights. Too much, too bright, he thinks. They make his eyes sting and his head hurt, but he's out again before he can say anything about it.

The second time, Richie's more alert. He hears the steady beeping of machinery, smells the overpowering scent of clean, sterile. He can’t turn his head, though, can’t get his eyes to focus on anything, and before he knows it, they're fluttering shut again without his permission.

The third time Richie wakes up, there are big, brown eyes peering down at him. He recognizes those eyes before he can focus on the face they belong to. Eddie. Those heavenly brown eyes blink in surprise before they disappear from his line of sight. Richie vaguely hears yelling, but he can’t make out the words.

Next thing he knew, there're people all around him, nurses and various hospital personnel writing things down, and poking and prodding at him.

“Richard,” a voice that isn’t Eddie’s calls, “You won’t be able to talk just yet, but blink twice if you can hear me.”

Richie blinks twice, confused.

“Good to have you back with us, Richard. Do you know where you are? Blink once for no, twice for yes.”

Richie blinks once.

“You’re in the hospital. I’m Doctor Hasaan. You got pretty banged up the other night, but we’re going to take care of you. You’ve got some broken ribs, a subsequent punctured lung, and a pretty nasty concussion. Do you remember what happened?”

Richie blinks once.

“There was an accident, Richard. A pedestrian found you in an alleyway downtown, and called 911. I’m not surprised you don’t remember any of it, you hit your head pretty hard and your blood alcohol level was high when you were brought in." And that can't be right, Richie hasn't drank in years.

"Are you in any pain right now?” Dr. Hasaan questions.

It’s almost as if his question brings all of Richie’s sensory neurons back to life, and he's only just began to notice the aching pain in his head, throat, and chest.

Richie blinks twice.

“Alrighty.” The good doctor says, “We’ll give you something to help with that.” One of the nurses puts something in his IV. “Try to rest, Richard. We’ll have that tube out of your throat in no time, and you’ll feel much better once you can breathe properly on your own. Is there anything we can get for you right now? To make you more comfortable?”

Eddie, he thinks, bring him back in.

Richie tries to blink twice but his eyelids are so heavy, and then, in the blink of an eye, he's asleep again.

Richie wakes up with a start. His chest is tight and his throat is on fire and he can’t fucking breathe. He feels like he's drowning. Is he dying? Richie weakly struggles for a minute with the IV in his hand before a soft hand on his arm stops him.

“Richie, calm down.” Comes an angelic voice. He knows that voice. He loves that voice. “You’re panicking, it’s okay, baby.” The angel soothes.

Delicate hands hover around Richie’s face like they want to caress him, but are too afraid. God, what he wouldn’t give to have those hands on his face.

It takes him a second, but Richie is eventually able to come back to himself, focus his eyes on the man standing beside him, focus his ears on the steady beeping and mechanical breathing of the machines surrounding him.

He carefully reaches one trembling hand up to his mouth, onto the uncomfortable tube that was forced down his throat. Eddie gently slaps his hand away from his face.

“Don’t touch it, Richie. Relax, okay? Let me see if I can get your doctor in here.”

A couple of minutes pass before Eddie comes back into the room, smiling widely, while Dr. Hasaan follows a few paces behind him.

“Richard,” greets the doctor when he walks in, “Great news. We’re on pace to get you extubated today. I’m sure that thing must be bothering you, huh? The ventilator’s providing minimal support now, so most of that breathing is all you, kiddo."

Richie gives two shaky thumbs-ups, careful not to jostle the I.V. too much, lest he upset Eddie again.

It's got to be the most uncomfortable moment of Richie Tozier’s existence. The process doesn't take more than a minute or two, but there's a lot of choking, gagging, and saliva sucking—and not even in the fun way. Once the tube is out, though, Richie only feels relief. And a little sore.

“It’s all done, Richard, you did great.” The doctor praises, as he discards some tools onto the table beside him. “Hold still now, I’m going to insert an intranasal cannula, just to be safe...”

Richie lets the doctor do doctorly things while he lets his eyes roam around the room. They settle on Eddie, who’s been hovering anxiously on the other side of the bed. He's wearing a too big hoodie and a pair of skinny jeans. His hair is curly and unkempt, so unlike Eddie. His face looks relieved, but his eyes are so tired. So sweet staying here with me, Richie thinks.

“Alright. Why don’t you try and say a few words for me? It might be uncomfortable at first, but the more you work at it the easier it’ll get.” Dr. Hassan states reassuringly.

“Just like...the first time...I gave you... sloppy top...right, Eds?” Richie croaks, then he threw a wink in his boyfriend’s direction.

Eddie’s face twists in a strange combination of horrified amusement. He looks like he wants to laugh—or maybe cry—but instead he just purses his lips together and shakes his head. Richie grins back.

The doctor rolls his eyes and asks if Richie felt up to answering a few procedural questions.

"What's your full name?"

"Richard Tozier."

"What year is it?"

"2019."

"Who's the president of the United States?"

"I know...but don't make me say it."

“Excellent, Mr. Tozier," Dr. Hasaan chuckles, "you’re well on your way to health. Your lung and ribs should heal on their own in a couple of weeks, but there's no reason for us to hold you hostage here any longer. Your short term memory should come back to you gradually. You're set to be discharged no later than tomorrow afternoon. Because of the severity of your concussion, however, I'm going to ask that you have another adult at your home to monitor you for 48 hours."

"No problem, doc... I got my... Eddie Spaghetti to take care of me." Richie smiles as wide as he can without his lips cracking due to lack of hydration.

He doesn't notice the way Eddie's eyes shift guiltily to the floor.

Eddie might've been driving too cautiously.

"Eds...I know you're worried...but you might actually...be driving in reverse." Richie complains as another car speeds past them.

Eddie ignores him and grips the wheel tighter. I've hurt you enough already, I can't do that to you again Eddie thinks. What he says is, "Yeah, and if I speed up and hit a pothole and your stupid ribs slip and puncture your stupid lung again, then you'll be mad at me."

Richie laughs, but it's bitten off like it hurt him, and Eddie winces. "My Eds...always...so damn dramatic."

They spend the rest of the car ride in relative silence, save for the quiet humming of the radio, and Richie's occasional labored breathing.

"Oh, fuck." Richie voices miserably when they arrive at his complex.

"What?" Eddie asks, worried. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm okay, Eds." Richie reassures, "I just remembered...that I live on the third floor."

Oh, fuck.

"I'm not carrying you up three flights of stairs because your landlord is too cheap to get the elevator fixed." Eddie says, mostly serious.

"You couldn't...carry me up those stairs...to save both of our lives...Spaghetti head." Richie jokes, "Come on...little man...we've got some...climbing to do."

Eddie might not've had asthma when he was younger, but it sure as fuck felt like he did now.

Carrying their bags and about 30% of Richie's body weight feels like a workout, but he feels guilty almost instantaneously when he hears Richie struggling to catch his breath.

"I'm sorry, baby." Eddie says, forgetting himself for a moment. He rubs his hands up and down Richie's back soothingly. "You okay?"

"Fine, Eds. Let's keep...going."

They make their way down the hall to Richie's door, where Eddie reaches under the "did you call first?" welcome mat to retrieve the spare key Richie keeps hidden there.

"Where's yours at...Eds? Need me to...get a new one made?" Richie asks, gesturing to the spare key in his hand, and Eddie blanches.

"No? No, I just left mine at my place. I'm an idiot." He lies, and Richie just looks at him kind of odd.

"That you are...Spaghetti Head."

Once they're inside, Eddie helps Richie settle comfortably onto the couch, before going to Richie's bedroom to drop off his bag.

"Bring me...my heating pad, please, Eds?" Richie calls with some difficulty.

"Yeah, sure, Rich!" Eddie calls back, but when he steps into Richie's bedroom, his heart hits the floor.

Now, Richie isn't the tidiest person alive, so Eddie's used to picking up after him a bit; sometimes folding his laundry, but it's never been like this before. There are empty bottles of alcohol littering his floor, half-empty food containers left open, clothes thrown haphazardly over almost every surface. This, Eddie knows, is what depression looks like for Richie. This is what it looks like when he's given up.

"I did this." He gasps quietly to himself, looking around the room in horror. "I did this."

"Eds?" Comes Richie's worried voice from his position on the couch. "You get lost?"

"Just gimme a minute, Richie!" He snaps, way harsher than he intends. Then much softer, "I'm sorry, babe, please just give me a minute, okay?"

Richie doesn't say anything else, and Eddie pulls himself together long enough to go to the supply closet and retrieve Richie's heating pad.

He hands it to Richie wordlessly, and Richie mutters a quiet "thanks". He looks at Eddie like he's a puzzle to be solved, and Eddie can't take it.

"What do you remember from before?' He asks, avoiding Richie's questioning eyes.

"From when?"

"What's the last thing you remember, Rich? Not... not in the hospital, but before that. What's the last memory you have of--of us together?"

There's a pause, and Eddie can see the gears working in Richie's head.

"Oh, I don't...I can't...um...I don't? The movies?" Richie tries. "We went to see that scary movie you wanted to see. The one...with the clowns." He looks so proud of himself, and Eddie's heart just shatters.

Richie's used to his boyfriend being weird; and usually he loves it, but there's something about the way Eddie's been acting since they left the hospital that has his hackles raised.

"Am I...missing something, Eds?" Other than the obvious, he doesn't add, "What's the matter?"

Eddie still looks crestfallen when he answers. "That was over three weeks ago, Rich."

"Yeah?" He asks, and Eddie nods miserably. "Holy fuck. I mean...we knew that there were...holes in my memory. Doc said...things'll come back on their own." He tries to sound reassuring, but Eddie's still frowning hard.

"Yeah, I know but...that's not...it's just that, um, I don't really, um, and—"

"Woah, dude, are you...having a stroke?" Richie interrupts, and Eddie puts his head in his hands and sighs.

"God, shut the fuck up, Richie, this is really hard."

Richie bites his tongue. "What's hard, baby? What's got you...so upset? Eds...whatever it is...it's okay. Talk to me."

"It's us, I mean, you and me, we're um," a pause, "we'renottogetheranymore." He finishes quickly.

That's a silly thing to say, Richie thinks. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Eddie starts, "that you and I aren't together anymore. We're broken up."

The sharp pain in Richie's chest has nothing to do with his broken ribs.

"I broke up with you?" He asks dejectedly, "Eds, I'm—" but Eddie holds up a hand and cuts him off.

"No, Richie, I broke up with you."

And there it is. Richie feels it like a punch to the solar plexus. Thats why Eddie's been acting so strange, keeping something like this from him.

"I don't...why?" He demands, chest aching to keep up with the heavy pounding of his heart.

"It doesn't matter, I should've never done it, I'm sorry—"

"It fucking matters!" Richie explodes. With great difficulty, he stands up off of the couch—wincing in pain during the process—so that he's looming over Eddie. "It matters." He tries again.

Eddie just stares up at him from his spot on the sofa. He shakes his head 'no', like he's resolved on keeping his mouth shut, and the anger is drained from Richie as quickly as it came.

"Why are you...here, Eddie?" He asks, exhaustedly. Just Eddie this time. Not Eds, not baby, just Eddie.

"Because you're hurt, and I need to make sure you're okay, and I—"

"Let me...guess. You feel...guilty?" Richie laughs mirthlessly. "Get out."

"No, Rich, c'mon, I'm here to help you."

"Just, go, Eddie. I'm going to go...take a very careful shower...and by the time...I get out...I want you...out of here."

"Rich—"

"Out, Eddie."

He walks carefully to the bathroom without waiting for a response.

Eddie doesn't leave. Fuck that, he thinks. Instead, he takes on the harrowing task of cleaning Richie's bedroom which he's labeled "The Depression Den" in his head. He starts with the clothes: grabbing piles and piles from the floor and Richie's bed and discarding them into their respective hampers. Once he's done with that, he takes care of the disposable trash; putting everything into bags that'll need to be tossed sooner rather than later. Lastly, he works on the beer cans, and liquor pints that are scattered all around the room. God, Richie must've really been on a bender. Eddie swallows his guilt for the time being and gets to working on separating glass from aluminum to recycle.

The shower's still running by the time Richie's room looks presentable. Eddie carefully, quietly places his ear up to the door. He can hear Richie humming softly and takes that as a sign that he's okay in there.

He makes his way to the kitchen to rummage through Richie's cabinets, trying to find something to cook for them, but Richie's cupboards and refrigerator are bare and depressing looking.

Take out doesn't sound so bad, Eddie thinks.

He's just getting off the phone with the Thai place when Richie comes into the living room

"You're still here." Richie croaks. His skin is still pink from his shower, and he's wearing an oversized t-shirt and a pair of Spiderman boxers. He's still a head taller than Eddie, but he looks so small, so young.

"Yeah, Rich, I know you're upset, and I understand its a lot, and I'm s—"

"You're still here...you didn't leave." Richie's voice cracks. "You didn't leave me." He takes a hesitant step towards Eddie, expression vulnerable. And oh, fuck, if Richie starts crying its going to set Eddie off too.

"I promised you I wouldn't." At Richie's confused glance, he elaborates. "When I got the call that you were in the hospital, I was so scared. They wouldn't tell me anything and I-I thought the worst. I thought I'd lost you. But then I went to your room, and you were sleeping. You were cut up and bruised," He eyes the healing bruises across Richie's face, desperately wanting to reach out and touch him "but you were alive. And I thought to myself 'I walked away from the best thing in my life, because I was scared.' Truth is, I didn't know what scared was until I saw you lying there, so still...so pale, machines breathing for you. So that night, I promised myself and you that as long as you'll have me, I'll be here. I won't ever leave you again. As long as I'm welcome in your home, and...and in your life, I'll—"

"Stay."

"What?" Eddie asks, eyes wide.

"Please...even if it's just for tonight...just, stay."

So Eddie does.

Richie does a lot of healing over the next couple of weeks. None of it is easy, but that's to be expected. He gets short tempered, and emotional as his memory clears, which the doctor tells Eddie is a "completely normal response to being concussed," but Eddie thinks it's more than that. Richie slowly begins to ease himself back into daily activities like driving, and grocery shopping for himself, relying on Eddie less and less with each passing day.

Eddie tries not to let that worry him.

It's a fair question, and one that needed to be asked, but it still makes Eddie choke on his coffee when Richie asks "So, why did you break up with me?" one day when they're sitting on the couch, watching TV with the volume down low.

"Um, Richie, I-" Eddie starts, then stops.

"Yeah?" Richie raises his eyebrows expectantly, the tiniest hint of a smirk on his lips.

Eddie sighs. He owes Richie an explanation, he owes him the truth. "I was scared." Okay...so...baby steps.

"Of...?" Richie prompts, impatient now.

"You leaving me? I know it's so stupid, now, but at the time I thought you would get sick of me, and you didn't l—" he cuts himself off but its too late.

He doesn't miss the way Richie inhales sharply, and flinches like Eddie just slapped him.

"You thought I didn't love you?" Richie sounds so lost.

"No! I mean, yes, but no! I know that you loved me, remember? I told you that, and I knew it, it's just that, with my anxiety and everything, uh, it's like my head...was playing tricks on my heart and I had to leave, because if you left me I wouldn't be able to take it. And I know that's not an excuse, and I don't mean for it to be. I just, I never meant to hurt you, I swear. If I could take every word back, I would. I never- I'm so sorry."

"You're so fucking stupid." Is all Richie says, then louder, "God, you're so fucking stupid!"

That's fair, Eddie thinks.

Richie puts his hands on Eddie's shoulders, lowering his head until they're eye level. "I have never. Ever." He punctuates each word with a gentle shake to Eddie's shoulders, "Loved anyone the way that I love you. Not even close."

"Richie, I'm so-" Wait. "Love?"

"Yes!" Richie cries, exasperated. "Love, dummy. I love you! I never stopped loving you. Even when I was drowning myself in a bottle," It's Eddie's turn to feel like he just got slapped. "All I could think about was you. You, Eds. You're it for me, I think."

Eddie freezes, feels the tears well in his eyes before he can do anything about it. "You called me Eds." He cries, tearfully.

Richie grins in triumph. "I knew you fucking liked my nicknames!"

"God, I missed this." Richie moans in between kisses. He's got Eddie pinned down on his bed, breathless and panting beneath him.

"Richie, please." Eddie whimpers.

"Please what, baby?" He teases. "You want something from me, you ask for it."

Eddie squirms underneath him, dick already hard and leaking. "Please fuck me. Need it, need you." And Richie groans, grinding his hips down hard, eliciting a shaky moan from Eddie.

"Mmm, not yet, baby. Gonna take care of you. I'm gonna worship every inch of you."

Richie takes his time taking Eddie apart, finding all the spots that drive him crazy, and playing with them until Eddie's a writhing mess underneath him.

"Alright, Eds. Face down, ass up. C'mon chop, chop."

Eddie opens his mouth like he's about to retort—probably to tell Richie to stop ruining the mood or something—before he thinks better of it. He does as he's told, stripping down completely naked before laying face down on the mattress.

Richie hums in approval, kisses his way down Eddie's shoulders, along his spine, feels the tremors that are coursing through him.

"Please, Richie, I need more" Eddie whines, rocking his hips back.

"I know what you need, Eds. Let me give it to you, okay? Gonna make you come so hard. On my tongue and fingers, then on my dick, okay? You just gotta take it." He says it casually, like he's discussing the weather, and not taking Eddie apart piece by piece.

