#had to write it down somewhere

[blu3berrydraws]

I'm sure many of y'all share a complicated relationship with your birthday for various reasons. Mine is in two days and im always really anxious for it. I hate the limelight and certainly don't want attention on myself and yet at the same time I feel very much upset and unimportant/inconsequential when people forget my birthday or don't really put in an effort to mention it.

It's a double edged sword honestly. Wanting it to pass quickly without too much hubbub and still always feeling some childish hopefulness that it'll be fun this year. I haven't celebrated really since I was 10-12 or so, simply because the 'birthday politics' were so confusing and it was much too stressful, not to mention not really having many friends :') It was also just far too close to christmas, so people never had time anyway. My focus shifted much more to that than anything else after my teens, simply because i could focus on getting other people gifts and stuff :'))

[shehzadi]

so israel simultaneously bombed: an ambulance convoy going to the rafah egypt-palestine border that was transporting the most severely injured, the main entrance to al-shifa hospital, the vicinity of al-quds hospital and the indonesian hospital. in doing so, they’ve martyred at least dozens of people, with the numbers still climbing, only to then bomb the osama bin zaid UNRWA school barely an hour later, and the scenes coming out of there are literally those of children blown to pieces. they are unrecognisable as humans. may Allah accept them all as martyrs. and if that wasn’t enough, al-shifa, which is now completely overwhelmed with martyrs’ bodies and even more injured people than before since it’s sheltering and treating those from 1. the ambulance bombing and 2. the entrance bombing, is now totally blacked out. no more light or electricity.

while all this was happening in ghazzah, israeli settlers, aided by the israeli military, were/have been continuously forcing palestinians from their land in the west bank by burning their land and shooting palestinians.

this is only what has happened today (03.11.23) in a period of about 2-3 hours. remember, this has been the last 75 years for palestinians.

[fauchart]

So I caved, and I made a Simpsons OC, because of course. I blame my friends for having too much fun getting silly with them (ily).

Ann-Doreen Dale is just your usual Springfield resident, getting tangled in the many shenanigans of everyone else, usually a victim of circumstances rather than a driver of them.

Most of her episodes revolve around her 'housewife community' (my friends' OCs), and her sham of a relationship with Snake.

This woman was born to fail at life.

[ashestoashes7]

Okay random thought time again. What if the twinyards never met or knew about each other before and they grow up apart and all that. Don’t know about each other at all until Andrew gets brought on as a stunt double for Aaron (who’s like the lead in a movie or something) because they look remarkably similar and they meet a little ways through production.

[poisonedfate]

please, fic writer was my father, call me perpetual wip thinker upper

[general-cyno]

love love the intentional aspect of the trust, loyalty and devotion that's shared between luffy and zoro. as much as fate has come into play in the story, agency and choices are so important too and these two have 20+ years worth of publication in terms of how their relationship's been structured and built along those years and it's fascinating, truly.

I know there's mixed opinions on whiskey peak, for example, but I like that it happened precisely before major arcs such as alabasta, jaya-skypiea and water 7-enies lobby in which luffy actively chose to trust zoro - with saving smoker, during the confrontation against bellamy's crew, with nami robin and chopper, with zoro's assessment of robin's situation and later usopp's comeback to the crew. because luffy has been plenty made aware that the straw hats' well-being and safety is something zoro greatly prioritizes and watches out for. thriller bark also wasn't a random or blind decision made by zoro, it was the result of all the love/loyalty/devotion he's come to feel for luffy and the crew throughout their journey, especially luffy who's proved time and time again that he's a man worth following and given zoro so much in turn (a home, friends to care for and who care for him too, adventure, someone who completely believes in and respects both zoro and his dream, a reason to keep fighting and getting stronger for etc etc).

idk. it's just so deliberate in a way I find compelling. every single time luffy places himself or the crew, their allies or just civilians under zoro's protection that's a choice, one with so much weight and context behind it. when zoro says stuff like "there'd be no point in me being pirate if not on this ship", no matter how casually he does it, that's the kind of thing that highlights how he continually chooses to remain by luffy and the crew's side, for similar reasons. really good stuff.

