#how far until you can't go back?

[peppered-moths]

six-petaled promise

scott doesn't use salt in his cooking anymore. it all tastes horribly bland. he's never been the best cook anyways.

he had been the one who did that for them. scott still can't say his name, except when he wakes up, calling out for a life long gone.

he misses it. it feels... painfully obvious, to say the least. there had been a future where he didn't have to claw for power, to vie for even a chance of living beyond the competition, and he misses it. he misses thunderstorms. he misses fresh-baked bread. he misses lilies, white, six-petaled. he misses... god, he misses life.

so yes. maybe he is crazy. maybe that's what the others say about him, along with the fact that he's cold and heartless and dead, on the inside and outside both.

(and, well. the heartless part isn't strictly untrue. he has feelings. but, well. necromancy has its ups and downs. there is always a new sacrifice to make.)

scott doesn't use salt in his cooking anymore. he can't remember the last time he ate something for the sake of enjoying it. everything is sustenance, fuel to push onwards.

he has to win. no matter the cost. he knows he's not the only one- he sees the constant blue tinge of pris' face, the way she breathes air like it's not quite natural anymore. he's watched joey, manic, fever higher than any normal person should be able to survive, throwing himself into a block of ice for some relief. he's listened to shelby cry storms at the death of a bee, seen the fresh lightning burns on her hands.

yes. they all lose something. it makes it worth it. it doesn't make it fair. power is power, at the end of the day.

scott pretends that the lichen crawling up his fingers is simply a result of too much magic at one time. that it will go away, slip back down his wrists without a trace. he would make scott scrub it off. scott will do it when he's back.

scott doesn't use salt in his cooking anymore. it burns his tongue, his throat. his arms are mottled with pale scars. oh, the sacrifices he makes for him. it doesn't matter; they'll adapt. they always do.

how does it feel to be a real witch? a real lich? cleo laughs at him. he doesn't think they're actually laughing at him. her eyes are distant, far away as ever. she glows now, in the dark, the lichen budding on her skin.

pinocchio, pinocchio, a real boy at last, they muse, steepling their hands in front of them. tell me, why do you still dance to their puppet strings?

scott doesn't understand. he doesn't understand so many things. that's why he has to practice. he has to get better. be the best.

cleo looks away from him. she looks-

(at you. she looks at you. don't do this to him. it isn't fair. nothing is fair. learn to live with it.)

scott blinks. nothing has happened. nothing has changed. it has always been like this.

go home, scott.

there's no home left to go back to. he says it, nonchalant. if he had a heart, it would be beating in his chest. nevertheless.

then go anywhere.

scott doesn't use salt in his cooking anymore. scott doesn't cook anymore.

(when does the question turn from who am i without you? to who am i at all? where is the line? how do you learn how to stop, to just let go? i don't think any of us know.)

the earth hums beneath his feet. he can feel death, old bones rattling, waiting. there is a graveyard twenty minutes' walk from his house.

there are two graves side by side at an abandoned home. scott thinks there ought to have been a third. he thinks he ought to have carved their names on their graves, let them be remembered. milo. maxwell. really, he ought to have done a lot of things.

(he is the corpse and he is the vulture circling overhead and he is the mycelia beneath and he is and he is and he is-)

he is all that is left.

scott doesn't use salt in his cooking anymore.

[arctic-hands]

I always say the shingles saga as an immunocompromised sixteen-year-old was my near-death experience but then my mom will occasionally make musings of the time my heart stopped when I was 8 and I'm like oh yeah that happened

[tittyinfinity]

contemplating deleting my blog soon I might make a new blog but idk

[notyoinara]

alice yabusame art marathon 2024 has ended early.........it's okay there's always next year

[majouartings]

PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA *inhale* PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE Z

[sysig]

The brainworms are winning, clearly (Patreon)

[racke7]

My internet has been investigated by a professional.

There might be something weird with the big cables (to quote the guy: the "inner-pair" and "outer-pair" of the eight-cables are of different lengths, but by all accounts still work just fine), but my own equipment has at least passed (no extra-fine for crying wolf for me).

The weird stability-thing continues to be weird. And current test is for them to switch my internet-provider (internet-provider has a use-contract with the cable-operators, who are the ones investigating) over the weekend. See if the problem is on that end.

It's possible that this is the case (at which point I guess I'll try to switch permanently), or that it's that weird cable-length resulting in the problem (which is... a whole different can of worms).

[dhwty-writes]

.