Eddie just whines again, and Richie smirks before he flattens his tongue, licking over Eddie in broad strokes before pressing his tongue inside. Eddie nearly shouts, hole fluttering around Richie's tongue.

There's nothing particularly romantic about the way Richie eats him out. It's wet, and sloppy, and Richie's got spit dripping down his chin as he licks into Eddie until Eddie's trembling at the intensity of it.

When Eddie's whines start getting high and needy, Richie takes pity on him, adding a finger in alongside his tongue, and Eddie groans appreciatively, fucking himself back onto Richie until he adds another.

When Richie crooks his fingers purposefully, searching out Eddie’s prostate, Eddie whimpers pitifully and tries to shift away. “Richie, please…” he begs, but Richie just pulls his mouth away and shushes him, keeping his fingers deep inside.

Richie knows Eddie simultaneously loves and hates getting his prostate fucked. Hates how vulnerable it makes him feel, how it leaves him shaking and non-verbal, even after he's come. Loves it for the exact same reasons.

“Relax, baby,” Richie soothes, placing a comforting hand on Eddie’s hip. "I got you."

Eddie forces himself to relax, and soon enough, he’s whining and sobbing, fingers twisting the sheets, begging Richie for more.

"Good boy." Richie praises. He’s careful when he does this, not exactly gentle, but he doesn’t want to go too fast or hard and overwhelm Eddie, so he keeps his strokes long and purposeful, fingers brushing expertly over Eddie’s prostate. Eddie's hips keep shifting, like he’s not sure if he wants to get away from the sensation or get more of it, so Richie tightens his hand on Eddie's hip, effectively stilling him.

He keeps up his methodical torture for minutes, or hours, or days, before Eddie's granted any reprieve. Even if it weren’t for the almost hysterical whines Eddie’s emitting, the way that he’s clenching around Richie’s fingers, shaking like a leaf, would be enough to alert Richie that he’s close. He keeps Eddie hanging there on the verge of orgasm for a long time, drawing it out of him slowly, so slowly, with precise fingers pressing rhythmically against Eddie’s prostate. “Touch yourself, baby, you’re doing so good, make yourself come.” Richie urges, using his free hand to massage Eddie’s perineum when Eddie brings a shaking hand to his own leaking dick. It’s over pretty quickly after that.

Eddie’s uncharacteristically quiet when he comes, and Richie would be worried if not for the way Eddie’s muscles had locked up so tight before he started trembling something fierce.

Eddie had stayed like that for a few long moments, could do nothing but shake and gasp as his orgasm worked through him in a way that looked almost painful.

When it's over, Eddie drops like a stone onto the mattress, still trembling. Richie's quick to gather him in his arms, rearranging them as best he could so that Richie was against the headboard and Eddie’s head was resting on his chest. That's when he notices the tears tracks running down Eddie's cheeks as the man in question struggles to catch his breath. He runs soothing fingers through Eddie’s hair, waits for him to come back to himself.

"Oh my God," Eddie whispers, moments later, once his soul is back in his body.

"Okay, baby?" Richie asks, genuinely concerned, as he wipes at the tears staining his boyfriend's face.

"More than," Eddie gasps, "It's just a lot."

"Hmmm." Richie hums in agreement. He gives Eddie a couple more minutes to recover before he rearranges them again. This time, with Eddie on his back, legs spread wide around Richie's hips. "I'm not done with you yet."

Eddie looks up at him, eyes wide, and Richie grins. "Told you I was gonna make you come on my dick tonight. You want that, baby?"

Eddie nods enthusiastically, then gasps in shock when he feels Richie's open palm connect with his cheek.

"Use your words, Eddie. You want my dick, then beg me for it."

"Please, Richie, oh my God, please I want your dick, please give it to me, I need it." Eddie's shameless now, past the point of caring what comes out of his mouth.

"That's good, baby. I'll give it to you." Richie says, reaching into his nightstand for the box of condoms they never use anymore.

"Rich...what? Why?" Eddie asks, dubiously eyeing the box in his hand.

"Eds..I..if there was any-" But Eddie cuts him off, head clearer than it's been since they started.

"There was no one else, Rich, I swear, I didn't. You're it for me, too."

"Yeah?" Richie asks, tossing the box somewhere in the corner of his room, smiling down at Eddie.

"Yeah, stupid." Eddie promises, and Richie just has to kiss the grin off his lips.

Richie takes his time pushing in, making sure Eddie feels every inch of him until he bottoms out, hips flush against Eddie.

"Gonna make sure you feel how deep my love goes, baby. Never gonna have to worry again." Richie promises.

"Oh, my God." Eddie whimpers, eyes rolling back as Richie starts to fuck into him slowly.

It's so good, too good, and it's not long before Eddie's hard again. Richie takes notice and doubles his efforts, going from thrusting into Eddie to grinding their hips together, dick a constant pressure against Eddie's prostate. It's too much, too fast, and Eddie damn nears screams.

"Feel good, baby?"

Eddie doesn't respond. Just keeps making these little "ah, ah, ah" sounds like he's about to sneeze. "Oh, fuck, Richie, how are you doing this to me?"

He's crying for real now, taking big, sobbing breaths as his hands frantically grip the pillows, the bedsheets, the headboard, his own hair, anything he can to ground himself against the pleasure that's threatening to overwhelm him completely.

"Don't do that, baby, you'll rip your hair out." Richie chides, dropping to his elbows so that he can detangle Eddie's hands from his hair, and twine their fingers together.

He never once breaks stride, going back to fucking into Eddie deep and slow, each thrust bringing Eddie closer and closer to that point of no return.

And surely Eddie's going to explode. Surely, the human body isn't meant to withstand this kind of pleasure.

"You're so fucking good, Eds." Richie's pace is starting to get falter, tell-tale sign that he's close. "Gonna come for me again?"

Eddie nods senselessly, beyond words. He's pretty sure he's drooling.

"Then do it, Eds. C'mon." And Eddie's right there, so close to the edge, back arching completely off the bed as Richie takes him higher and higher and—

"That's it, baby, you're right there, God, I love you so much, Eddie."

"Say it again." Eddie gasps, fresh tears spilling over.

"I love you." Richie repeats.

"Again."

"I love you."

"Again, again, again!" Eddie shouts as he starts to come, untouched, across his and Richie's bellies.

"I love you, I love you so much, baby." Richie groans, and tumbles over the edge right alongside of him.

Eddie's nervous as Richie drives them to the restaurant; some overpriced Italian place that Mike wants them to meet at. It's not like he and Richie were avoiding the Losers; they still talked on the phone a couple of times a week, but in the light of recent events they had, admittedly, been spending a lot more time with each other. It's been the best and happiest weeks of Eddie's life, and that makes his decision ten times easier.

Months ago, Bill told Eddie to take some time to think about what he wanted.

He picked out a ring that very same day.

What he wants is Richie, always and forever. He's known that for most of his life.

He just hopes that Richie feels the same way.

The ring is heavy in Richie's back pocket as he and Eddie walk into the restaurant that Mike picked out. The rest of the Losers are already there, talking animatedly amongst each other. The conversation stops when they get to the table.

"Well I'll be damned." Mike says, like he didn't expect them to actually show up, he's grinning though, and Richie smiles back.

"Richie Tozier, back from the dead!" Bev exclaims, jumping out of her seat to hug him. He squeezes her tight, lifting her off her feet as he twirls her around. She laughs brightly, and it hits Richie like a brick to the face how much he loves this group of people. How, since they were kids, their little group of outcasts has been his one constant. Something he could always run to.

Bill and Stan smile at him knowingly, and he winks back.

Richie's always had a hard time holding on to the good things in his life, but as he looks around the table at all of his friends, at the man he hopes says yes tonight, Richie finds himself smiling at the realization that he's there's no way he could ever let this go.

#m writes #god I hope this read more link works for mobile users #back at again gays #writing tag #fic: reddie

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unpopularly-opinionated · 3 years ago

Link

I don’t play WoW but I used to play Overwatch and Diablo and this touches on just the general issues that are inside of Activision Blizzard right now regarding the major decline of World of Warcraft and how they’re losing to Final Fantasy XIV, how if the latest WoW expansion or Overwatch 2 flop as they’re projected to do then Blizzard’s most definitely going to pivot almost entirely to mobile games, and how the differences in age demographics are actually dividing the company into multiple camps.

It’s important to note two things: 1) this could be fake but also 2) the link came from Grummz, a former team lead on WoW and producer on Diablo II and Starcraft. It still could be fake despite this, but if he’s sharing it then I feel like there’s at least some measure of truth in this.

Transcription below in case this gets deleted and/or you don’t wanna click the link. Warning, it’s fairly long.

“I’m dropping this here after getting chewed out for three hours over shit the chewee did at work so fuck it. Assume larp and let me vent.”

>Shadowlands is a shitshow. Critical response, Player drop off and just about every engagement metric outside of cash shop have been catastrophic. No higher up expected this because of their “we are too big to fail, if we built it they will come” mentality. They refuse to accept their focus on the world being a begrudged mechanic to funnel players to raiding is not appealing to the player base at large because it appeals to them. They have spent the last 4 months trying to course correct but there is no solid direction and the response to 9.1 has only made things worse.

>Sylvanas is planned to replace the Arbiter despite so many people in the company and god knows how many online saying this would be a total replication of Kerrigans storyline in Starcraft 2 that killed none competitive interest in the brand entirely and you can only go “no, no they WILL like it eventually” for so many real world years before its time to change course. Thus far that has not happened.

>The elephant in the room is FFXIV. To the people in charge they are acting like this came out of nowhere and don’t even seem to understand why its drawing players away in their tens of thousands. We have all tried to highlight things it is doing that are clearly appealing to an mmo audience and not, in my opinion, focussing more on mobile game style retention traps to keep MAU users and habit forming personalities logging in. Its not that they don’t care. They just seem so pig headed and digging their heels in with their fingers in their ears thinking all the problems will go away because WoW is “too big to fail”, there will never be real competition and “they will keep coming back”. But they aren’t coming back anymore. Not in the numbers they used to.

>The people making the spending choices know this. The new model for WoW is market the hell out of a expansion pack for a huge quarter then use 6 month lock ins to pad numbers for the quarters after that. Even if corona had not happened 9.1 still would have been dropping after the initial 6 month subs expired to “keep the chain holding”.

>The mood in the company is tense but also very much “its just a rough transition period”. Activision has been pushing hard for Blizzard to release more regular product and to generate more income per user. As far as i know this is going to be a transition over the next 5 years to a much larger mobile/tablet gaming focus. By all accounts not just WoW but Overwatch was intended to be the moneymaker in the interim but once again someone had the bright idea to kill a game casual players loved on the alter of e-sports hoping for another Brood War. From what i hear the “told you so’s” were loud and a lot of people walked beyond Kaplan.

>The sentiment that was shared quietly in private but being spoken more often is simply that the leadership at Blizzard are not bad people, nor incompetent people but people who had to fill seats left when the old guard jumped ship wether they were suited for it or not. Brack is a genuinely good man out of his depth, Ion is a fantastic raid designer put in charge of designing a virtual world he has no interest or real ideas for and so on. They have been taking form the roles they excel at to be put in positions where they get to do far less of that purely because there is nobody left with the experience to do so and the trickle down is a lack of concrete direction, ambition and focus.

>2021 has seen the playerbase, media and gaming at large “turn” on WoW to a degree i don’t think the leads in their “positivity dojo” bubble considered possible. Its gone from people going “This is how Blizz needs to fix WoW!” to “WoW is no longer salvageable, time for greener pastures” and i think on some level this was never considered as a possibility so there have never been any major plans beyond the usual “try and minimise player drop off by arranging releases around competitors launching updates/products”. The official forums being filled with talk of FFXIV and worse “why do we actually pay a sub?” hasn’t helped.

>There have been some testing the waters lately from certain higher ups if we can remove the line “No King Rules Forever”. Read into that what you will.

>There are still arguments going on about the Kael’thas Voice actor shitshow. I don’t know much about it but i know its heated, wouldn’t be the first time a knee jerk reaction only seemed to generate bad press. We lost a noticeable amount of pvp engagement after the Swifty thing.

>The Preach interview was treated as a disaster and there was talk of more strongly vetting interviewers for “bad actors” and only engaging with a list of questions Blizzard provides. Some pointed out that could just be used to create some form of Fireside Chat akin to the FFXIV “Live letters” but that fell on deaf ears.

>The two sentiments right now among the team are either “we really need a win” or “theres a dedicated cabal of internet trolls out to kill WoW”. Right now we are crunching hard to get 9.2 ready to wrap up the jailors storyline so we can get an expansion out early 2022. If that doesn’t happen there are talks of major shakeups coming down from Activision that have been threatened for a few years now. Its an all hands on deck feeling thats been around to some degree since the “Is this an out of season April Fools Joke” Blizzcon. A make or break deadline is coming closer and things like Diablo 4 were not planned before then. Blizzard needs a significant win not just in initial profit but consumer goodwill. Nobody likes working at what the public now seems to see as “the bad guy” of the mmo industry.

>This has also made new hires decline. Not significantly but the “you WANT Blizzard on your resume” line doesn’t seem to have the appeal it used to. This has lead to more hiring via friend of a friend, to some rumblings about nepotism, and people severely lacking in experience “because they get great twitter optics”.

>On the topic of Twitter we are not being told to “disengage” from it. Multiple employees like Nervig and Holisky publicly attacking paying customers because they got too heated and couldn’t keep quiet is bad press that could have been avoided. A email reminder has gone around more than once lately stating “if you are not customer relations you should not be representing the company to customers, especially if you cannot remain professional”.

>Lastly the biggest elephant in the room is “yo’ boy” Asmongold. The newer hires cannot stand him. They have used terms like “toxic masculinity” and “dogwhistles to dangerous males” while some of the oldest crowd still remaining have called him “based” or “telling it like it is” which has lead to friction to put it mildly. People are told not to talk about him and the recent FFXIV stuff only made it all worse. The idea that an outside element can have such an effect on the product genuinely upsets people. Like Zach is engaging in some malicious act of cyberwarfare. Many of us have point out the now famous quotes by Naoki Yoshida about understanding that players will drift and we need to make something worth coming back to because they want to but some people for lack of a better word see out customers -or “consumers” as they refer to them nowadays- as some kind of antagonistic relationship where the goal is not being an entertainer putting on a show for a crowd but some kind of game hunter trying to trap a large, profitable kill. I wish i could blame Activision but this is a sentiment from more of the younger crowd than the “tech boomers”. Which personal opinion is probably why so many folks like Metzen and Morheim left.

>Before you ask, yes the topic of “wokeness” has shown up in group talks. Its not all some grand sjw conspiracy, people really do want to feel welcome and represented. However the “we need everything veto’ed by people not working on it to see if its inoffensive and bland enough” rubs some of us the wrong way. Like anything in life you can take something too far and lose sight of the core ideals and with everything gone on since Blitzchung it feels like people are forming little factions to pull people in different directions to decide “What Blizzards identity is now” and how to appeal to new players. There has been some drop offs with “go woke go broke” as the only answer in the survey when unsubbing but honestly we are losing subs in unforseen numbers anyway and still making more money than ever through cash shop “heavy users” so it honestly doesn’t make an impact.

>All in all things are rough right now. Blizzard doesn’t have the love of the customers anymore, is no longer treated as an industry giant and while D4,D2R and Immortal aren’t going to kill Diablo even if they fail the sentiment for World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 are a lot more tense and stressful. The phrase “it might be good to brush up on your mobile development portfolio if we get another underperformer” has been doing the rounds a lot. If Shadowlands continues its stark decline and Overwatch 2 is looking to underperform like its current projections suggest i think the Blizzard of a few years from now will be imitating King a lot more than trying to learn any lessons from Square Enix’s mmo division.

#random #video games #Blizzard #Activision #WoW #World of Warcraft #Diablo #Overwatch #Starcraft #Activision Blizzard

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crippleprophet · 4 years ago

Note

Sorry to bother you but I had a few questions I was hoping to get help with. I just started using a cane but I’m only 16 and I feel really embarrassed about it. Does it ever get easier/less embarrassing? Also is there any way to ease pain on my hand while I’m using the cane? (I already have a gel grip) I have pain in both legs but it’s worse on my right, so I lead with my left, but that’s just making my left leg hurt more. I can’t lead with my right though, it can barely take any weight. Will my leg get used to it eventually or is there something else I could do to help? Sorry this ask is so long, I didn’t really know where else to ask these questions. Thank you so much!

you’re not bothering me at all, & no need to apologize! 🖤 i’m glad you were able to get a cane and i hope it’s been helpful! i’m sorry about those problems though, i relate to that with my experience starting to use one. i didn’t get a cane until my first semester of college but i used axillary crutches on and off for about 2 years in high school and people were really shitty about that so i can only imagine :\ i’m happy to give my input on each of your questions, but obligatory heads up that i’m certainly not an expert - i’m coming from 3 1/2 years as a cane user (in addition to other mobility aids), undergraduate coursework & research on mobility, and half a semester of graduate-level biomechanics.