[stjernespiller]

Another eye

Can also be found on AO3

You can’t see anything.

Blood drips from your face. You think it hurts, in that distant way everything does now. You try to get it out of your eye, just enough to see the fight, but your vision stays dark through the wet sounds of blood and flesh.

Stupid, you think to yourself. Stupid stupid idiot, zoning out in a battle. Should have just looped forward to the king instead of taking that bathroom break and fighting the floor boss. Couldn’t even blinding cry, so what did it matter?

Your family members are speaking. They don’t do that much in battle. You should probably listen.

Bonnie is crying.

Mirabelle heals you again, a light feeling drifting over you that does nothing to take away the weight in your stomach. You don’t know why she did it again, you just need to get this blood out of your eye and you can go back to the fight, stop zoning out just enough to beat the sadness blocking your way to asking the king the question you’ve been dreading.

Isabeau is saying something very close to you. You think it’s him, at least, from the deeper tone. You can’t hear it. Can’t fight can’t see can’t hear. You’re pathetic.

He touches your face.

It’s- new, strange, unexpected. You flinch, and he takes his hand back, like your family always does because you’re so weak you can’t even handle being touched. But the hand only leaves for a moment before it’s back again, holding your cheek. you stand very, very still.

Is the fight over? It has to be. You almost had it before you got distracted and let yourself get hit. Maybe Isabeau and Odile got it while Mirabelle was healing you. He wouldn’t be touching you like this if the sadness was still attacking, back turned to where it stood.

He wipes the blood away from your eye, unstained hand doing a much better job than yours had. You still can’t see. You still can’t hear what any of them are saying. He sounds close to tears, though.

Ah. You know why you can’t see.

It clears your hearing. Fear, for some reason, leaves when you exhale. You breathe deep in, again, and a full sense of calmness fills the space of the fear you breathe out.

The blood hadn’t covered your eye, it was coming out of it. Stupid Siffrin didn’t pay attention to the fight and lost another eye.

Isabeau is cursing, voice wet with tears. His other hand cups your jaw, keeping your head in place. He wipes more blood away, touching your eyeball with so much gentleness you feel it should heal it. Mirabelle crafts another healing spell, and Odile asks Bonnie for the one sweet tonic you picked up this loop.

You pick up your wooden arms, raising them slowly, like through a thick fog, to land your hands on Isabeau’s. He drops his hands from your face. You’re speaking to your whole party when you say, “It won’t work.”

Bonnie sobs. Someone, likely Odile, pours a tonic on your eye anyway.

You just need to get to a frozen tear. You don’t remember where they are, but maybe you could convince your family to lead you to one. If you could find some excuse. Or just swing your arms around until you hit one.

“The head housemaiden could heal you,” Mirabelle whispers, voice just as teary as Isabeau’s. “I should have taken more healing classes. Studied more on my own. I can’t do it. And by the time we get to her...”

She trails of. Crafts another healing cure. It works just as well as the others.

Healing of this scale needs to be done quick. You know, because you all talked about it when you lost your first eye, and when Isabeau showed you a small scar on his bicep. Go more than an hour or two without the right healing craft, and it’ll be permanent.

An idea lights up in your mind. You turn your head, but it all stays black, and you can’t look anyone in the eye.

“We can find a tear. Freeze me.” It’s so perfect. You almost have to stop yourself from grinning. The best excuse you could have ever asked for. “when you beat the king and everyone unfreezes, someone can help me.”

The lie is easy, as easy as all the others you’ve filled these two days with. They won’t beat the king without you. You won’t unfreeze with everyone else, and the head housemaiden will never help you. But you need to see to fight, and you need to loop to see, and you need a tear to loop.

It’s quiet for a moment. “Will that work?” Odile asks, voice strangely soft.

“It’s worth a try.”

“We’ll find a tear!” Bonnie yells. They either stamp their foot or jump in place. “We’ll defeat the king and you’ll get your eye back!” their voice is still wet. You don’t know why. Are they scared of fighting the king without you? Now you’re thinking about the loop you let them go alone. Stars, you really are an awful person. Of course they’re scared when you can’t keep fighting, and just before the king, too.