[queenerdloser]

i'm not trying to be mean but if you're not american and you have no idea how the american voting system works, maybe just shut the fuck up about the 2024 election. thanks.

[firebirdsdaughter]

I'm divided…

… I like Rukia getting something to do, I like the Kuchiki sibs plus their idiot, I like that she was allowed to hold her own despite this being a 2000s shonen manga, you know what I mean. Like for what it was many of the women in BLEACH made it through fairly well and I like that. I like Rukia being cool, I like her Bankai, I like it.

But at the same time… Like I get why it was her, and I like it, and I don't so much mind as… Well, I just kinda wish that Renji had gotten to kill As Nodt, since he was the one who actually had to watch Byakuya get maimed like that? Like obvi Rukia deserves a shot too, like I said, I understand it being her and I don't mind, I just kinda would… Also like to see a reality where Renji got to do him in.

Not necessarily in canon, bc yes, give Rukia more to do? Like I just want an au where Renji got him. Them. Finish what he tried to start before getting punted.

It's like I like the way it was and I wouldn't actually change it bc we always need more women being able to fight on their own, and I liked what was done. I loved Byakuya just showing up to get his bankai back and then leaving the rest to his sister, I love love love her getting Bankai.

I just. Want to see the version where Renji gets a go at him after having to watch that.

Like I don't want to write it myself, but I want it.

[lisbonsteresa]

they make me so

[ourceliumnetwork]

it is not slacking off to write or create it is not slacking off to do things that are fun i am not slacking off or procrastinating right now i'm allowed to do things i enjoy doing for fun including playing games and writing and such

[xavieremix]

okay so the tags on that last post got me feeling those melon collies so i'm just gonna. tagdump in here. slightly sensitive topics? so uh. scroll down (or press J to jump to next post). or read my thoughts like the morning paper. sorry. cheers.

[enby-cuntboy]

thinking about an escape room but the twist is that if you don't get out in time, you're used by the entire staff until they're satisfied.

you know what you're getting into, of course. you sign the forms saying that the facility can't be held liable for any damages that happen to you. afterwards, you're stripped down and restrained. cuffs around your wrists behind your back as you're bent over a table, chains holding your ankles together. a collar is attached to your neck, connected in two places. one, to hold you still on the table. and the other connected to the ceiling with a lot of slack. you seem to be in a dungeon, iron bars blocking the unlocked exit.

you're left alone and the timer is placed immediately in front of you, counting down, minute by minute. right where you can see it. the restraints are firm and secure, but they each have their give, their weaknesses. the chains on your feet can be undone by looping it around the corner of the table and pulling at it at just the right angle. then you have to move your cuffed wrists behind your back and under your legs so you can use them.

the part of the collar connecting you to the table is dealt with by simply unhooking it, meaning you're able to stand up and move around the room. there's a box with a pile of keys for you to sort through. one of them must open the cuffs. one of them must unlock the bars. you sort through them in a hurry, adrenaline making your cuffed hands shake as you try each and every one of them, adding them gradually to the discard pile. once your hands are free, you fiddle with your collar. it doesn't seem to have any give. but while doing this, you see that on the other side of the iron bars is a bolt cutter, exactly what you need.

you're invigorated, trying all the keys on the bars as the minutes count down. your time is scarce, it's moving far more quickly than you're able to take into account. until finally, the lock clicks. the metal gate swings open and you can see the bolt cutter on the floor right in front of you.

except when you walk forward, the collar around your neck tugs you back. the tool is just out of reach. you can't get enough slack to pick it up. you try desperately, every option you can think of, to stretch your body out and try and kick the bolt cutter closer to you, desperately now as you see you only have three minutes remaining, then two, then one and a half.

until you finally remember the chains on your feet. you hurry back to the table, reaching under it to grab the chains and looking at the time left on the timer. 50 seconds. you hurry back to the iron bars, throwing the chains, trying to lasso the bolt cutter to finally get it in your grasp. and with 20 seconds remaining, the tool hooks onto the end of the shackles on the chains, and you desperately try reeling it in. 15 seconds, and you're pulling it closer, so very carefully. until finally, you reach down and wrap your hands around the tool and that's when your heart sinks.

it wasn't a bolt cutter. it was a toy. lightweight and useless, like something that would go in a child's tool set. and you realise: you were never meant to escape this. you never even had a chance. you had willingly walked into a trap.

your time is up and an alarm sounds, the lighting in the room turning red. the staff walk through the door, heading straight for you, cocks and straps and toys in hand, grins of delight on their faces.