1) embarrassment: god, i feel this, and i’m so sorry you’re going through that. the short answer is yes, it absolutely gets easier, or at least it did for me, and several factors affected that - the people in your day to day life get over the novelty of it after a while, so for me now the staring is only particularly bad in august-september when a freshman class who hasn’t yet seen me in all my crippled glory comes to campus, and i also learned to cope with it better. one thing that’s really helpful for me has been reading theory or personal essays about similar experiences; there’s all sorts of research on stigma and the politics of staring, and the title of one article called “one lady was so busy staring at me she walked into a wall” made me cry because it was such a relief to not be the only one.

it’s okay to mourn the ability to go out in public without being forcibly made a spectacle, but remember that it’s their fault, not yours. you didn’t do anything wrong. you’re doing something very good; you are taking care of your body in the best way you know how. it’s so frustrating that we’re the ones made to feel ashamed, when ableists are the ones doing such shameful behaviors. i think really often of the “no shame even in shame” post (link) by tai, the founder of cripple punk, and i have stickers on my crutches that say that phrase; it’s been really helpful for me to accept my emotions as they are and allow myself to go through the full spectrum of reactions to an honestly really traumatizing treatment by society & forced separation from my own body.

for me, i still get angry when people are rude to me because i’m a mobility aid user, and i doubt that’ll ever go away and don’t necessarily want it to, but i’m at a point now where i just could not give a shit about their opinion of me, and i’m no longer embarrassed about my body and its needs. this is how i work, take it or leave it. and it’s honestly such a joy and comfort to be fairly firm in that belief, and i hope you reach a place that brings you similar comfort & reassurance 🖤

a couple of sentiments that sustain me in bad days are this sweatshirt (link) by @possum-butch and this art piece (link) by @solstice-snakes. just in general remembering that other people experience this and are hurt by it and rage against it, that i’m not alone. a researcher studying stigma wrote about “the relief of self-isolation” for marginalized people, that exhale when you’re alone and no longer have to experience any hostility, and that resonates so deeply with me. you aren’t overreacting; it’s so understandable that you would feel embarrassed about something people around you, the media, and society at large are trying to tell you is embarrassing. and it’s okay to decide not to interact with people (to the extent of your ability) on the basis of how they make you feel about your body. what you’re experiencing is incredibly difficult, and it’s okay to feel strongly about the injustice of that, and this doesn’t fix it, but i genuinely do think it will get better with time.

2) hand pain: to a certain extent mine got better after about 2-3 weeks using it, it felt a bit worse/sharper than like usual sore muscles and then it calmed down once my body got used to it i guess, and now it only happens after extended periods of time. if yours is worse than that or has been around for longer, though, i’d try to make some changes. also, if you experience any significant or lingering wrist pain, talk to a doctor if possible or try to look it up as best you can because using mobility aids that put weight into your wrist can potentially cause carpal tunnel or other issues (which thankfully isn’t a problem i’ve encountered)

you could try a foam handle grip, it has thicker cushion but not as much give which is why i like the gel grip better, and the texture gets gross and slippery when wet so if you’re in a rainy area that might not be a good call. a different cane tip might help because some of them are designed for better shock absorption, ergonomics, and what not, but i don’t have any specific recommendations - folks reading this, feel free to reply with recs or any other suggestions!

3) leg pain on better side: i had a similar leg pain problem where my ‘good leg’ got worse because i was leading with it. i ended up switching to using forearm crutches (specifically Smart Crutches) after about 9 months because of that and my chronic pain getting worse overall, and that was a good call for me, so that could be an option. even though almost every crutch users still walks leading with one leg, they’re more effective at bilateral pain relief and stability.

it’s okay if it’s intimidating to think about changing mobility aids that soon after starting to use one, though, and losing the option of one free hand makes a big difference, so that might not be the right call for you as an individual; it depends. getting a brace (or a better one, if you already use one) for your left leg could help support it - that’d be a whole post unto itself, but if you or anyone else reading this need a comparison of over-the-counter knee braces, i’ve tried so many kinds and am literally doing a class project on that right now lol. shoes with thicker soles and better shock absorption can also help.

the way people with lower limb pain on one side or that’s worse on one side walk is called antalgic gait - we put more weight on the leg that’s less painful and have a shorter stance phase on that side (the part of walking where all your weight is on that leg as the other leg swings forward). when i started using a cane, this pattern of my gait actually reversed; i started putting more weight on my more painful leg and taking longer steps with that side because the cane was supporting it, and had a shorter stance phase on my less painful side.

it’s possible, to a certain extent, to make those kinds of changes intentionally, but that’s the kind of decision that should be very informed and really carefully weighed. every part of your body affects every other part, so the way you move your legs affects the angle of your hips which in turn affects your spine, and the unfortunate nature of the beast is that adapting to one form of chronic pain can easily cause another. that being said, i haven’t had that problem or specifically learned about negative effects from that particular gait pattern, but if you search “effects of antalgic gait” it’s hard to find anything that isn’t treating a limp as a problem in and of itself because of being visibly disabled, so finding useful information is not ideal.

at least from my personal experience, i would recommend that you not assume the left leg pain from leading is going to get better on its own unless it’s been less than 3-4 weeks or so (although you aren’t obligated to wait that long to try to do something about it; being in worse pain sucks). if you’re using a cane regularly, there will definitely be some soreness and stuff at first, but your body will likely adapt relatively quickly and those will go away, so if you’re past that stage, i’d recommend looking into solutions so you hopefully don’t have to deal with that long(er)-term.

i hope that helps! i started experiencing chronic leg pain when i was 16 so this ask resonated with me really personally, i’m totally open to talking more about this if there are any more asks you want to send or questions you have (& that goes for folks reading this, too!) i really believe that when the system fails us we’ve gotta depend on each other, and the medical system has really failed us, so if possible i want to help out however i can 🖤

#chronic pain #cane user #mobility aids #cripple punk #asks #biomechanics #gait #mobility #shame #tt #c slur reclaimed #long post #faq

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scripttorture · 4 years ago

Note

I’m not sure if you’ll be comfortable answering those, but with recent police brutality in the U.S, I want to write about police torture of protestors and protestors’ feelings. I have a wheelchair user Latina girl and a blind Black trans man. They will be arrested together after the trans man tries to talk down a cop (inspired by a real video) and I wanted them both to be tear gassed. I have experience with police brutality, but was not arrested.

Part 2- How do they arrest blind people and wheelchair users? I understand mobility aids are usually taken away. Does this apply to canes for blind people? Also, I was going to have them in holding for 1 day with no treatment for their eyes after being tear gassed. Is this realistic or do you think police should pour water on them? I was going to involve the arrested characters all going on hunger strike, which might cause the police to transport them to booking faster. Does this sound okay?

‘Comfortable’ feels like the wrong word for all of this subject to be honest. I don’t think I could do this if I was comfortable, I am incandescent with rage. I am furious that the world we live in is still infested with this pointless, preventable brutality. Yes I am essentially a ball of rage and ferrets.

And a portion of that is about the fact it only really makes the news when it affects wealthy countries. Seeing the response in Kenya and Nigeria to these movements/events in the West has been… interesting.

Let’s start off with some definitions here because I think that will help as we discuss the story idea.

Realism in the context of these discussions doesn’t necessarily mean ‘this would happen to 100% of people in this situation.’ If we’re talking about torture techniques used and treatment of particular groups in society then it’s less a case of ‘does this happen or not’ and more a case of ‘how often does this happen?’ ‘how likely is this?’

Most modern torture is ‘clean’, which means that it doesn’t leave obvious external marks. But you do still get incidents (including in rich Western countries) where scarring torture occurs. They just a lot rarer.

And, continuing this example, if a writer came to me asking about writing a scarring torture in a modern setting I’d warn them about the implications that can go with that. I’d talk about how survivors of clean tortures are dismissed and belittled. I’d talk about how the harm clean tortures do is downplayed. And I’d say that while there’s nothing wrong with wanting to use a scarring torture in a story, when we do it’s important to be aware of the context: that scarring tortures are rare and that they’re not ‘worse’.

Everything you’ve described for your story is possible and it’s the sort of thing that’s more common in the country and time period you’ve chosen for your story.

I’ve found it difficult to get hold of larger studies focused on the US. A lot of the statistical analysis I’m seeing focuses on mental illness or doesn’t draw a distinction between mental illness and physical disability. That can be pretty common when you’re looking up stuff about disability. It can be a helpful approach in some respects, showing how the disabled population broadly is discriminated against. But it also masks things that affect particular sub sections of the disabled population by lumping everyone in together.

The Prison Policy Initiative has a page here you might find helpful, but most of these articles focus on mental illness and low IQ. Solitary Watch has a frankly horrifying list of cases in a prison where the disabled were routinely denied treatment and left in neglectful conditions that amount to torture. (The list includes a blind man denied a cane for 16 years.)

Based on individual cases I’ve read I’d say that what you have planned is realistic, in the sense that it is possible. Similar things have occurred in America.

In the absence of clear statistics on the number of disabled people in custody in the US, let alone how they’re treated, I’m finding it difficult to say how common this would be.

Part of the problem is a lack of consistent standards or definitions across the country. This is from a Reuters investigative piece on deaths and abuse in US jails: ‘Seventeen states have no rules or oversight mechanisms for local jails, according to Reuters research and a pending study by Michele Deitch, a corrections specialist at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. In five other low-population states, all detention facilities are run by state corrections agencies. The other 28 have some form of standards, such as assessing inmates’ health on arrival or checking on suicidal inmates at prescribed intervals. Yet those standards often are minimal, and in at least six of the states, the agencies that write them lack enforcement power or the authority to refer substandard jails for investigation.’ (Emphasis mine, full article series can be found here. It contains video footage of torture (beating), some graphic descriptions of racist abuse and miscarriage.)

What this means for you is that there’s massive variation between jails in the US. The variation affects everything from the structure of the jail itself, to staffing levels, to workplace culture, to oversight, to provision of medical care. Basically some jails are a lot more abusive and dangerous then others.

It’s also difficult to identify problem facilities because, as the Reuters article points out, a lot of the relevant statistics aren’t released to the public. Reuters came up with their statistics by examining jail records and reporting of deaths or abuse in local newspapers over a period of several years.

In some of the accounts from US prisoners I’ve read people were allowed to keep wheelchairs. In others they were taken away.

The cases where wheelchairs were taken were generally reported as part of a wider pattern of torturous neglect. I do not have enough evidence or cases here to say that that’s always the case: I don’t think this proves that prisons or jails which take mobility aids always neglect disabled prisoners. Because I don’t know whether taking a mobility aid, in and of itself, would be reported if it wasn’t happening alongside prisoners being left lying in their cells for days, unable to eat or clean themselves.

I’ve tried my best to read about disability generally over the years. Because I live in the UK most of what I know about disability is based here. I know about attitudes in Saudi, where I grew up and a little about Cyprus where my family is from.

Based on what I know about disability generally I’d say that when mobility aids and canes are taken away neglect and abuse are more likely. And I think that would include being left in a cell, having been tear gassed, with no water.

In terms of physically arresting people with disabilities, well there are problems with abuse of disabled people the world over. I’ve heard stories from a lot of different countries about people being ripped out of wheelchairs, being tackled, being dragged. Unfortunately a lot of people are taught to doubt disability and to treat obviously disabled people with contempt.

But you should remember that I read about the worst case scenarios. My knowledge is focused on abuse and ideas about what encourages or discourages it. Which can skew the perception of how common these things are. (I really wish I could find some decent statistical data here, the absence is maddening.)

I think part of the way to approach this is to break it down and figure out how many groups these characters are being passed between. I don’t actually know how the booking in process in the US works. (I’m sorry but the nature of the blog is that I’ve got a lot of broad knowledge, I’m not an expert on every police system in the world.)

The standard of treatment could easily vary between the people making the arrest and the people actually holding the prisoners.

And all of this means that I think you’ve got a lot of leeway here. There’s a big range of things that are possible here. So there’s scope to choose how bad it’s going to be.

You’re already doing that to some extent with the way you’ve planned this out and thought it through. That’s good, it’s important to work within your limits and focus on the elements you’re interested in.

There will be real cases similar to your story that went a lot worse and there’ll be cases where things went a lot better. No one story can capture everything and that’s OK.

I think these characters will probably be acutely aware that things could go very badly for them. They’ll probably have heard stories about people of their race, disability and gender being abused or even murdered by police. Use that in the story. Try to bring some of that fear and rage and defiance into the story.

I’m not sure what kind of cultural weight hunger strike carries in the US. I can link you to my masterpost on starvation which outlines the physical and psychological effects of hunger.

I also want to leave you my masterpost on solitary confinement, because I’m aware that US jails and prisons often put vulnerable prisoners straight into solitary.

It’s really clear just from your question that you’ve already put a lot of thought into this and done a fair bit of reading. Keep going.

You’re probably going to need sensitivity readers. It’s also probably going to take a lot of time, editing and re-reading to get this story as good as you want it to be.

And it’s going to be hard. Researching this stuff is incredibly exhausting. For the love of gods take breaks. I’ve got a guide to researching difficult topics here. It can be hard to follow the advice there, hell I struggle to sometimes, but you can’t let this stuff poison you.

I hope that helps :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#writing advice #tw torture #tw racism #tw police brutality #tw transphobia #tw ableism #disability #clean torture #tear gas #pepper #America #American National Style #jails #abuse of prisoners #prison systems #blind characters #paralysis

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ask-jumblr · 4 years ago

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Proposed blog changes: move to Reddit

While I enjoy personally blogging on tumblr, it has many disadvantages for this blog’s format... For some time, I’d been thinking about moving this blog to another platform and I keep coming back to Reddit.

What does this mean?

I’m going to wait 7-10 days for people to comment on the idea of a Reddit move before doing absolutely anything.

If you have used Reddit as a regular user and/or as a community moderator: Do you think it would be a good fit? Do you have any tips?

If you don’t have a Reddit account or would want to make a separate one: Would you be willing to make a new account to engage with this community?

If we proceed, think on: What are some ground rules we might want to set for users? for moderators? What might be a good name? Would you be interested in being a moderator?

The ask box is staying open, and I will still be queueing asks. However, it may take me a while to catch up, I will not be reblogging asks, and I won’t be trying to keep a super consistent queue. The ask box will remain open unless and until there is a clear transition plan.

I intend to keep my personal tumblr. I like it here--I just don’t think here is the right home for this blog.

Why Move to Reddit?

1. Better community tools around banning

It’s hard for me to stop someone from using this blog to spam and harass others. (1) On Tumblr, my only tool is blocking. In Reddit, there are some more nuanced tools. (2) On Tumblr, it can be tricky to message people to discuss their behavior, and any resulting warnings or consequences. On Reddit, there are some built-in tools for making sure admins and moderators can reach out in these cases.

2. Better community tools for informing new users

On Tumblr, there isn’t a great way for me to introduce new users to how this blog works. On Tumblr, I can’t pin a post, I am limited to a fairly tiny description on the homepage, and people on mobile can’t always find the pages for rules, guidelines, explanations, archives. etc. On Reddit, there are better ways to inform new users of how the community works, including community descriptions and pinned posts.

3. Better mobile interface

I am yet to hear any concerns about Reddit mobile limiting features. If I’m wrong about this, please let me know.

4. Easier collaboration for moderators

Reddit is built for multiple moderators and approving posts/comments in ways that Tumblr just isn’t. There are whole systems for approving outside posts, for moderators to chat as a group, and for reminding people of rules.

I am not expanding the moderating team on Tumblr, but with a move to Reddit I would try to bring in some new moderators. This would have some added bonuses:

Content can come out faster!

More perspectives and fewer insulting goofs when handling Jewish people who aren’t me! I so often don’t know about different Jewish groups, perspectives, and overlapping identities. With a bigger team, more perspectives and identities could be represented.

No weird conflict from me of Should I answer a question on a post I’m also moderating?

5. Less Repeating Ourselves

We get a lot of repeat and semi-repeat questions, but archiving and search are pretty awful on here. I never know whether people have seen those similar asks and still want answers to their own question, or whether those asks were enough.

Often, on mobile, people can’t view the archive I’ve been building. I’m under the impression that a subreddit’s pages are still viewable on Reddit mobile.

Tumblr’s search is also terrible--I regularly can’t find a post on here that I know exists. I’ve played around some with Reddit's search and have found that it actually works.

6. Better Conversations on questions

When reading this blog, people rely a lot on the notes. In Reddit, the platform is the notes. While up/downvoting have some downsides, I believe that we can find ways to work those out.

7. Retain anonymity from ‘outside’ identity

I know that many users appreciate their account being separate from their life ‘outside’ this corner of the internet. For some users, this is an important safety concern. For better or worse, Reddit is known for being separate from ‘real life’ and its connected internet activity like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linked-In. While brings me to my next point...

8. More functional balance of anonymity and privacy

I very, very often, wished I could just message an anon to clarify. For understandable reasons, that just isn’t possible. However, taking the anon feature away would make it much, much harder for people with sensitive questions to send them in:

On Tumblr, people can’t send in an ask from a ‘sideblog’ created just for that purpose. If I turned off the anon feature, people would have two choices for relative anonymity from their main blog (A) message me with a sideblog using the tiny chat and hope I post it or (B) make a whole separate account with another email address.

In Reddit, option A (message a mod) is a little easier. The chat function simply works better.

And Reddit provides a much improved parallel to option B (new, separate account). Reddit allows one person to make multiple, independent accounts under the same email. In other words, you don’t need another email address to make an independent account to send in a question.

9. Not any worse?

While Reddit is notorious for being unchecked, Tumblr is also a cesspool of Nazis...