“Let’s bandage it until then.” Mirabelle says, and a piece of cloth presses against your face. It’s nice and cool. “Your coat is all dark know.”

Odile, you think, listening to the footsteps, start walking. “We can’t go back,” she says, “hopefully there will be some tears further in.”

You walk after her. The corridor is as familiar to you as the rest of this blinding house. You don’t need an eye to know the way.

Isabeau still hovers beside you, steps heavy but careful. He doesn’t offer to guide you, probably afraid to touch you, but you can imagine his arm reaching out, hovering above your shoulder, ready to steer you away from the walls or the floor or what else you might kill yourself on. Fragile little Siffrin, can’t walk on his own.

Bonnie is to your other side, rushing ahead for two steps at a time before falling back again, never straying far. They hiccup, and audibly sniff their snot in. You feel awful. The tear is close. You just need to loop.

Mirabelle walks in front of you with Odile. You can almost feel her continuously looking back at you, footsteps irregular in that familiar pattern. You don’t know why it’s familiar, and when you try to remember, it slips away like lightless sand between your fingers.

The air is tense. You slip into your mind, a little. Claude is up ahead, frozen in time with the secret ingredient. You turn a corner, and don’t think about how strange it looks to your family for you to walk through the corridor like this. Isabeau calling you graceful is there, memory pushing itself to the front of your mind, but you don’t force yourself to act as if you don’t know this place better than yourself. They won’t remember.

“Does it hurt?” Bonnie whispers besides you. You instinctively look towards them, but still see nothing but darkness around you. “Sorry, stupid question. Of course it hurts.” Their voice is still wet. They sniffle. “You just act like it doesn’t.”

You’ve been acting a lot. Almost everything feels like a secret, a lie, a play. This isn’t one of them. “It’s just an eye.”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN JUST AN EYE?!” Bonnie yells, and their voice is still wet, but it cracks in fury. “You always do this, you don’t care about anything! It’s your eye, you can’t see, you lost both of them now! You have to care!”

They hate you. You remember, now, that they don’t love you. You couldn’t get yourself to help them this loop, too tired from hearing the same thing again and again and again. In this moment, Bonnie hasn’t hugged you. In this moment, you haven’t talked with Bonnie about losing your first eye. In this moment, they still hate you.

But it’s fine. You’re on your way to a tear. You’ve all been walking this stretch for a while, Mirabelle should see Claude soon, and then they’ll find the safe room, and after that - you think you’ve seen tears there before.

“It’s just an eye,” you say again, because you can’t bring yourself to pretend any differently, that it matters to you more than having to loop and run through the third floor again. “I’ve lost worse.”

Bonnie doesn’t respond. Claude has to be here soon, right? Was she always this deep in the corridor?

"How is your eyes not the worst thing you've lost?" Mirabelle asks, so quiet you almost don’t hear her. The kind of question she doesn’t expect a response to.

You shouldn’t respond. You don’t want to respond. How can you. You can’t speak it’s name, can’t tell them anything about it, and you already didn’t help Odile this loop because you couldn’t bring yourself to follow the blinding script again when she won’t understand and won’t remember and won’t care.

“I lost my home,” you say anyway, because it’s all one big cosmic joke. They won’t remember anyway. It doesn’t matter. “And I don’t even remember it.”

Does your country matter, if no one remembers it?

Isabeau speaks up, always the emotionally mature one. “I’m sorry, that sounds awful.”

“You never remember anything,” Bonnie sniffles, sounding tired. The kind of exhausted you get calming down from crying. You wish your stupid eye would let you cry.

You’ve already broken the dam. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. “I don’t.” Isabeau tugs at you cloak, pulling you slightly towards him. He lets you go, a meter more to the left of the corridor than before, and doesn’t explain anything. You don’t ask.

“Not even the word for a stuffed animal. Or a sharpening stone, which you use all the time. Or bananas.” It seems to calm Bonnie down, listing all the things you don’t remember. You follow along.

“Not the name for all the birds in Dormount. What bonding earring are. What we did last week. My family. My country. Your names, that one time.”

It doesn’t calm you down. Or the others, for that matter. Isabeau stopped walking. The other three follow suit.