they push you back onto the table and use you exactly how they want to, each and every one of them noticing how soaked you've gotten just from being in the escape room and playing this game, mocking you for what a slut you are as they take you without any preamble.

they use all your holes simultaneously, manhandling you into whatever positions they want. bending you over, taking you from behind. seeing how much can fit into you at once. slapping you about, spitting on you, spanking and whipping, passing you from one to another. never a moment for you to rest or recover before you're impaled on another cock.

all while their mocking voices taunt you.

this is what you were asking for when you came here. this is exactly what you were hoping for. to be used relentlessly. you never wanted to escape anyway, no matter what you'd say. you needed to be used like this. only sluts ever enter these escape rooms, and so you would be treated as what you were. willing holes for them.

once they've all had their turn, they take the toy bolt cutter and shove it into your used hole, fucking you with it slowly. it's too big and uncomfortable, but you stretch around it so easily after all that use. your arousal making it easy. you keep crying out, and they keep laughing. this was the thing you thought would set you free. this was your salvation for twenty minutes or so, all you cared to get. and now they were filling you with it. and worse than that, they were making sure you enjoyed it.

they bring you to an intense orgasm with the very thing you thought would save you. your mind is foggy and you can't think of much aside from the feeling of the toy inside you. you're burning with embarassment.

you came so close to escaping. you were so resourceful and clever about it all. but now you were nothing but holes for them to use until they decided they were done. all that intelligence you used to try and get out would leak out with your arousal as they continued to whore you out. your brain would never work the same once they were done with you. once they had reduced you to something so pathetic.

they aren't done using you. they won't be for a while. and you don't know if you ever want to be done serving them. this is where thinking got you, and now you were being put in your place.

[vaspider]

Tonight, the night before Election Day 2024 in the US, I am thinking about my stepkid.

I am thinking about the phone call they made to us earlier this year, the one where they told us they'd gone to the hospital thinking they had appendicitis and found out, instead, that a zygote - a tiny splodge of cells - had taken up residence not in their uterus but in a fallopian tube. The one where our kid said they were waiting for their partner to arrive, hoped that said partner would get there before the docs took our kid back to terminate that pregnancy, & assured us that they'd be okay.

After all, our kid lives in a state with choice measures embedded in state law. That pea-sized blot of tissue doesn't have more right to their health than they do. Nobody is standing between them and their doctors. They made a decision, and that was that.

In this tiny tragedy, the kind that plays out dozens of times a day at minimum across the country, we only had to worry about the small risk of surgery complications. We didn't have to worry about Ken Paxton threatening to charge their doctors with felonies. We didn't have to think, "What if the hospital's legal team doesn't think an ectopic pregnancy - which is never ever viable and must be terminated before it kills our kid - is really that big of a deal?" We didn't have to worry that they live in a state where ob-gyns are fleeing, leaving few experts behind, as has happened in Idaho.

We didn't have to watch our kid vomit up black blood before dying the day after their baby shower the way Neveah's mom did. We didn't have to pray in a waiting room (while doctors took our kid apart until their heart stopped because the doctors waited too long out of fear of anti-choice laws) until a doctor came to tell us we'd have to bury them the way that Amber's mom did. We aren't having to pick up our lives after fully treatable miscarriage-related sepsis took them from us the way that Josseli's husband and daughter must.

I could go on for far, far too long.

Listen. If you are a single-issue non-voter and have already decided that "both parties are the same" or whatever other thing you've told yourself so you can sleep at night, smug and secure, then I can't reach you and I can't help you. But if you genuinely think that your votes don't matter, if you're just suffering from a bout of overwhelm or apathy, if you're too young to remember the 2000 election and can't see that Dobbs is a direct result of that election and every one that's followed, please, I am fucking begging you.

I didn't really talk about this when it happened. I mentioned something briefly, maybe. The posts I've started writing about it are still in my drafts. It was too fresh, too frightening. It's not any less frightening now, honestly - because if this week doesn't end with President Kamala Harris, we're headed for a national abortion ban, at the minimum - but it's not about how fucking frightened I was or how sad and bewildered I was to realize that my kid was going through this crisis in a nation more hostile to them than when I needed a D&C for an abortion at 21, in 1998.

It's about stopping this chapter of this fucking bullshit and at least finding some new fucking bullshit.

Vote, dammit.

Do the other work on Wednesday. Tomorrow, the work is to vote.

[onigiray]

hey guys does anyone have a tutorial for how to stop crying because tomorrow is my last day with my long distance partner after spending 6 months together no glue no borax 👍 any suggestions welcome thanks