Some Final Notes:

There are already some corners of Reddit with features similar to this blog, but they aren’t an entirely question-based environment like this blog. This blog was in part made (spoiler alert?) to be a non-terrible version of “God Save Us From Your Opinion” on Facebook. Reddit would be a much better platform than Facebook or Tumblr for that purpose.

This blog was also created* to provide an outlet for the many asks that I and other Jewish blogs get on tumblr. Moving platforms would...not be ideal for diverting those asks...thoughts?

* mild clarification edit

#ask-jumblr

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livebloggingmydescentintomadness · 4 years ago

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I only use tumblr on mobile, which is its own bag of issues, but was wondering what all happened with the latest desktop update since I haven’t seen it?

well its really ugly for one thing, even if i do appreciate having a dark mode.

i’m not tech savvy enough to actually understand the why of how awful it is, but for me the primary issues are, firstly, that it’s so fucking slow. two or three times slower than it was before. it takes forever to load pages, to open blogs, to even open a new post. and when i do try to open a new post i more often than not get this error message:

while i wait for the page to load, posts either look like this:

or straight up like this:

they also don’t STAY loaded on the same page, and because of this i had to shut off my queue because the page was totally unusable. i like to organize my queue before it posts and i cannot do that at all without it taking hours.

the next big issue is that about half of xkit doesn’t work with this, and xkit is the only thing that makes this site bearable at all. i still have one-click reblogs, thank god, don’t know what i’d do with that, but lots of other functions are completely gone. i know the team is working on it, but they’re volunteers and they shouldn’t have to put up with this crap for no reason.

when scrolling, i like to keep my hand on the keyboard and use either the space bar to go down, or use the j/k shortcuts to jump post to post, but this now barely works, if it works at all. the space bar doesn’t always make the page move, and the j/k keys just sort of highlight the post, giving it a blue halo?

another big problem for me personally is that there are just no longer distinct pages on the dashboard or in the likes. i prefer to turn off endless scrolling so each page i’m on stays where it is and i don’t lose with an unexpected refresh. i like being able to go back 10, 20, 30 pages in my likes, or even be able to bookmark a unique spot in my likes so i can come back so some posts later. that is no longer possible now. if you type in likes/page/2 nothing happens, you’re still at the beginning of your likes. you can turn off endless scrolling and manually flip through the pages, but again with how it takes fucking forever, and if it refresnes you’re back at the beginning. same with the dash. i find this unbelievably frustrating.

apparently we’re supposed to be ~impressed~ that there’s this new drop-down menu that looks like this:

but xkit has a much better timestamp feature, you can copy the link from that folded down corner on the top of the post, and ‘close’ just closes the menu. the pin function is useful, but so what? they didn’t need a drop-down menu to add that.

i know there are many other technical issues people are rightfully complaining about, issues with the tags and with the site crashing and overheating devices, making laptop fans work so hard they make sounds like they’re breaking, and other stuff i haven’t had the focus to read about yet. it’s just an absolute clusterfuck, and i see nothing truly useful whatsoever OR any actual reason for them to put so much work into doing this unless they are genuinely, literally trying to drive people off this site and make it go belly up.

if i was a casual user instead of someone who’s been trapped here for 7+ years, i’d probably just stop coming here because the interface is aggressively user-unfriendly and can easily drive someone to rage-quit the dash for how nonfunctional it is.

i have some slender hope they’ll realize how much everyone hates this and just undo it all, or the xkit team will roll out ways to undo the damage, but who knows at this point.

#tumblr #anonymous #ask

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silentexplorer18 · 4 years ago

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I’m alive: an update

Hey everybody! Long time no see.

This is gonna be a bit of a long post, just gonna throw a read more here for all the mobile users who don’t want an eternal post on their dashes every time they log on. TLDR at the bottom.

I notice there are asks in my inbox and notifications in my activity thing, and I want you to know that I see that there are things for me and that people have been interacting, and I appreciate it. I’ll be looking at/responding to everything as I’m able to.

I’m back in school and, honestly, I’m a dead gal walking. I’ve been gone for a month(?) and this is the first night that I’ve really had a “break” to do something other than school. I’m loving some of my classes, hating others, I’m sure you all know how that goes.

Right now, I’m trying to get back on my feet and get adjusted to the radical ways my life has changed in the last several weeks/months. When things hopefully (dear god, hopefully) stabilize in my life a little bit, I’m hoping to be able to balance some self care (and writing!) with the myriad of other things I’m dealing with.

In the last month, I’ve missed reading stuff on here so much. Y’all, go send @slytherinbarnes and @stuckonspidey some love for me because I’m seriously missing Sub Rosa and it echoes through so much.

(Oh my gosh, Lilly, you’ve finished the sequel and I’m so far behind! 😭 My heart! I can’t wait to read and find out what happens! And, obviously, you were gonna finish it, but here’s a high five for finishing it because writing’s hard and authors deserve more support!)

(And Sb! You’re already on season 3??? I’m so far behind and I’ve got so much amazing writing to catch up on! And I swear if we’re still in the slow burn stage I will be having a word with you! I’m so impressed with how far you’ve gotten; I feel like I blinked and you made it through season 2. I can’t wait to read it!)

It’s going to be very hard to go back to schoolwork tomorrow and not binge both of these series.

Also go check out the Very Harry Potter Summer’s Masterlist because there are a lot of great fics on there and I’m so mad school started during that because there’s so many fics on that list that I wanna read and haven’t had time to yet!

As for me writing, I have a stack of WIPs I’m going to start nibbling on when school permits. It’s probably going to be a hot minute until I post another fic (she says as though she’s posted much since Christmas...), but I do have lots of ideas in my writer hat that I just have to actually, you know, write. I have two that I’m loving but I have no bloody clue where they’re going (one being Draco x kind of an OC and the other being Drarry). But there’s a stack. More google docs than I dare count. So I promise that eventually (slowly) there will be things coming.

For a while I was honestly really stressed that I wasn’t writing and posting fics, but the truth is, I just like writing, and when I get to finishing a piece, I’ll get to it. There’s no point worrying or stressing over something that’s meant to be fun.

I hope all of you are staying healthy and safe. I think school has started for a lot of people right now, so I’m wishing you all the best with your semesters! Try to do as I say and not as I do lol. Practice self care, drink water, stop for meals, stretch, get sleep, tend to your mental health.

TW covid: As cases continue to rise where I am, I want to remind everyone to remember to practice safe hygiene practices like washing your hands, social distancing, and wearing masks properly! Just because you may not become critically ill doesn’t mean that everyone around you won’t.

There’s probably more things that I was meaning to include in this, but it’s late, I’m tired, I’ve misspelled so much on this post already, and I think I’m gonna cut it here for the night.

I’m sending all of you love and good vibes. Take care of yourselves, and I hope to talk to all of you again soon.

-Silent

TLDR: I’m still around, but school is a monster of work right now. Hopefully soon I’ll have a balance figured out so I can practice self care and start writing again. I’m slowly working on WIPs and eventually those will be posted. So in the meantime go read Sub Rosa and it echoes through (both linked above) by Sb and Lilly because they’re awesome and their work deserves kudos. Take care of yourselves and good luck to everyone starting school. I’m wishing you all well! -S

#silent talks #woah #haven't used that tag in a while #update

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skyler10fic · 4 years ago

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hey fandom mom. any advice on how to organize tumblr fic? posts or pages? doesn't a certain number of links break a post? i've branched out into separate fandoms and even within D/R, I'd like to have my fic organized by character. i'm so confused

Hello my dear Nonny!

I am going to give you advice that I hope you read in the desperate tone of voice I intend it in: “it’s too late for me! save yourself!” and by that I mean come up with a fic tag and use it consistently.

Did baby!Skyler tag her 150 fics with anything consistent? No. No she did not. #regret

I think having all your fic for a fandom under a specific tag would be the absolute low-bar easiest place to start. They would all be on one webpage, which is https://<yourusername>.tumblr.com/tagged/<your+fic+tag> (the parts in < > are parts you would fill in with that info).

Option 2 is a bunch of posts (ideally, again, all with a consistent tag). This I did a bit with all our #self-rec events purely by dumb luck/coincidence/following the crowd. You can create posts like: “Doctor x Rose: Fluff” or “Nine x Rose masterpost” or “Rose Tyler fics” or whatever makes sense for your writing. This is how most rec blogs work. (for example: x)

Option 3 is definitely the hardest but it’s the most satisfying. I searched for fic rec pages on Tumblr and copied this theme someone made. A friend graciously helped me customize the code to fit my blog (which was not easy), and I really like how it works, with the ability to filter lots of tags to find what you are looking for but do not be deceived, this was HOURS of work and frustration. (my fic page: x)

If you love designing websites and doing copious and labor-intensive data entry, this is the option for you. Reminder, you have to edit the code every time you post a fic. Sooo this was not the best option for me, even though it is by far the prettiest.

There are definitely less labor-intensive pages, but pages are also hard on mobile users because they have to access the URL from a browser. It’s overall not a mobile-friendly option, and also, they can’t be shared with a reblog, so it’s pretty stagnant for your readership. Useful if you want amazing sorting, and if people are willing to click through or go to your page on desktop, but overall, I don’t recommend it.

I can’t answer on the certain number of links because it seems ever-random. I have a huge New to the Fandom Guide that hasn’t had problems with loads of links (*knock on wood) but some of the DoctorRoseFicRecList posts have had issues for sure.

Overall, I’d recommend a combination of Options 1 and 2. Tag your fic with something unique to you as an author (#Nonny writes) and/or unique to you writing that ship (#Nonny writes Doctor x Rose). Then make a post for that character or ship with a list of links to your Tumblr post and your Ao3 story for each fic. You can break these down by genre, theme, rating, whatever. That way if you want to refer someone to all of your fic, you can. If you want to refer someone to all of your fic for a certain character/ship/fandom, you can. If you want to refer someone to more specific types of fic you’ve written, you can.

If you do want a page just to help keep track of all of this, maybe have one that links to each tag and each list. Sort of a masterlist of tags/lists. That will be more helpful to you than anyone, but it is nice to have. That has been useful for me with my page. For the Fandom Guide, I just have a link in my sidebar to the guide’s tag. (I did do that correctly, thank the fandom gods.) So I can always find that quickly and pass on the link to all the posts at once.

Hope this helps!

#new to the fandom guide #writer problems #fanfic #fandom life #writer life #learn from my mistakes #Anonymous

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laurasauras · 5 years ago

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What do you think Homestuck believes in?

g, i love you, your interest in me infodumping is honestly such a delight. i can sometimes feel like i’m talking way too much, but you always make me feel special, it’s lovely!

this is long, so i’m going to use a cut. i’m so sorry, mobile users. blame tumblr. tl;dr? i think homestuck believes in love, hope, and fighting even when the stakes seem insurmountable.

so there’s a lot of like “core themes” in homestuck, but “what homestuck believes in” is such a lovely and specific way to phrase it, so i’m gonna go with what i think the most important ones are.

firstly: love. and more specifically, all love.

look, there are romantic parts of homestuck. and they’re often show-stopping.

(also homestuck does visual callbacks very well, there’s a reason that these two scenes are composed the same way.)

but the core of the story is these four kids, all of them starting from a state of isolation. they don't have "real friends", they feel disconnected from their guardians, they feel disconnected from everyone in the world they walk around in, but they go online and they have each other. and they're constantly joking and making fun of each other, but they're also checking in almost every time they achieve something, as if grounding their friends in their real life.

the story keeps progressing and getting more and more complicated, but it can never quite overshadow the beauty of the pesterlog conversations between friends.

i think that's a large part of what the audience of homestuck connects with—that feeling of connection online and the support that the characters give each other.

i also think that a lot of the time, the friendships and familial relationships in homestuck were given the same—if not more—importance as the romantic relationships, which is fucking uncommon to see in media! almost every character has to come to terms with how their upbringing shaped them, and you know what? that's the same of almost every person.

the conversation between dirk and dave before the final battle is one of the most important and touching moments of the whole story! two of the characters most concerned with their adherence to masculinity and appearing Too Cool For Emotions talk about their feelings and trauma before hugging it out. and it doesn't further the plot, it isn't part of the hero's romantic arc, but it's vital.

the second big thing i think homestuck believes in is the importance of doing what is right. in being a hero.

homestuck positions john and his friends as the main characters selected by the universe to play sburb and literally ascends them to god status.

they're empowered by destiny! they're going to beat the game, conquer the worst villain ever and bring humanity and trollkind back from extinction AND their new world isn't going to be under the tyranny of a genocidal fish alien!

but that empowerment is also a disempowerment.

look at how frequently dave falls into the reluctant hero trope. fate fucking kicks them around. when they are so destined to do all that stuff, can they really be said to have free will? and when they do seem to make a wrong choice in relation to their destiny, it's either something that furthers the plot OR it creates a doomed timeline and they're usually killed horribly.

and it's a story that is constantly reminding us that it's a story! you can definitely lose yourself in homestuck, you can zone into it and accept the rules and just read it as if it's a reasonable reality, but i don't think it was ever written that way, or when it is, i think that that's a result of hussie accidentally getting into the story as well!

like okay, we start off with this:

that's fucking bonkers. he's 13 and he doesn't have a name? but of course it's bullshit, it’s just a cool homestuck thing. because we never get a conversation that goes:

TG: so the big 13

TG: you get a name yet

EB: yup! let me formally introduce myself as john!

TG: i give that name 4/5 hats

no, dave just immediately calls john by his name. and likewise, until we're introduced to the other characters and learn their names, they're referred to by their handle abbreviations, but the second they're introduced it's first name basis time. because it's a story and our perception is what matters most.

then we have the ridiculous intermission, that starts out as what dave sees when he goes to mspa.com and which resembles problem sleuth enough that i almost thought it was just that, but then seemed to be an entirely new adventure, and then became a pretty vital subplot!

and then we have the author literally climbing into the story and we watch him type it. Don't Forget This Is All Written By Me!

the website changes format, there are the meta jokes, there's the way that caliborn raises the same complaints to hussie about the story being too long and confusing that some members of the fandom were. there's the way that pantskat happened! or they drastic changes in artstyle, often because someone else was drawing a panel!

so like, we've got these characters who seem to have goals that they've developed of their own volition and who seem to have their own ways of going about achieving them, who at times even act contrarily to how hussie says he wants them to act (remember how he attempted to propose to/revive vriska and how both she and caliborn at different times type into the narrative prompt "instead of" hussie) but of course ultimately! he wrote every word!

they don't have free will, they don't even exist! but on a different level, which any writer can understand, once you as an author have established a character, you trap yourself into writing them consistently, which can mean that while something might be best for the plot, the character metaphorically crosses their arms in your head and goes "i would literally never do that."

some characters of homestuck become aware that they are and we know they are, but most of them don't think that, they think that they're just living the life they have.

how the fuck are his characters supposed to go about their days when their author finds it funny to block their path with a giant bust of snoop dogg? and when they work for pages and pages and pages to get around whatever asinine thing andrew fucking hussie (or worse! his fans!) has come up with, there's another obstacle and maybe there's not even a point anyway!

how do you not just dismiss it as something like "hes just being weird/an asshole/etc”?

yeah, look, he might just be having a laugh. but so to might god.

sometimes you're walking along and something really stupid happens and it makes you for a second want to believe in god so that you can stare at the sky and say "really." :|

think about why detective stories are so popular. they give the illusion that if you're clever enough, if you collect the right data and link it together, you can trace back exactly what happened and solve impossible riddles and make sense of the world. you meet a man who has dust on his knees and you can deduce that he's been sneaking down to the basement of the shop he works at to tunnel into the bank next door. there's nothing magic about it, watson, it's just good detective work.

and we neeeeed that lie! but you know how it works in the real world? in the real world, police are baffled at a crime scene until a decade later someone discovers the fingerprints belonged to a fucking KOALA! that's more ridiculous than a snoop dogg bust in a hallway, or most of the other things hussie has written.

i think like that's a huge message behind the epilogues too, because john figures out he's in a story in candy and everything feels pointless.

but if that's the world he lives in, that's the world he fucking lives in. there's nothing pointless about living.

and i think that clicks for him towards the end when he talks to roxy and then rose. rose actually thanks him for choosing a path that allowed her to have the life she had, because she loves her wife and daughter. like it's insane, but she's happy, that's the life she lived and she doesn't want a more sensible one.

so what happens to us when we get that feeling like the world is pointless?

(which is A Major Fucking Side Effect Of Depression BTW and i still stand by my interpretation that ALL of john's shit can be put down to his depression, which is what makes it interesting)

for a generation with fucking terrifying levels of mental illness, when we start feeling like the world is too crazy and the odds are too high, and there's fucking war happening and our friends aren't even guaranteed to be on our side?

we just fucking fight anyway.

because we live in the world we live in and we just have to be grateful that we are who we are because of that.

every character in homestuck chooses this, again and again, so i have to read that as hopeful. alpha dave and rose knowing who hic is and that their kids are so far away? still gonna fucking fight and fight LOUDLY even though they know it won't change things. (on top of the fucking white house, in case the political allegory was too subtle lmao.)

there are so many messages in homestuck and honestly i feel like i’ve barely scraped the surface of them. but what does homestuck believe in? i feel that in my heart. homestuck believes in love and in doing what is right, even when it’s hard to figure out what right is, even when you might not make a difference.

homestuck is good, actually.