You stop too, because the others did. Then you wish you had kept going, because now you’re just standing here, and you still can’t see anything.

“Sif...” Isabeau starts, soft and careful. “I’m sorry. We’ve been poking fun at your memory, but this... We need to talk, after we beat the king.”

You don’t want to talk. Have you already made the pun on your memory this loop? Bonnie said you couldn’t remember the name, so probably, you need something else, something to divert the attention, it doesn’t matter because they’ll forget but right now they remember and you don’t want to talk.

“Aren’t there any tears here?” You ask, and it comes out harsher than you planned.

“Oh! No, not yet, but there’s a door here, maybe on the other side?” Mirabelle sounds nervous and jumpy. Did you do that? Stars, you’re awful.

Then you think. There’s a door, and you hear someone open it. Claude was before the door. She was, you know it, you can’t have forgotten that, Mirabelle stops you all and says the same thing every time.

Did you all walk past her? Did... did Mirabelle change the script? Because you’re blind now?

Your head hurts. You walk towards the door, and only need to follow the wall for a moment before you reach it, having been pulled from the middle of the corridor by Isabeau. Was that.... because of Claude? Did he pull you out of the way?

When Mirabelle tells everyone to hurry through the safe room, they do so. No one talks about taking a break, and Odile’s stomach doesn’t rumble. You’re through the room without eating or touching the star.

“There!” Bonnie yells, first out of the second door.

“A tear,” Odile says simply. “Two, actually. Pick your poison, Siffrin.”

You chuckle, just a little. Lean right. But you don’t actually know where in the room the tears are. You just know the door to the king is straight ahead.

“Can I lead you to it?” Isabeau offers. You empty your mind, think of nothing, and hold out your hand.

He guides you in an arch. Let’s go of your hand. You reach out, and dream of nothing.

[smalltall]

I listened to 'Butchered Tongue' and thought about my Irish great-great-grandfather. I thought about a movie I watched over twenty years ago--can't for the life of me remember the title--where a young Irish boy from my great-great-grandfather's time was forbidden from speaking his language by Catholic priests. When he disobeyed, the priests punished him with a tight collar of thistles that scratched and pierced his throat until he couldn't speak at all. I thought about how the Irish language leaps and ripples when spoken, appearing in my mind as a bright swift river. I thought of all the damage I've seen done to rivers--dams and factory runoff, discarded recliners. I remembered the goal I've had since high school to teach myself Irish Gaelic. I remembered the day I filled three trash bags by picking up bottles, cans, foam cups, license plates, chip bags, empty lighters from the riverbank near my house. I worked in the shadow of an old paper mill that had shat poison into this water for a hundred years. One of its drained chemical vats is a swamp now, and you can hear frogs singing up from the bottom. The river still had a few fish even when they could barely pass that slime through their gills; now, after a few decades of the mills standing empty, their numbers have grown. Riddled with PCBs and too toxic to eat, but they're here. Each year, more life. I'm learning how to sing Casadh an Tsugain phonetically. I don't know what the words mean yet but I'll practice until I can say them all. It's a start.

[magical-girl-coral]

Actually, no, have another snippet. I am not done here. Riz deserves some nice things.

"Yeah, I can't really do any of that," Riz said, shrugging and putting his hands in his pockets. "My apartment building has a worse leak than usual and my mom still hasn't gotten her pay from her old job yet, so I probably have to pick up a summer job to help with money. Shit happens, ya know?"

Oisin hummed to himself. "I see. So why don't I just buy Strongtower Luxury Apartments and give it a fixer upper?"

All of wheels in Riz's brain came to a halt. "What?"

"I can just buy the apartment building and give it a makeover," Oisin said casually, as if this is a normal thought to have. "My family is still feels pretty guilty over everything that's happened and I do want to undo some of the damage we've made in the past year. I saw the state the apartments are at, I doubt the landlord will give much of a fight. I can even lower the rent, it's not like I need the money. Maybe send you guys on a vacation until the construction is over."

"You will lower our rents," Riz repeated slowly, "and send us on a vacation. Just like that. For fun."

Oisin was too busy fumbling on his crystal to notice Riz's aneurysm. "Will the beach do? I know a good hotel there that owes my family a lot of cash. I can also send you to somewhere greener if you want. Or colder. It's open season for all I care."