#long post #homestuck #my post

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jafndaegur · 5 years ago

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The Blood Sacrifice’s True Ugly

“Broken migrant, knife through heel—sing your praise so hell can hear. Where did you come from? The strange, we walk, the touch we feel…Could you find a way to love us all? Don’t wake up.” – Coheed & Cambria

Day Two @mmangstweek . I’m definitely trying to NOT turn this into a Jumin x MC fic rofl. I’m failing miserably. A LOT of triggers in this one, i’m sorrry. With a character whose power is blood sacrifice you can’t expect this to be a happy story until the end…maybe.

Triggers: Bodily harm (both self and from others)

MC’s father hid her eyes behind his hands. Beneath her knees where she had collapsed in front of her mother—she felt the thick and sticky liquid that smelt too much like iron. Her father clutched her closer and his shoulders trembled as he pulled her against his chest. He wouldn’t let her look. And that was okay. It wasn’t too long after that she forgot her mother’s face, and her mother’s name. She didn’t know why; she tried to think of all the good times, all her favorite moments with the woman, but all she could see was an empty face as blank as a wiped chalkboard.

From then on, her father dressed her in a surplus of thick, long clothes. From turtlenecks and gloves to long sock and trousers, not an inch of her wasn’t covered up in some form or capacity. The only place she was allowed visible was her face. He told her it was unlikely for her to bleed there. “Such a pretty face shouldn’t be hidden”, he smiled sadly.

He must’ve been traumatized, she figured. The death of her mother too much for him. He didn’t want to risk her getting hurt. So she stayed careful. Stayed cautious.

The times with him were fond.

He loved walking in the park on the days that were warm. Not an afternoon during the summer, the spring, and the fall were wasted inside. He would pick her up from school, and he would park at a nearby convenience store. Together, they would walk in, and he would buy a coffee and she a soda; he’d purchase dinner from there too, a pair of sandwiches or a couple of hotdogs—whichever was cheaper. From there they would walk down the sidewalk to the local park. Her father was a man of few words, and she was fine with that. Someone like him didn’t need to speak much to show what was on his mind. So she would skip along side him and tell him about her day at school, about the few friends she’d made, about her favorite book that she’d read. He would smile. And she would smile back.

As she grew older, however, her steps became a little less light. He never changed: the same stride, the same tired glance, the same expectations of her to stay covered up. The same old walks in the same old park.

But she changed.

When she entered high school, she figured he was a prude—after all, that was what her classmates called her because of her dress and certainly her wardrobe was not her decision.

The one time she’d mentioned it to him, she said she would like to wear a sun dress, his characteristic passive look had warped. His brow knitted and his lip curled. His eyes stormed. His jaw clenched. “Absolutely not MC”. She had never heard him so frustrated; so scared. For the moment she would apologize and leave it alone. Afterall, he’d never done wrong by her before.

Winter tumbled in harshly during the near tail end of her senior year in high school. They didn’t go outside for walks. She wanted to leave. For once she wanted to leave the house and do whatever she wanted. But with the snow-in came a surprising amount of stern behavior from him. He didn’t let her leave. Normally she did the errands; now he did. Normally she went for the groceries. He would take the car out and return within the hour with whatever they needed for the week. More and more often, he hovered. “Ice is dangerous”, MC. She started to sit and stare out the window, wondering what would happen if she just left. “You could slip and fall, MC”. She stopped wearing her socks, and wore stockings and skirts instead of pants. “What would happen if you hurt yourself”? His stare was less endearing and more crazed.

It was evening. She remembered it like that. The sun crested itself just barely above a hill hollowed of any trees or brush. Rid of anything she might scrape herself on. She was gazing out the kitchen window while she was grating the vegetables for their dinner that evening.

He ranted to her about how he disapproved of her going outside without her gloves on.

Brow twitched, she scraped a carrot harder against the grater. Her father growled on about how it was irresponsible of her to go without anything protecting her fingers. She snapped, whipped around, and sliced the side of her palm against the sharp little edges of the kitchen utensil.

“God, I wish you’d just leave me alone!”

MOBILE USERS HERE IS WHERE, THE TW KICKS IN. FOR WHATEVER REASON, MOBILE IS NOT KEEPING THE “KEEP READING” LINK

His expression into hurt, and his big brown eyes widened. Hands fell to the side and he stuttered. His eyes lowered and noticed the slice on her hand, shiny red blood trickling down her wrist.

Her father’s eyes widened, he yelped with a cracked voice and reached out suddenly . “MC—”

Then he was gone.

There was no flash or snap or brush of magic. Just one moment he was there. And the next he wasn’t.

At first she thought it was a joke, or something to make her feel bad. She waited for him to go home. Upstairs, she wrapped her hand with gauze after applying a little bit of disinfectant. He didn’t come home. Took a shower, put on pajamas, made apology hot chocolate. She even did some of her homework, but by the time the clock read three am, and her father wasn’t home—she could only hope that he’d gone to cool off from the argument. In her mind she couldn’t remember the last time they’d gotten into a fight. Perhaps he thought that they both needed a little bit of time. He’d be back in the morning, she told herself.

He did not come home the next morning.

She waited for a day. Then two. On the third day, she looked through obituaries, her emails, the news, anything to tell her if he had died or gone missing. She called the police on the fifth day. She told them he was missing—they told her he was not.

Her father never came home again.

MC stopped going to school. She worked a job, but never made the money to keep the house. Although somehow the bills were always paid and on time. She didn’t know why her father was staying away, if he was clearly alive and well.

At the time, she wondered why he would listen to such a simple wish.

But that was her second encounter with Blood Sacrifice.

Later in her life, since she didn’t have the finalized education higher than middle school, MC had resorted to some…undesirable jobs. After one night with a man, he’d accidentally cut her thigh with his belt buckle. He’d been purring in her ear as he was leaving about how he wished she would give him another hour. She’d been done for the night. But her body seized as he apologized profusely for the injury. Her own limbs worked against her—wrapping her arms around his neck, and pulling him closer as she told him she’d give him another hour if he paid for it—he was ecstatic, the bleeding gash forgotten.

Her third encounter with Blood Sacrifice.

MC found more and more people somehow figured out about her power. Someone stabbed her in the bicep with an ice scraper, they wished for money to pay off a loan-shark’s loan. Another person tore her lip while they were kissing her, they wished for their wife’s undying love so they wouldn’t have to keep seeing MC. Bit by bit, her body became a bit more tore up as she gave more and more of her wishes away. She’d tried to stab herself too, right above her collar-bone. She wished to see her father again, for him to sweep her away so she could cry against her chest and tell him she was so sorry for stupid words during an even more stupid argument.

Shortly after that wish, as she hobbled through her home city, she discovered two things. While she’d been living in an alley the past few years, in the sheltered shadow of a dumpster—more and more people like her had appeared. They were called Oddities; people with strange mutations and powers of all sorts, just like characters from old time comic books and superhero movies.

The second thing she discovered, was her father. It was fall, and she’d been close to that local grocery store they’d frequented so much—it was the first time since his disappearance. A church had been built behind there. That was new. She snuck in, through the back, hoping she could find loose bulletins she could use as mats for her bed. Instead she found a wall of cremated people. Her father’s name among the dozens.

She smiled. He really had just left her alone.

Life after that was blurry. She collapsed at the wall of burned bodies. Her vision swam. Who knew how many days it’d been since she fell there. A flash of golden hair as bright as flames, and brilliant green eyes just as warm as frozen jade. A tender hand around her wrist, pulling her—a Savior from death or a Sentencer to life…

And then nothing.

MC shrieked as she sat up. An IV had been strapped to her arm and a heart monitor beeped pleasantly next to her. In front of her, with his hand recoiling from her temple, was the crazy ghost in the suit from earlier. Except this time he wasn’t a specter. His fingers had left a warm graze angst her head.

She seethed, knowing perfectly well what happened. “You. Read. My. Memories.”

“I,” he paused, as if considering what to say be for narrowing his grey eyes and setting his expression as blank as snow. “I did. They were as open as a journal entry. Thank you for your cooperation.”

She searched for anything to cut herself on—she was going to kill him.

#mysmeangstweek #tw: bodily harm #mmangstweek2019d2 #day two #trauma and journal entries #mystic messenger #mysme #i'm sorrryyyyy #au: horrific superhero #angst #mmangstweek

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izzy-b-hands · 6 years ago

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Årsgång På Metall-Chapter Two

So Chapter Two is really late lol. But it is here. And Chapter Three will be here sometime later today, after I get some sleep and a shower.

For now, please enjoy the fruits of my labor--it was really fun getting back into writing this one, so I hope you guys like it.

Link to Chapter One, in case you haven’t read it or because it has been forever since I posted it: http://aboutthatmelancholystorm.tumblr.com/post/169018669101/%C3%A5rsg%C3%A5ng-p%C3%A5-metall-chapter-one

Though I will say, sorry and RIP to mobile users if the ‘cut/read more’ feature doesn’t work. I don’t mean to make you scroll for eternity, this is just what happened this time lol.

The very next morning, the Keep Skwisgaar Safe plan began.

“There ams things to prepares. Lets me up,” Skwisgaar mumbled into Toki’s neck.

Toki held him tighter, having the advantage of already being awake and laying properly in the bed. Skwisgaar was flopped against him, half out of the bed, and exhausted from his constant research and preparations.

That alone was part of what made it all so frightening to Toki. Skwisgaar didn’t trust the Klokateers with the research, or do much else other than help prepare the trip for them. He kept waiting for the usual ‘world’s best guitarist’ attitude to come out, and for him to refuse to do something. Or to demand a break from the pace he was working at. Something, anything diva-ish in nature.

But it hadn’t come out at all. He realized this must have been what it was like for Skwisgaar before the band—doing all his own work, willing to get his hands dirty doing whatever he needed to do. Granted, he didn’t mind watching Skwisgaar get filthy while they chopped firewood, or observing his repairs to his guitar (watching his hands do all of that was downright erotic.)

It was so strange all the same—a side of Skwisgaar that he’d known existed, but that he figured he’d probably never see. Yet here it was, and now he wanted to make it go away. To have his Skwisgaar back—the arrogant asshole who let him into the band, who begrudgingly became his friend, then not so begrudgingly his boyfriend.

“Lets me up, don’ts bes an asshole,” Skwisgaar grumbled, pushing and prying uselessly against the arm Toki had wrapped around him.

“Ams not an asshole, just wants to cuddle,” Toki murmured. He knew it didn’t sound convincing, but he was too focused on figuring out his possible next steps to make it sound better. Like, what if Skwisgaar managed to get up? Should he just tackle him, try and lure him back to bed somehow, what?

“Yous heart ams beatings too fast,” Skwisgaar said. “What ams wrong?”

“Nothing,” Toki replied.

“Yous ams a terrible liars,” Skwisgaar muttered. “What ams your problem?”

He was right. Lying wasn’t going to work. Truth probably wouldn’t either, but he could at least give it a shot.

“Everythings you reads about this ritual, alls the things you tells me about it—it scares me,” Toki didn’t mean to whisper, but it came out as one anyway. “People don’ts do this ‘Year Walk’ anymores much, right? So I thinks, ‘why ams that?’, and I thinks--”

He paused. Couldn’t let the tears fall. Couldn’t completely fall apart, not with Skwisgaar acting the way he had been. Someone needed to have their shit together.

“I thinks it ams because they lose people. People who sees things and don’t wants to come back homes, or who ams stolen by whatevers ams out theres, or who sees that their futures ams goings to be bad, and so theys kills themselves so it won’t happen,” Toki continued. “I don’t wants to lose you.”

Skwisgaar was quiet.

Toki couldn’t bring himself to look at Skwisgaar. He stared at the cabin wall, and let his arm go limp so Skwisgaar could push it away.

“Ams sorry,” Skwisgaar mumured, his voice hoarse.

Toki sat up and turned to Skwisgaar.

Tears were pouring down Skwisgaar’s face as he sat up. “I didn’ts thinks about it likes that. Didn’ts thinks you would cares if--”

“If yous was gone? If somethings happens what ams terrible and tragic and leaves me heres all alone?” Toki asked. “You ams so stupids sometimes. I loves you—of course I cares. I wouldn’ts bes here otherwise.”

Skwisgaar was quiet again.

“I wants the albums to bes good too. But if you ams not here, wes don’t haves an album. Please don’ts does this,” Toki let the tears fall now, half sad at the thought of losing Skwisgaar, but half happy that Skwisgaar was listening and understood. They’d all joked that years of evading the deaths that had befallen their fans and business partners and family had started to soften them up. But maybe it had—and maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

“I haves to,” Skwisgaar replied. “Just this once, to sees ifs I can, to sees what ams out there when yous does it.”

Toki choked back a sob. How could he say that now, that he had to?

“But, maybes wes can do it differently. I don’t knows what wills happen if wes change it—wes can only try,” Skwisgaar said. “Yous could comes with me. Do the rituals with mes, and wes go outs and does the walk together. Plus, then wes both gets materials for the album.”

Toki slipped a hand over Skwisgaar’s—his hands were always so cold. “Thought you needs someones back heres in case somethings happens.”

Skwisgaar nodded. “Normally yous do. But wes ams not normal—ams guitar gods. Wes can’ts be killed by just anyone.”

“Yous ams,” Toki corrected.

“No—you ams one too. Just ones that needs to practice more,” Skwisgaar smiled.

Toki’s heart was beating fast for an entirely different reason now. Skwisgaar had never included him in that definition before. “So—wes does this togethers then?”

Skwisgaar nodded. “Wes either dies outs there togethers or comes back and drinks and writes new music.”

Toki nodded. It wasn’t exactly how his Keep Skwisgaar Safe plan was supposed to end—ideally, it would have ended with them staying in bed and fucking the day away, and no ritual at all on New Years Eve. But if the ritual had to happen, then this way would be better than the alternative.

“Wes shoulds gets up then, gets things ready,” Toki sighed, and moved to leave the bed. “What ams lefts, yous haves beens doing so much already.”

Skwisgaar’s now free hand crept over his shoulder and pulled him back down to the bed. “Nothings, actually. Was just sayings that so yous would lets me gets up. Wes gots four days of nothings to dos until the nights of the ritual.”

“Ams that my new nickname? Nothings?” Toki grinned.

Skwisgaar moved to straddle him and frowned, clearly confused.

“You ams goings to be doings nothings for four days—who else woulds you bes talkings about?” Toki continued.

Crying out of pure, overwhelmed love and emotion during sex was usually only Toki’s thing—but it was weirdly nice with both of them doing it at the same time. And it distracted from the idea that they both might die out there in the woods, cold and terrified. But at least they’d be cold and terrified together.

Four days later, walking was an interesting exercise for both of them, and they had hickeys in places that would have made their mothers blush (if either of their mothers had actually been decent mothers, of course.)

“Nows wes fast—plus nos drinkings, and it ams supposed to bes no seeings anyone else but--” Skwisgaar shrugged as they dressed in the darkness of the bedroom. He’d insisted on keeping all the lights off, apparently another part of the ritual in some places.

“Wes ams already breakings the rules, wes coulds have a little drinks,” Toki replied. They’d never been this sober for this long. But in between all the research and work, Skwisgaar hadn’t had time for drinking, and Toki hadn’t really thought of it until now. Even on Christmas, his only concern had been that Skwisgaar be forced to eat and bathe at some point. Celebrating and drinking just hadn’t made the list of worries.

“Wes don’t wants to bes drunks if there really ams...things outs there,” Skwisgaar said. “Ams goings to feels fucked up as it is, with no foods or drinks.”

Toki found himself only able to nod. After all, he didn’t really know for sure what they’d be facing. Sure, he knew of some of the creatures that had been reported during others’ ‘year walks’, hell, some of them had their own version in Norwegian and other Scandinavian folklore so they weren’t any great surprise to read about, but he’d never envisioned actually having to ever face any of them. As a kid, they were just scary stories his parents told him to keep him in line.

Now, they might be real.

“Wes can’ts talk, cans we?” Toki asked as they settled into the living room.

“Ams not supposeds to,” Skwisgaar replied. “Wes probablys coulds though. If wes ams alreadys screwed withs breakings the rules, how much worse cans it get?”

They didn’t talk anyway, cuddled up on the couch. It was easier to just sit in the darkness somehow.

For Toki, it was because he didn’t want to admit that he was gradually becoming more and more terrified. But one of the rules was, you couldn’t be scared, couldn’t show it—to be scared and show it was to essentially declare yourself a free treat for the creatures.

He didn’t know if Skwisgaar was quite as scared as he was, but he knew Skwisgaar’s hands were shaking as they wrapped around his.

Midnight came quicker than he expected. They pulled on coats and boots and hands and gloves in silence, before finally heading out.

He’d forgotten how many of the stars were visible, somewhere further away from city lights and the ever present security lights of Mordhaus. It was beautiful, but he knew better than to break the silence they needed to keep for the walk. He settled for squeezing Skwisgaar’s gloved hand as tightly as he could as they started into the woods.

There were a few places they’d agreed to go, and a few they’d agreed to avoid, based on what information Skwisgaar had gleaned in his research and what time they’d had to discuss it all while they fucked.

Churches and graveyards were supposed to be extra spooky, but also could offer a glimpse of things to come with only the risk of a Church Grim being present.

Rivers and lakes nearby were to be avoided if possible—most of the articles called the creatures by their English name, the brook-horse. Granted, it was supposed to take children, but they’d both figured there was no need to risk finding out if it would make an exception for them.

Huldra were going to unavoidable most likely—they couldn’t go into the forest otherwise, which would have made the whole thing kind of pointless, since Skwisgaar had discovered the nearest church and graveyard were within the woods. Mylings and the Night Raven also seemed potentially unavoidable—they might run into them, they might not. There was no way to be certain.

Toki felt the fear start to slowly melt as they walked. If he didn’t think about the potential to disappear forever, it was a nice walk. Cold, but they were both used to that. For Toki, it had been terrifying nights left in the punishment hole—and he knew Skwisgaar had spent nights as teen alone in the woods, to get away from his mother.

The trees rustled as they continued on through the brush, and for a moment the thought of trolls flashed through Toki’s mind. Sure, no account had mentioned them, but who was to say they might not be out there?

Skwisgaar suddenly tapped him on the shoulder with his free hand and pointed.

Just a few feet ahead, there she was. A huldra, gorgeous as could be (but still nowhere near as gorgeous as Skwisgaar, of course) was watching them. She was saying something—nothing Toki could understand. It sounded like a song, not a language proper they could translate really. But her meaning was clear enough: follow me.

Skwisgaar shook his head, and they turned down a fork in the path, away from her.

The song turned to a shriek, and Toki could hear the whoosh of air as she raced past them. If the folklore and accounts were true, they might be okay as long as they kept walking. Stopping and trying to fix the offense during the walk seemed like it might only worsen the issue.

She dashed in and out of their path, but they kept on. Finally, she stopped in front of them one last time and growled, before taking off into the trees.

Toki let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. If every creature was like that, then maybe they could do this. And it was inspiring—he already had a riff in mind for a song inspired by her shriek. He only hoped Skwisgaar would like it.

They slowed as they joined the tail end of a funeral procession. Towards the front of it, Toki could see a head of silver long hair, one of blonde and silver hair, one of greying brown hair, and another of grey and curly hair. Which meant Pickles was...he didn’t want to think about it, even as he stared at the coffin atop the shoulders of the Klokateers in front of them.

“He lived a hell of a lot longer than he should have,” Nathan’s voice echoed in the quiet of the forest. “Especially after--”

“Wes don’ts needs to talk abouts that again. Wes haves the scars to remembers it by,” a version of Skwisgaar’s voice rang out next. It was clearly older, thought Toki couldn’t place an exact age for it. It was strangely comforting to his ears. If this vision was true, Skwisgaar still had plenty of years left.

“Still, gotta give him kudos for it. Can you imagine how pissed off he is right now, wherever he is?” Nathan chuckled.

“Yeah—dying of old age in hisch bed like a normal dildo, inschtead of an overdosche or schomething,” Murderface’s voice showed his age more. Toki knew he’d hate to hear it, but he kind of sounded like a male version of his grandmother.

The procession reached the graveyard, and they hung at the back of the group as the Klokateers set the casket down by an open grave.

Suddenly, the casket popped open as the group turned and stared at them. A very dead, very gnarly-looking Pickles sat up in the casket.

“Seventy-five,” he croaked. “The water will not kill you.”

Toki looked to Skwisgaar, who only shrugged. They’d both read how some of the visions might not be one hundred percent clear on their meaning. They’d have to talk over what it might mean later, if there was a later.

Suddenly the group was gone, and they were alone in the graveyard.

A song started up from one of the graves, slow and melodic, but very clearly the riff Skwisgaar had been playing with for weeks.

It was Skwisgaar’s turn to squeeze Toki’s hand, as the song continued, well past what Skwisgaar had written down back at the cabin. Toki knew Skwisgaar was probably trying to memorize it, and he wished he’d checked to see if it was against the rules to bring pen and paper for things like this. Too late now, of course.

Skwisgaar led him out of the graveyard, and towards the church they could see in the distance. A closer look revealed it to be something very old, and almost definitely abandoned.

Except for the Church Grim, staring them down from the stairs at the church entrance.

It looked like a goat, for all of a second at least. Then there was the cracking of bones and some unsettling squishing sounds as it grew and stood up to be something like a man with a goat’s head.

It met them at the gate to the church, and Toki held back a gasp as it placed a hand on each of their heads. It was way taller than he’d been thinking any version of the Grim might be—at least seven feet. And none of the reports had mentioned this happening.

Then there was a sound like a gunshot in his head, and he could see a vision—himself and Skwisgaar, at the altar. It had bits and pieces of the ‘perfect wedding’ they’d each told one another about—the braids down their backs and small black flowers intertwined in their hair that Toki had wanted (he would never deny that he wanted some of the really cheesy romantic shit) and the black and red candles dotting the aisle and altar that Skwisgaar had mentioned wanting. They’d both laughed off that version of a wedding—at the time, it had seemed unlikely to happen if only because neither one of them had proposed and neither of them were in a rush to when they were happy as they were (and had been together long enough to fall under common-law in most places.)

But it looked perfect in his head. And they were smiling and happy in it, wearing the black metal rings Skwisgaar had once designed during a night of drinking, complete with engraving in silver—the phrase ‘I love you’, in Swedish on Toki’s ring and in Norwegian on Skwisgaar’s ring.

The vision exuded love—even the rest of their bandmates were smiling in the vision. Pickles had his hands occupied—one holding onto Charles’ hand, and the other holding onto Nathan’s. That wasn’t surprising—they all pretended they weren’t all fucking, but it wasn’t a secret to anyone who spent a night at Mordhaus. And they could be disgustingly cute with each other, the latest being Nathan carefully carrying both Charles and Pickles to bed after a long night of recording, while humming a lullaby under his breath. Granted, the lullaby was a black metal song, but that was a lullaby to him.

Murderface was alone, but he didn’t seem upset. Toki noticed a ring on his ring finger, and wondered A. who’d fallen in love with Murderface, and B. why they weren’t at the wedding as well. But he didn’t have time to question it, as he felt the weight of the Church Grim’s palm leave his head and the vision went away with it.

The Grim stood in front of them, hands now held out with a ring in each palm.

Toki tried to ask what he wanted to ask with just a look to Skwisgaar as he took the ring with Norwegian engraved on it from the Grim.

Skwisgaar nodded, and took the other ring from the Grim. They yanked off their gloves as quickly as they could, and placed the rings on each other’s fingers as the Grim watched and nodded, seemingly pleased.

They watched the Grim go back into the church as they pulled their gloves back on, whatever job it had been assigned for their walk apparently complete.

As soon as it was gone, Toki pulled Skwisgaar into a kiss. He wasn’t sure if that particular interaction counted as another breaking of the rules, but he didn’t really care. The ritual seemed to be adapting for their rule breakage anyway.

Neither of them could stop grinning as they pulled away and continued down the path. If the rest of the walk was like this, it would be a breeze.

The thought of course, immediately jinxed them, as Toki had figured it might.

Suddenly, the sounds and lights of war surrounded them. Constant gunfire, screams, and the roaring of something very ancient. It was terrifying, for more reasons than Toki could count. But perhaps the most unsettling was the view of him, Skwisgaar, and the rest of the band—bathed in red light, and striking down soldiers without even having to touch them. He couldn’t tell exactly who they were fighting, or why—but the vision again didn’t give him time to ponder it much more.

As quickly as it had come on, it was gone, and they were back on the quiet trail. Skwisgaar let go of his hand, and instead wrapped an arm around his shoulder to draw him close. Toki was grateful for that, after seeing what they had.

The splashing of water broke them both out of their reverie, and Toki realized with a held back gasp that they were right by a river.

Skwisgaar’s just slightly longer steps spurred them both on faster, even as the sound of hooves came about on the trail behind them.

In the distance, Toki could hear a baby crying, and he wished desperately that another fork would appear in the path.

There was nothing to do except go forward, or risk the brush without any semblance of a path. It was a split-second sort of decision, one that normally Toki would have wanted to discuss. There was no need though, as Skwisgaar seemed right on the same page, pulling Toki with him into the brush.

They broke into a run, as best they could through the mess of moss and branches and snow, until the hooves and crying were far behind them.

Skwisgaar pulled him into a hug, and as nerve-wracking as it was to not keep moving, he hugged back as hard as he could. It was evident in Skwisgaar’s eyes that he wanted to talk, and probably had a lot to say—but they weren’t done yet.

Snow and brush crunched beneath their boots as they stumbled around in search of another path, again hand-in-hand.

Finally, a stone path appeared in front of them, far too well-maintained to be real. But it was all they had, and Toki knew the sun had to be coming up soon—and by then, if the various legends and folklore had it right, they either had to be in a church or back at home to be safe. He wasn’t sure what was considered more safe, but if he had a choice he’d rather they be back at the cabin rather than sharing the morning with the apparently harmless but still creepy Grim in the church.

The path, of course, didn’t lead to the entrance of the forest, but to a huge nest. It was filled with rotten eggs the size of boulders, and bones—bones that were much too small to belong to any adult.

Skwisgaar squeezed his hand again, and Toki remembered what little lore they’d amassed on the Night Raven. It all seemed to boil down to: don’t be a naughty child that could be stolen by it, don’t look it in the eyes, and don’t touch it. Easy as those three things should be (particularly the first), he still wasn’t keen on having to face the creature.

In a flap of giant wings, it was there, and they didn’t have a choice. Skwisgaar had yanked the edge of his beanie down over his eyes, but Toki got a glimpse of the bird as he reached for his own hat.

The Night Raven squawked in surprise and fear.

He could understand that. According to legend, he should have died upon viewing it. But he felt fine.

The Raven continued to squawk and splutter, until it began to gag up a vile black fluid. It pointed a wing in apparent accusation at Toki, but he only shrugged. Wasn’t his fault the legend wasn’t flowing the way it had for others here, or that he apparently had the ability to kill the Raven just by looking at it.

It finally fell silent, then turned to ash. As soon as it did, Toki pulled Skwisgaar’s hat back off of his eyes.

Skwisgaar was well-beyond puzzled, that much was clear by the look on his face, but the explanation would have to wait.

Toki pulled him off the stone path and back into the brush, hoping that they were nearly at an end. They had plenty of material to use at this point, or he did at least.

He could see the edge of the forest, but just before they could reach it another vision took them over.

It was...strange. In how simple and utterly boring it was. The band was in the living room, settled on their usual couch, with the news playing.

“Dr. Rockso, the clown who did cocaine, found dead in Miami of an apparent...everything overdose? How can you OD on everyth—I’m being told by my producers to continue the broadcast despite this...quirk, in the story. More to follow on this story at eleven,” the female newscaster disappeared as Nathan turned off the TV.

“Thank fuck you got over that creep. Thank fuck he’s dead,” Nathan said.

Pickles nodded. “I mean, he didn’t even show up to your wedding. What a fuckin’ tool.”

“Even if he had, he woulda ruined it,” Murderface scoffed. “Can’t we juscht be glad he’sch dead and move on with our lives?”

The vision version of Toki pressed a kiss to the vision version of Skwisgaar’s forehead. “Yeah. Yous ams rights. Can’ts believes I wasted so much times with him—I hads somethings betters to helps mes cope right here.”

“That is disgustingly cute, cut that shit out,” Pickles said.

“Yous boughts Nathans and Charles roses today, Pickle. Ams that not also disgustinglys cutes?” Skwisgaar asked pointedly.

“Yeah, but Nathan and Charles are disgustingly cute, so they deserve disgustingly cute things. That’s just the way shit works, don’t ask me,” Pickles replied.

The sounds of their playful ribbing of each other faded out with the vision, and suddenly the cabin’s front door was right there, with the sun coming up just behind them.

They dashed in and Skwisgaar slammed the door shut behind them, locking it and pushing an end table in front of it for good measure.

They sat in silence for a beat.

“Wes maybes needs a naps, then wes goes over this?” Skwisgaar asked.

Toki nodded. It was both wonderful and weird, being able to talk again. He’d gotten used to the silence, in a way.

“A nap sounds goods; that was...” Toki shook his head. He really did need sleep.

Skwisgaar took the lead again as they stripped off their outerwear, then stumbled into the bedroom and onto the bed.

If it wasn’t for the rings still on their fingers, Toki figured he could have passed it all off as a hallucination.

But it was all fucking real, and it was going to make for a kick-ass album.

#text post #Alyssa writes #Dethklok fanfiction #Skwisgaar/Toki #holy shit this got long #but I almost made it just a two parter here so really this could be seen as short #considering it could have been much longer #idk it is 230 in the am and I've been writing for hours I need a shower and my eyes hurt #point is I got this up and I'm super excited to write part three later today after I get some sleep

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itsallavengers · 7 years ago

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Coming Home

The airport was crowded and the air was stale and Tony Stark was waiting.

He had been doing so for exactly 4 hours, 35 minutes and 12 seconds- that was when he'd arrived at the airport, anyway. And Steve was supposed to have arrived exactly 17 minutes and 9 seconds ago, which meant that Tony was currently waiting even more than he had been 17 minutes and 9 s-

Okay, maybe that was enough numbers for now.

Tony tapped his foot anxiously, eyes searching the crowds for the zillionth time as various people flooded through arrivals. Unfortunately, not any of the travellers were remotely important to Tony- not right then anyway. He was looking for a very particular individual; one who was currently running 17 minutes and 15 seconds late.

Goddamn it, Steve was always punctual. This was a terrible sign.

He breathed as deeply as he could and swallowed. It was just the nerves; the constant anxiety he’d been holding onto in the nine months Steve had been gone bubbling up to the surface all at once. He never dealt very well with stress. Especially not Steve-related stresses. So, of course, the letter he’d received three weeks ago saying Steve Rogers had been involved in an IED explosion and was currently being held in some backward hospital had certainly not been a good period of time for him. At all.

He can remember seeing the US Army stamp on the front of the letter and immediately feeling his knees just loose all strength. He’d thought the worst, instantly, because God only knew it kept him awake most nights anyway, and then there it was, right in front of his eyes-

The panic was still there, even now that he’d read it and knew what it was really telling him- that they were sending Steve home. He still felt that initial feeling; right in his gut like a twisted up knife, all jagged and rough. Jesus- he hadn’t seen Steve’s face in nearly six months, not even after the accident. Hadn’t had access to a phone, could you goddamn believe that? Steve had been getting treated in a place where there weren’t even fucking phones-

God, nope, there went his breathing again. He needed to focus on the positives. Steve was coming back! Steve had done his tour at the ripe old fucking age of twenty years old, and now he was coming back. Back home to Tony and their shitty flat on the shit end of Brooklyn. It was all going to be fine.

Except Steve was 18 minutes and thirty four seconds, late, and it was making Tony antsy.

(Read more, mobile users!)

He checked his watch, just to make sure the airport clock wasn’t lying to him. But yep- there were the same numbers. Even his phone read the same. Steve was definitely, unequivocally late.

He knew it was stupid, but his mind had begun working itself into a panic during the first minute Steve had failed to show. Plane crash, another bombing, taken captive, killed on the way and Tony was just waiting for the news-

Fuck. Fuck, it was stupid. Stop shaking. Stupid stupid stupid stupid.

Steve wasn’t dead. They had plans, him and Tony. They were gonna get married, definitely- whether it be in five years or twenty. Tony was putting a ring on that finger if if took him the rest of his life. He was only nineteen, currently- he had bags of time. Bags and bags.

Steve just needed to show up.

He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. The past month had been...well, hell, basically. He’d barely slept more than four hours a night. He’d been on edge the entire time; terrified that he’d hear a knock on his door and that would be it, Steve would be dead from whatever injuries he’d received and Tony would be alone. Rhodey had come over during a particularly anxiety-ridden period and when Tony answered the door he’d already started fucking crying, so convinced that he was going to get the KIA notice.

Yeah, it was a mess.

Looking back up, he once more checked the entrance. Nothing. 19 minutes, 43 seconds and Steve still hadn’t fucking-

Wait.

He felt the familiar lack of strength in his knees overcome him once again, though this time for entirely different reasons. The image hit him like a physical blow- Steve, pretty much running through the gates with his kitbag strung over his shoulder and his eyes wide, searching through the crowds.

Steve.

Steve, looking relatively unscathed. Not dead. Alive.

Tony was sprinting before he’d even fully processed it.

His feet squeaked on the floor and his shoulder bumped roughly up against the milling crowds but he didn’t care, he didn’t fucking care- Steve was there, it had been nine whole months and Steve was there, alive, alive alive alive-

Steve noticed him as he was halfway to his destination, and the way his face changed from slightly concerned to stupidly, joyously happy was almost comical. He made a choked-off sound in the back of his throat, dumping the bag unceremoniously on the floor as he stumbled forward, arms opening. “Tony-”

Tony didn’t let him finish, slamming into him as fast as he could before the rest of the sentence could ever leave his mouth. His heart was going crazy in his chest, and he was making some quite frankly embarrassing sounds against Steve’s neck, but again, he couldn’t really find it in himself to care. Just clutched desperately to the back of Steve’s uniform and wrapped both legs around his waist, effectively clinging to him like a deranged koala. “Steve, Steve, Steve, ohmygod, Steve,” he whispered over and over like a mantra, voice broken and full of more joy than he’d even known he had in him.

Steve’s arms wrapped so tightly around his lower back he found it a little difficult to breathe. Tony could feel Steve’s mouth pressing into his neck, could feel the little shakes of relief radiating off him as he held Tony aloft in the middle of the airport. “Tony, sweetheart, I missed you so so much, I love you, oh God-” his words couldn’t continue, mouth too busy pressing manic little kisses into the side of Tony’s face.