Riz was opening his mouth and closing it, truly speechless for the first time in his life.

"Is that not enough, is it?" Oisin asked, dropping his crystal with a frown. "Don't answer that, I know it isn't. I can also make you sure you don't have to pay rent at all. My clan is terrified of you for killing my grandma, they wouldn't be able to say no."

Riz stopped feeling the ground underneath him around ten seconds ago. Fabian swooped in to catch him in time. "The Ball, get it together. We cannot faint in front of our former enemies."

"I am not fainting," Riz said faintly, "and I already have my shit together. I just need a minute."

[heyclickadee]

You know, if/when we get Tech back, and if he had anything to do with CX-2 (either flat out was CX-2 and the impalement helped, or was CX-2 via direct control via something like my super niche operator theory), and he sees the batch before he’s completely recovered, part of me wants to see:

1. Tech back away from Omega when she sees him and runs to hug him, because he doesn’t remember her yet as anything but that kid Hemlock made him kidnap and he feels incredibly torn up about it and doesn’t know why. Omega’s little face crumbling when this happens would be devastating and it would be really great set up for Tech moving to hug her first once he remembers who she is. I don’t know, Omega deserves to have someone else be the first to initiate the hug.

2. Tech lose his entire shit at Crosshair and Hunter the first time he sees them without really understanding why. Not because they deserve it—they don’t—but because there’s some good good cronchy conflict there and it’s a good lead in to resolving the little bit of Hunter and little bit more of Crosshair that remains unresolved.

[sourapplesauces]

why is gregory's age so confusing...

like how do you expect me to believe this little guy might be a highschooler in security breach?! (according to the books at least)

if you go to GGY in the TftP, his friends Tony and Ellis are both in seventh grade, and since Gregory shares classes with them its easy to assume he's in 7th grade too. Tony is 12 which is the average age for a seventh grader (12-13). And of course Gregory could be younger, but he really cant be any younger than 11 during GGY.

And since then, a year or two passes before Security Breach happens. (while its up to debate in my opinion its been 2 years). so if you do the math... he's most likely 14 (but his general age range is 13-15 (!)) which would make him a freshman in high school?!

tldr; Gregory is a freshman in HS... he's just a short king

[holland-vosijk-antari]

I've been thinking about how white london probably has different kinds of physical affection to red and grey, I can't imagine hugging being common among people who are casual friends like it is in a lot of places here (I'm talking from the pov of someone from an area not too far away from real london so i get that this isnt the case everywhere lol) hugging requires a certain trust that the person you are hugging is doing anything nefarious with their hands - like stabbing you in the back for instance... so i like to think that in white london where trust is about as thin on the ground as magic, hugging is a massive declaration of trust in which you may as well tell the other you love them.

on an additional note it makes me wonder about what affections would be commonplace, would a kiss on the cheek be a more common greeting to someone you care for? would people give a short bow as a greeting towards an acquaintance? (both things very common in many places in this world too so not exactly strange?) or are people simply all-or-nothing with their affections, giving all their affection to one or two people who have their absolute trust and not showing any at all otherwise?

when it comes to greeting a stranger i was taught in my martial arts classes to introduce myself with both hands visible and to shake hands with both of my hands as a sign of respect within the culture so i wonder if that kind of action would be common in makt - dont hide your hands when trying to gain someones trust or they will think you are hiding something...

[phasewashere]

if you ever see me staring into space in public, i am propably thinking about gay sex. hope this helps 

[pretendthisisaname]

Sure hope this isn't some kind of foreshadowing

[fairweathermyth]

i want to tell you about two of my favorite songs of all time, both written by my toddler aged nephew (a prodigious songwriter!) they go like this:

a person with a dog! a person with a dog! a person with a dog, and i want to take them home! (his first stone cold classic lyric which he came up with at age two during a neighborhood walk and has stood the test of time);

i'm siting in a chair, and i'm doing what i want. i don't know what to do, but i'm doing what i want. (his newest instant classic, recently written at age four. truly my anthem)

[possamble]

about to pass out but

auDHD shame and guilt hours <3