Steve had come home.

Tony’s face was wet and as he pressed it into Steve’s, he realised his was too. “I got the letter and I thought my heart was gonna drop out of my chest and then I couldn’t even see you and I kept thinking this is it, I’m gonna find out you’d died today and I was so worried, Steve, I love you so much-”

“I know,” Steve whispered, and Tony only realised they were dropping when he felt the jolt of Steve’s knees hitting the floor, “I’m so sorry, I’m fine, I swear, just a few sore ribs-”

“What? Oh God, fuck,” Tony stopped pressing in, horrified, but Steve made a keening noise and shook his head wildly, pulling Tony right back.

“I’m not letting you go ever again,” Steve mumbled into Tony’s temple, one hand curling around Tony’s waist and the other pulling over his shoulders, tugging him in close. “I hope you know that.”

“Please don’t,” Tony agreed, so unimaginably happy that he was wrapped up in Steve’s arms once more, protected from the entirety of the world by the embrace. He hadn’t felt Steve in nine months. He was so stupidly desperate for contact- he’d fight the rest of the military to be able to keep Steve within touching distance. And win.

“I’m okay,” Steve whispered, eyes clenched shut as he buried his face in Tony’s neck, “I am, I promise. And I’m home for good, this time. I want- I want to be with you. Properly. No more army, no more nothing- just me and you and our shitty Brooklyn apartment, right?”

Tony laughed a little hysterically. “Let’s get married,” he blurted, and maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe he’d just got the kick up the ass he needed to see that life was too short to waste on planning things, but either way, the words just slipped out of his mouth so easily and now they were out there, there wasn’t a hope in hell he was backing down on it.

He could feel Steve’s smile against his face. “You’re nineteen and the heir to one of the biggest companies in the world,” he laughed wetly, stroking the hair out of Tony’s eyes with a ridiculously reverent hand, “your dad would literally string me up by the balls and leave me for the crows. He hates me enough already.”

“Fuck my fucking dad, he doesn’t have to know,” Tony said fiercely, kissing Steve again and again and again, “we’ll elope- San Fran or Cali or wherever the fuck you wanna go, Steve, we can stay in a motel for the next two years if we have to. I’d do it. I don’t care.”

Steve rocked them both back and forth on the floor, and he was laughing, oh, God, Tony had forgotten quite how amazing that laugh was- “I know you don’t, darling. You’ve been living in a trash-pit for over a year after Howard cut you off just so that you could stay with me. I think you could handle a motel, right?”

Steve was raising his eyebrows, nose to nose with Tony and smiling from one ear to the other. Tony felt his own breath catch in his throat. Was that... was Steve agreeing?

“Tony Stark, I must have survived that explosion for a Goddamn reason. And I don’t know what I could possibly have done to deserve you, but Goddamn it, I want to fucking marry you.”

Tony thought he might black out- the crazy rollercoaster of emotion over the past two minutes sending his head spinning wildly, but he managed to hold on just so that he could kiss Steve again. He loved kissing Steve. He’s missed Steve like a lost limb.

“We’ll send a picture of us sticking up our ring fingers to the StarkInudstires Server,” Tony said through a laugh, and he was still crying- God only knew the day had been eventful enough- but it didn’t matter, because Steve was crying too and they were seriously going to get married and Steve was back he was back he was back-

“I love you,” Tony sighed elatedly, dropping his head into Steve’s sternum and shutting his eyes again, “I love you so much. I want to marry you more than anything else in the world.”

“Well, it is my job to make you happy,” Steve whispered, linking their fingers together, “we’re young and stupid and broke and this seems like a flawless plan. Why not? Let’s elope.”

Steve was back. Tony couldn’t get his head around it.

He felt a hand cup against his side, pulling him up gently. “I’m not going anywhere any time soon,” Steve murmured, foreheads pressing together, “I promise, Tony. I’m okay. And I’m here for as long as you want me.”

“Forever,” Tony replied, shutting his eyes.

Steve leaned up, pressing soft kisses to each eyelid. “Forever, I can do,” he agreed.

Ao3 / Ko-fi

#stevetony #tony stark #steve rogers #itsallavengers writes #d'awwwwwwwwwwwwww #fluff #listen we were talking about soldiers in English poetry today and they were all grim as fuck and I was TEMPTED to write a much much sadder #ending #but then I was like. nAHHHHH #let them be happy for once #I can chill with the angst. For once #Plus I had like an hour to write this and it would have been too long anyways LOL #but whatever! enjoy

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universallytreepeace · 4 years ago

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Super Mario Bros Mac Download

Super Mario Bros. Is a classic video game that helped to launch a major franchise. It's game play elements and side scrolling action became a video game staple for years as other companies sought to emulate it, and hoped to capture some of it's success. Super Mario Bros. Is an all time classic that any fan of video games should love.

Jan 02, 2018 Download Super Mario Bros For PC Windows and Mac can be easily installed and used on a desktop computer or laptop running Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and a Macbook, iMac running Mac OS X. This will be done by means of an Android emulator.

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90’s kids will be able to relate with me when I say, ‘I grew up playing Super Mario Bros.’ Yes? Well, Super Mario Bros were one of the amazing games that I’ve ever played in my life. Back in the day, I used to leave everything just to play the game and god! The addiction was real. Well, I still want to play Super Mario Bros, don’t you? Would it be better if we can play it on our PC? Here are Super Mario Bros Download for PC.

There is no official way to get the Super Mario Bros download for pc, as the game was meant to be played only on Nintendo’s gaming consoles. Though the Super Mario Run has arrived for mobile devices, there is no word about the launch of Super Mario Bros download for pc.

Let us first dive into the nostalgic experience we all had with Super Mario Bros Download for PC.

Contents

4 Super Mario Bros Download for PC – Information

About the gameplay: Super Mario Bros

I guess each one of you must be aware of how, when and where the story of the game goes. The Super Mario Bros were developed and published by Nintendo in the year 1985.

This game was released as a successor to their best selling game known as Mario Bros, which was released in the year 1983.

The players are supposed to control Mario or maybe his brother Luigi (while playing in a multiplayer environment) and travel the world to find and save the princess.

During their journey in the Mushroom Kingdom, the players need to recuse the Princess Toadstool from the Browser (the antagonist).

Furthermore, during the whole gameplay, the players are supposed to dodge a lot of hurdles and have to conquer some of the enemies too.

On the bright side, Super Mario Bros also give the users with different power-ups as super mushroom, fire, and Starman.

If the player completes a level, he’ll be given with an extra life in the next level.

Super Mario Bros successfully managed to get its entry in the list of most successful and intuitive games of all times.

Additionally, Mario and Luigi need to collect several coins that are scattered randomly at different spots.

The game ends when the player gets defeated three or more times in a row either by the enemies or if the timer goes off.

For each defeat, the user loses one life at a time. Apart from that, if there is any power up taken up by the player, then the first thing that he’ll lose when defeated is his power.

Then comes the life. So it makes even more interesting.

Also, the enemies can be conquered using the power-ups, or by jumping on them.

Koopa Troopa retracts inside its shell when the player jumps on it, and the other hand Goomba gets flattened and therefore defeated.

The overall gameplay is divided into 8 worlds with 4 stages per world.

The final world will take you to the castle where you need to fight with the browser to rescue the princess.

Now, that you know each and everything about the game, it is time, to get to know about Super Mario Bros download for pc.

Super Mario Bros Download for PC – How to guide

Before proceeding further, you must know that no official PC version is available for Super Mario Bros. Therefore, exact replication of the Super Mario Bros can’t be produced on a PC.

But there are several ways by which Super Mario Bros download for pc can be possible. Let’s check those out:

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As the game was released way back in the year 1985, because of its low graphical and processing requirement the game file size is small.

And for that reason, some of the websites have converted into a playable format.

This playable format can be accessed from their website, and the users can play Super Mario Bros without any hassle.

But there is a lot of downsides to it; one being, the constant availability of fast internet is needed to stream the game, and the other is the frame drops.

So, this method may or may not work at best for you. You still can try searching for Super Mario Bros download for pc and find some links to the flash Super Mario Bros game via Google.

The next method would surely surprise you. If I say, you can install (sort of) the Super

Mario Bros on your PC? Well, yes you can. Sure, there is no official program or app made to be installed on the Windows or Mac versions of PC but, you can get an.NES emulator.

Super Mario Bros Download for PC – via NES Emulator

As the game isn’t available officially on the internet for PC’s, you can download the Nintendo file version of the Super Mario Bros.

This Nintendo version comes in.NES format.

The .NES format isn’t officially supported by your PC. and it even doesn’t recognize it at all.

Therefore, all you need to do is to download the best.NES emulator.

For that, search for the best NES emulator on Google, and there are a lot of free NES emulators available.

Make sure to scan the downloaded NES emulator using any antivirus program to ensure maximal safety and security.

Once the emulator is downloaded, install using the executable file.

Run the program and then within the program interface you’ll be able to see some options that will enable you to launch any game.

Go to the load game option and then locate the .NES file for the Super Mario Bros you just downloaded.

Now, you can play the game on the emulator easily.

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Super Mario Bros Download for PC – Information

Below we have mentioned all the details of Super Mario Bros Download for PC. You can read below:

How to play Super Mario Bros?

So far so good, the game will work smoothly with the .NES Emulator. There are still some things that you need to understand before you can enjoy the game at its limits.

First being, the controller setup.

Before going forward and jumping right into the gameplay, make sure that the controls are set in the .NES emulator.

Make sure to go to the options menu and check for the controller configuration. If you have an additional gaming controller, you can plug it in your PC and start playing.

Furthermore, if you don’t own a gaming controller, then you need to make sure that every key on your keyboard must be assigned to the controls that are needed for the gameplay.

Secondly, the graphics and fullscreen settings must be adjusted accordingly to make it easier for you to render the game properly.

Lastly, the sound settings may also need some tweaks. Sometimes, the default speakers fail to produce the sounds available during the running gameplay.

Make sure to tweak the sound settings properly to enjoy the game completely.

Super Mario Bros Download for PC – Issues

Macos high sierra dmg torrent. Sometimes, because of some errors the gameplay may be hindered and in turn ruining your mood.

Make sure to check the downloaded.NES emulator update. And to get the best out of the app make sure to keep it updated. You can also check for the update on the developer’s website if the automatic download protocol isn’t working.

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What do you think? Playing Super Mario Bros on a larger screen gives you an edge? At least it made my experience immersive.

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survivorgalaxysedge · 4 years ago

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Episode 5 | Forgive Me Cowtown For I Have Sinned - Ari

ohhhhh i found something JUICY tonight!!! so yesterday the hosts got tired of me constantly asking how many fuel i have and gave me the command to view it, and i knew i was outta points so i was like ok cool we'll check it out tomorrow. TURNS OUT the scorekeeper bot shows you not just your personal points.... but the points of everyone in the game.... and WHOM is number two on that list with 36 entire points? that's right. my best friend keegan. my first thought was wtf ew how did he already recover from my sabotage, i feel zero percent guilty about doing that now! and then my second thought was WAIT...... this is PERFECT. so you can bet i ran right to all three of my allies to be like "hey omg i found something shady :0 didn't keegan say all his fuel got blown up the other day? well i pulled some receipts and it turns out he still has all of it! why would he lie about that??? so sus!" and now i'm laughing because there could not be a more perfect excuse to get him gone!!! i'm not gonna push it any more than that right now - for all i know, we'll prob win the next challenge again - but i've tucked the ammo away in my pocket, planted the ari seed in jonathan and zoe's heads, and i'll let it sit pretty there until i need it. also, i ended up telling ali what i did to keegan simply because he is 100% not going against me and i needed someone to tell me i'm funny, so i also let him know about this plan o mine and that we could use this against sir keegan, which he's so down for. god. i cannot wait to tell mj about all this shit.

Jacob being voted out of NuTrian is the second best thing that could have happened. Preferably Nathan but my OG Andro and Jessie are safe so that’s very good. Now we’ve got a Guess Who challenge which is okay. I don’t care if we get first or second, I just really really don’t want to get last. Let’s keep the good vibes going and be safe for a fifth straight tribal council. Ali told me he scored 11 points, I scored 10. I hope Zoe can whip out her survivor magic with a score of 8 or 9. And then hopefully Jonathan can pull out a good score as well. Nathan and Zach have both scored 12 on this challenge before, so I can only hope they keep up with that and score high again. Gotta make sure those other tribes flop. I’m still incredibly uncertain about how to play this steal a player advantage. It’s possible we ride this 3 tribe split all the way to merge. My guess is merge at 11 or 10. That would be quite a few tribals to go without another swap but it’s certainly possible. Though I could absolutely see a swap now at 12. Two tribes of six, and then merge at 10. A final 3 with 7 jurors perhaps? Either way, I think I’ll hold on to this advantage until it seems likely that I’ll need it. No sense in causing some chaos if it isn’t necessary.

ok so i'm doing well in challenges rn, as best as i can at least, and i feel like that's the only thing keeping me alive bc.... nobody talks to me. i feel like i'm starting every one on one conversation and desperately trying to keep it alive and not be left on read. idk if they're like this with each other or if its just me but !!!!!! it doesnt make me feel good abt potentially losing a challenge. so i will just keep carrying my weight and keeping my cute little head down and pray im just being paranoid<3

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WELL We lost the immunity challenge which is the first loss after four straight immunity wins. That was a nice little break while it lasted. The obvious choice right off the bat is to vote for Ali. Keeps the OG Andro tribe fully intact, and avoids the most possible drama. However, I worry he might have found the Circi idol from his original tribe. Plus whatever advantage he may have gotten from the first challenge of the season. So the alternate thought is to maybe vote for Jonathan or Zoe. I adore Ari would not want to vote them out. It's tempting to throw a vote on one of them in the event of Ali playing an idol, just to keep myself safe. But if Ali doesn't have an idol, that could cause a whole world of issues. On the flip side, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if some or any of my tribe mates decided to throw my name under the bus. I haven't been the most social person and while I have definitely pulled my weight in the challenges, I could see them having their own little group that's willing to throw my under the bus and make things as painless as possible for the rest of them, especially considering they've all said they like Ali a lot. Ahhh this is all so much worse considering I have the hidden immunity idol. I don't want to waste it, but I also don't want to pull a Kellee Kim and go home with it in my pocket.

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it's kind of ridiculous how well this is all going???? why havent they voted me out yet i am running this shit -talked to ali, told him he's gonna be fine we just need to get people to vote for keegan -talked to jonathan, convinced him keegan is the most logical vote "because he's shady" and because it also means we can vote ali easily next time (versus going down to andro 4 and having it get much more messy) -jonathan was like "should we tell ali right before the vote?" and i was like i think you should call him and see where his head is at and we can go from there, jonathan said ok good point, if he says he wants to vote keegan and he also tells you that without any prompting from either of us we know he's real about it -yeeted myself into ali's dms the very second jonathan hung up like OK LISTEN HERE IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY WHEN HE CALLS YOU, HE CANT KNOW I TOLD YOU ANY OF THIS -ali called me half an hour later like "omg we had such a good talk i love jonathan now deadass, i told him exactly what you said to say and he's so down" -presumably in the morning jonathan will call me and say "wow had a great talk with ali he seems cool and great and he said he'd vote keegan, what did he tell you?" and i can say "yeah same he mentioned keegan so i think we're good!" and jonathan will feel like we Did This Together and ali will feel like i Did This For Him and everyone will be in love with me -all i have to do tomorrow is make sure zoe is on board & that she doesn't feel pushed, and prob call keegan and make him some vague promises about working together long term, and then cross my fingers that i don't get blindsided during my editorial meeting at 9pm est i am having so much fun

i just keep thinking about how funny it’s gonna be when we get to merge and mj tells me to vote out all these people i’ve been making f2s with and i’ll be like “okay!!!!<3”

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Not to go back to INV this round, but not much has been going on. I've been keeping up socializing but since we're not going to tribal it's been more quiet than it has been last round. I'm really glad we won though bc I feel vulnerable if we go to tribal again. Cindi seems close to Nathan, and Nathan and Jessie seem closer to each other than they will be to me so I'm worried I'd be an easy vote. So I'm really hoping for a swap or merge tonight, or at least a challenge we can excel in. Don't want it to come down to one point again.

^_^ Okay, so no important updates with this tribe! It's freaking QUIET. I haven't talked to Zach or Silver at ALL since being with this tribe. I've talked to Jules a lot and Asya some, though. I'd like to work with the two of them if possible and if we ever go to tribal here, which I don't want to do because uhhh it's worrisome! Anyway, the only actual update I have is that I found the legacy advantage!!! Randomly at like 2AM I found it. I don't remember what I was doing exactly... I think I just went to watch the Circi round 3 tribal and then the Trian round 4 tribal... and then I think I went to watch the Tribe Swap video to see if there was some sort of announcement made regarded the Oxygen Tank amounts because I was confused why that number was changed more than double. I guess I was also thinking that since the hosts didn't make an announcement that the adventure was resetting at the swap then MAYBE there would be a new twist/advantage inserted elsewhere for this next phase of the game? Now, being the crackhead that I am, of course back on original tribes, I SEARCHED everywhere on the blog that I could think of. Extenders URLs, the source code, hidden hyperlinks - everything. Nothing was there. But in this case, my brain said, hmm, let's just scroll down and see if there's anything in the description of the Tribe Swap Youtube video...and... there was!! I didn't really know what it was at first but when I opened it everything CLICKED! Finally the Reem Cameo from launch night serving a bigger purpose made total sense. After seeing this link in the description though and realizing it was calling back to something we were told about night one, I went back and checked to see if this had been hidden all along, and of course it's literally in the description of the Cast Reveal video!!! and every other video after that!!! Keeping in mind that I found this 11 days into the game, I was like, oh there's definitely some nerd that found this instantly on night 1 so I'm probably just gonna get a message saying nothing here or something like that. Obviously that wasn't the case though. I think nobody found this because I lot of people operate via mobile in these, and Youtube descriptions require an addition click to reveal what's there. Alternatively, for desktop users, who the hell is scrolling down for any reason while you're watching videos from your ORG?? It's nothing something anyone does naturally. So that explains that. Anyway, I'm happy I found it even though it has absolutely no use until Day 39. I will say though that having this and knowing that, it has really motivated me to get to the end of this game. Coincidentally, HOURS before I found this, I had a conversation with Jules about how quiet this tribe has been and that I'd like to start working towards bettering our positions moving forward seeing as there are people here with more/stronger connections than either of us. I just love that I found an advantage that motivates me to start playing this game, exactly how I'd voiced to Jules about feeling a desire to start doing SOMETHING. We love a live narrative!!!! Anyway, I'm not gonna tell Jules about the legacy advantage because it's an advantage that incentivizes people to vote out the owner and have it passed on. I trust Jules, we go YEARS back and have to successful runs as allies under our belts, but this is just something I'd like to keep to myself. Earlier today I also decided that I'm probably never gonna tell Ari about it either if our paths ever (hopefully) cross in this game. I wanna surprise my bestie! At any rate, Jules did tell me that Zach and Asya seem like the type of players that only play on tribal days (at least in this case of this game) which is fine, but I've played a few super intense, intimate, and high-stakes ORGs in the past couple of years which has made me prioritize personal relationships with people over barebones game relationships. This makes dealing with people who aren't that interested in getting to know me or revealing themselves to me a SUPER off-putting experience and a drastic change of pace from what I've become accustomed to. But I'm totally capable of adapting to this environment... I just don't necessarily prefer it. I feel like I have room to connect with Asya on a personal level if given the chance. Zach and Silver I don't know. Although, I do think that if we ever lose immunity here I could for sure spit some game to Silver that would make him believe I want to work with him. I already have an idea of how that conversation goes, and the potential negative consequence of it is practically non-existent on this swap tribe, whereas it could have backfired on me if original Trian lost that third challenge. Anyway, I'll get into that whenever we lose or if I get bored and initiate that chat just to feel something lol

No tribal ever again until merge or swap please. Jessie would be the one I'd want out and I assume Jay would as well but she has Nathan's shard so, like, he'd lose that and then I lose my hope of getting both their shards and misplaying my first idol because I'm not good at survivor

Yayyyy we won immunity. Idk what much else to say except that I got 40 fuel tanks

today i am mad and sad. lost the challenge, was my fault bc purple not pink. no i will not elaborate. now ari jonathan and i have decided to save ali and vote out keegan. i hope it goes well. i am filled with anxiety. i don’t even want keegan to go, we just have to make the decision based on the fact that we don’t want to be seen as a tight alliance going into merge, and keegan can make it look like there was a crack therefore not making us look strong. but he is just sacrificial unfortunately. but we’ll see how it goes. i’m still anxious

Wow we won what a concept See what happens when we don’t throw comps ? Anyways yeah that’s it I guess lol

Honestly I I'm done with these hoes I'm ready to vote off Keegan

This is definitely a very stressful and emotional tribal. I hate that we’re voting for Ali because he is a genuinely fantastic person and under different circumstances I think we could have worked really well together in this game. But when there’s a 4-1 tribe swap and the four of us have absolutely no beef with each other, there’s not a whole lot that can be done. None of my other 3 OG Andro players come across as big move players either. So unless I’m being straight up lied to and am about to get completely blindsided, it’s looking like a unanimous Ali boot. Which is incredibly sad. I really wanted us to win out until merge so we wouldn’t have to vote him out. But such is the game. Keegan signing off (hopefully not for the last time)

#toinfinityandsurvive

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myurbandream · 7 years ago

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Sentinel Wars (4/?)

I actually.... wrote some fic... *crying tears of joy*

(Anyone seeing this for the first time, be warned: I ship Obi/Rex and I’m not ashamed to admit it.)

On AO3 | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4:

The next two days are… an experience.

Rex has to pull Kenobi aside a total of four times on the first day to settle his senses. It works beautifully every time, and leaves Rex feeling high as a skybird when all the accumulated tension drains out of his body in the span of a few minutes. Kenobi’s schedule is hectic at best, but every time, he drops whatever he’s doing when Rex tips an eyebrow at him in a silent request. Rex doesn’t even have to say a word - Kenobi reads him with remarkable ease. It must be that link Kenobi was talking about, sensing what Rex’s mind feels like. The fourth time, Rex doesn’t even have to signal him before Kenobi is excusing himself from the briefing on the hyperdrive repairs, and they find a quiet corner to re-sync without having to discuss it. Rex still isn’t quite sure how he feels about that level of connection, but he has to admit, it’s damned useful.

[mobile users, there’s a cut here]

Their first major stumble is at the end of that first day, and Rex doesn’t even realize it’s a problem because he’s so Sith-damned tired. He follows Kenobi back to his quarters in a haze of exhaustion, and Kenobi doesn’t say anything about his continued presence until they’re both standing at the hatch of the General’s berth.

“Captain?” Kenobi asks, glancing from the closed hatch to Rex, one eyebrow raised.

“...yes?” Rex suppresses a yawn. It’s been a long, long day, and he dearly wants to climb into a rack and turn off his brain for a few hours. Stupid karking instincts won’t let him, but a guy can dream. He blinks at Kenobi, who blinks back at him for a long minute.

“I never asked anyone to assign you quarters,” Kenobi says, with an air of realization. “I suppose I thought Cody-”

“What?” Rex asks stupidly. “Um, what quarters?”

Kenobi stares at him.

Oh - of course. Obviously Kenobi only has one sleeping rack in his quarters. And it won’t be the double rack designed for partnered Sentinels. Stupid.

“Don’t worry about a rack for me, I can take the floor until we figure something out.” Rex clenches his teeth around another yawn and breathes deeply through his nose, automatically dialling down his senses until all he can smell is the standard disinfectant in the hallway.

“I suppose we have more to discuss than I realized,” Kenobi murmurs, touching the control panel to open the hatch. “Please come in, Captain.”

Rex nods and follows Kenobi inside. It’s a typical layout for a high-ranked officer’s quarters, and Kenobi waves Rex to sit down at the small built-in table while he clatters around in the tiny personal kitchenette.

Rex settles into the left-hand bench and props his chin in his hands, feeling the scrape of stubble across his palms. He closes his eyes and inhales - the air is permeated with all the smells he’s come to associate with his Guide, plants and cloth and paper and the scents from his soap, lingering on Kenobi’s skin and in his hair. He drifts in the scent for a while, somewhere between sleeping and zoned out.

A soft touch on his shoulder makes itself known, along with steam wafting up from the table carrying the scent of more plants. Rex blinks awake to find Kenobi standing beside him and a cup of something hot set in front of him.

“Sorry- I’m up, sorry,” he grunts, wrapping his hands around the drink. Warm. “Mmm, thanks.”

“It’s no trouble,” Kenobi assures him, sitting down across from Rex with his own mug in hand. “I find a cup of tea helps me wind down after a long day, especially when there’s things to talk about.”

“Talking, right.” Rex inhales the steam from his cup, cataloguing scents, and then looks up to meet Kenobi’s calm gaze. “What are we talking about?”

“Well, sleeping arrangements for one.” Kenobi smiles a bit, taking the awkwardness out of the statement. “Also the empathic connection between us, and anything you might have noted today that you’d like to discuss. Communication is going to be essential, Captain. It won’t be easy, but all good relationships take work.”

Rex nods, biting the inside of his lip. He knows the taste of arousal on Kenobi’s skin. Too soon for that discussion.

“The first one is simple enough. I’m probably not going to sleep tonight so much as zone in on you for the next… five hours,” Rex calculates, pulling up his chrono. Little gods, Kenobi’s schedule is a mess. “So I need to rack up wherever you’re sleeping. In the same room. Actually, I’ll probably have to do that most nights that we’re around each other. As a general rule.” Ha. General rule for Generals. Damn, he’s tired.

Kenobi blinks at him, and then takes a big gulp of his tea. “Alright. We can do that.”

Rex breathes deeply, trying to stay awake. He takes a sip of his own tea, and that helps, feeling the heat of the steam on his face and concentrating on the new flavors over his tongue. “That empathic connection you mentioned, then. Let’s go over that.”

Kenobi nods, and starts talking.

Rex is surprised at how comfortable he is with the idea that Kenobi can feel what he’s feeling, and get a sense of his intentions. Kenobi promises he isn’t able to read Rex’s mind, which is probably true, given some of the… rather inappropriate thoughts Rex has had over the course of the day. Thank all the little gods for that.

It ought to make him uncomfortable, that connection, but the more they discuss it the more Rex finds he doesn’t mind. He can’t actually feel anything - it’s all on Kenobi’s end - and he can’t deny the benefits. Something as simple as waking up from a zone-out is already a completely new experience.

Sharing his mind with a Jedi doesn’t seem so bad. On the other hand, sharing space with his Jedi is incredibly awkward.

After they hash out the whole Jedi mind link, Rex ‘goes to sleep’ (in other words, he falls into a full sensory zone-out) on a bedroll on the floor in Kenobi’s quarters, with one hand wrapped around Kenobi’s wrist where it dangles over the side of the bunk. A little over four hours later, he wakes up in the General’s bed, curled up around his touchstone, nose buried in the fall of copper hair at the back of Kenobi’s neck… with their bodies pressed together all the way down to their knees.

Kenobi very politely shifts away as Rex unwinds his limbs from their death grip around Kenobi’s smaller body, and both of them studiously ignore Rex’s morning erection as they climb out of the bunk. Rex is mortified - and then he realizes Kenobi can probably feel his embarrassment. Still. He should say something.

“Sorry,” Rex finally croaks. He rubs a hand over his face, too uncomfortable to actually look at the other man.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kenobi replies, his normally smooth voice rough with sleep. He steps sideways around Rex - the cabin isn’t exactly spacious - and shuts himself into the tiny attached ‘fresher.

Rex leans back against the bulkhead beside the bunk and thunks his head into the wall. Instantaneous connections be damned - their relationship is careening along far ahead of his ability to cope with things, and if yesterday was a typical schedule for Kenobi, they aren’t going to have nearly as much time to discuss things as they should.

It hasn’t even been 24 hours since they synced. That’s way too soon to talk about… certain aspects.

Despite the awkward start to the morning, Day Two is a vast improvement. Rex is doing a hell of a lot better in terms of his need to zone on General Kenobi. Four hours and change of being locked onto his Guide has done wonders for his control, even if he’s kriffing exhausted from lack of sleep. Sound and scent are completely tamped down; touch and vision are manageable. Rex is still having trouble with his sense of taste, but it’s always been his weakest sense, and the easiest to control. He lets that urge ride on the input from his nose and manages to keep it together enough that he feels comfortable leaving Kenobi’s side for half of their (first) shift.

Rex spends a few hours at a workstation in the officers’ lounge, catching up on his datafiles and messages from the 501st, and then he indulges in some time on the firing range, blasting targets to bits. He’s working on a cross-draw for his two favorite blasters, and it’s taking a bit more work than he’d thought to get the hang of it and keep his accuracy up; the practice time is a treat, and it helps him relax a little. After the range, he cleans up himself and his pistols, grabs lunch in the officers’ mess, and happily congratulates himself on not having a single moment of sensory distraction in the whole of first shift. He sent a few messages to Kenobi throughout the day cycle, letting the General know as he moved around the ship, but that’s it - no contact, no loss of control. The morning is a complete success.

That doesn’t stop Cody from checking on him, of course.

“I’m fine, I promise, stop hovering,” Rex grunts subvocally, when Cody deliberately catches his eye from the other side of the command deck.

“You haven’t even seen hovering,” Cody murmurs. Rex thinks it’s frankly unfair how Cody can be so quiet and still sound so threatening.

“I’m not a newly-woken shiny,” he hisses back, taking the long way around to the middle of the room. “I’ve been active for four years and I don’t need a minder.” One of the troopers at the comms station overhears them - he glances up at Cody, then at Rex, eyebrow up in a silent question. Rex shakes his head, and the trooper goes back to listening for Separatist signals.

Rex walks up behind Kenobi, as silently as a trooper can in armor, so as not to disrupt the discussion between the General and Admiral Yularen. They’re still trying to track down Grievous, making frequent brief stops on their way to Kamino in hopes of collecting further intel on the enemy’s latest movements. As Rex approaches, Kenobi shifts his stance without breaking the flow of conversation, automatically making space at his side for Rex to slot into place.

On the other side of the holotable, Cody throws one last glance at Rex, and then flicks his eyes significantly towards General Kenobi. “It’s him I’m worried about, not you,” Cody murmurs, his lips barely twitching. “Did you two talk at all last night? How’s he taking it?”

Rex has his first moment of unsteadiness for the day as his hearing tries to compensate for the disparity in volume, simultaneously tracking Cody’s subvocal words and the conversation happening at standard volume right next to them. Needing a touchstone, Rex reaches out with his ungloved hand, going for the bare skin of Kenobi’s wrist - and Kenobi shifts to meet him halfway, quickly tugging off his gauntlet and clasping their hands together.

“Alright?” Kenobi asks quietly, glancing at Rex and waiting for him to nod before he resumes his conversation with Admiral Yularen.

Kenobi’s hand is warm. Rex feels the pulse of blood flowing beneath the skin, the minute flex of his muscles as their fingers intertwine, the rub of callouses on Kenobi’s palm and fingers. One of his knuckles is a bit bumpier than the others, probably broken and not healed exactly right. Sound oscillates in Rex’s head, going from fuzzy to balanced to individual words jumping out at him from across the bridge. He rubs his thumb over the back of Kenobi’s hand and sinks into the sensation of it, feeling the silk of fine hairs under this fingertips. Everything else goes quiet and still.

A bubble rises to the surface of a still pool of water, gently popping, and Rex wakes up. He automatically takes a deep breath, blinking as everything comes back into focus. Kenobi is still talking with Yularen, not looking at him - they’re still reviewing the last location of Grievous. Rex can’t have been out for more than a few seconds. Cody frowns at him, lifting one eyebrow.

“We’re good,” Rex murmurs to Cody. He squeezes Kenobi’s hand in wordless thanks and then lets go, focusing on the discussion. It’s time to get back to work.

Obi-Wan is honestly grateful when Rex asks to go with Cody on a series of outpost inspections, jumping from system to system to check the monitoring stations around Kamino. It's a good first attempt to separate - not quite a controlled environment, but even if something goes wrong at one of the outposts, the all-Sentinel ground teams stationed at each location should be enough backup for Rex and Cody to handle anything short of Grievous himself. And if Grievous does show up, they can always call for help from the outpost.

It’s not like they’re completely disconnected, either. With help from the comms specialists (and a little extra support from Anakin), Obi-Wan now has a direct connection to the comm frequency in Rex’s helmet. The signal can bounce through the shuttle’s onboard comms, or the comm system of each outpost, connecting Rex directly to Obi-Wan on the flagship of the 7th Sky Corps. On top of that, their empathic connection means Obi-Wan can keep track of the emotional state of his Sentinel through the Force.

It'll be fine. Rex can take care of himself; this is just going to prove it so he can rejoin the 501st Legion with no hesitation.

And maybe Obi-Wan can relax from the high-strung state he's been in for the last two and a half days.

Or not. Hyperspace travel makes their empathic link grow faint, almost non-existent, which causes an entirely new kind of tension as Obi-Wan finds himself constantly reaching down that corridor in his mind. The link isn’t yet three days old, and he worries at it like a loose tooth, poking at its weak points and hoping it won’t break apart. Separated by a distance of light-years, all Obi-Wan can sense is a general assurance of Rex’s continued well-being, and the barest edges of his emotions.

After a few minutes, Obi-Wan forcibly puts the connection to the back of his mind. He quickly gets caught up in his duties: battle preparations if they have to come in hot on Kamino, hashing out possible hiding places for Grievous, and debating what potential planets the droid general might target next. The empathic link with Rex - and the accompanying complications to his personal life - fade from his immediate attention.

That doesn't mean he doesn't notice when an echo of shock and adrenaline reverberates from that part of his mind. Rex doesn’t seem to be in pain, and the all-clear beacon at their next scheduled stop is still active, so it can’t be anything too terrible. When they can’t raise Cody and Rex on comms, Obi-Wan is undeniably worried, but there’s nothing he can do about it now, except trust that the two clones can handle themselves.

Still. When Anakin assigns the communications officer to continuously monitor signal traffic from the Rishi Moon Station, Obi-Wan adds his authorization to the order. The moment they hear something, he wants to know about it.

~ to be continued ~

#sentinel wars #obirex #the sentinel #star wars #the clone wars #obi wan kenobi #obi-wan kenobi #captain rex #my fic

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