#how it feels to disappear

[themissingnumbers]

Hey, Lance? Why did you react to the mention of Red like that? Is- Is something wrong...?

The Dragon Master's breath catches in his throat, a knee-jerk reaction that only serves to heighten your confusion and concern.

The silence that lingers after that question hangs heavy between the two of you. He refuses to look back at you, refuses to answer aloud for far too long.

It makes your mind wander, as he mulls it over- clearly, he knows many things that you don't. What exactly about Red would have him go so quiet? After how open he'd been about everything, why was he...?

"It's nothing against him."

Lance's voice cuts off your thoughts. Ah- you'd started to space out. He's looking at you again, a more somber expression on his face.

"Then what is it? If something's wrong with MY brother, don't I deserve to know?" you ask in turn, when he fails to follow up on his words.

"There's nothing WRONG with him," he answers quickly, seeming to bristle a bit. "It's just..."

"Just what?"

"I- I can't exactly provide a clear answer to you, miss. You and your brother are people that I can't understand like other things. That's what unsettles me so much.

Neither of you belong in this world. I can't see the two of you like I can everything else. Him especially. Only what's occurred while you're both within this place. So I'm..."

Lance trails off again. You tense your jaw, frustration bubbling in you.

Breathe, Leaf- in, hold, out, hold. Repeat. Breathe.

Though your attempt to calm only does so much- your next words still coming out with an audible bite:

"Get to the point."

"I'm SCARED for you!" he finally snaps back, before sighing heavily and pinching the bridge of his nose.

"... Red is NOT someone to be scared of," you reply while the man regains his composure, "you don't know him like I do."

"I understand that well. Don't assume I don't. I might as well have a sibling of my own- I know how those things are."

His walking slows down, and he runs a hand over his face and back through his hair.

"This just... it doesn't sit right with me. What he said to you back there, to 'keep going'... He doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't belong here. Doesn't know this place, or what lies ahead. And if he does..."

He swallows thickly.

"... I'm scared that he doesn't have your best interest in mind. You should be going back, not forward."

"You don't know anything about him, then," you spit, glaring at Lance.

"He's already saved me multiple times! He's never done or told me anything that wasn't in my best interest. He LOVES me, I KNOW it-"

"You didn't seem very sure of that in Mr. Fuji's home."

Your words die in your throat.

...

"... But I trust him," you insist, your voice weaker than you'd wanted it to be.

"I... I trust him. You don't have to. But I do. And I will never, ever stop. The... the amount of times, that he's saved me- even just helped me- in weird ways, with stuff he really shouldn't know... I couldn't even begin to count. Why would this suddenly be different? Why would he turn against me now?"

You look down, finally breaking eye contact with the older man.

"... So I'm gonna keep going. No offense, but... I trust him more than I trust a guy I just met that's a weird version of someone who only cared about me as a challenger."

"…それ以上に君のことを気にかけていたんだ、リーフ。"

"Huh?"

"Nothing," he sighs, shaking his head.

"I know my words have no sway over you in regards to this- and I won't be able to travel beyond this void. I'm just begging you- please consider another way. I don't want you to end up like... I- I don't want you to get hurt."

You look up at him again, meeting the man's pleading eyes. Even though you still feel that bitterness crawling inside of you...

You can't deny the sincerity in his eyes.

"Well..." you mutter, finally caving just a little.

"If it gives you peace of mind... I'll be careful. Just have a little faith in me, okay? I'm confident that everything will be alright."

"... Of course. I... I believe in you. I know that you're a strong girl- it'll take more than this to topple you."

FIRST || PREV | NEXT READ THE STORY IN ORDER ON AO3

[bonetrousledbones]

fuck it since my birthday is in like one day i'm gonna use my birthday wish to tell y'all to look at the shit going on in southern Appalachia right now after Hurricane Helene. look at it and talk about it and spread resources about it like wildfire because nobody else fucking is and it feels like we're on our own out here.

there are people who are stranded in hazardous areas that are still safer than trying to leave by driving on the increasingly hazardous roads. i'm personally going into my third day without electricity at this point, and haven't been able to get any gas for a generator to even keep our fridge working. there are very few places with power or running water, and cell service has just barely been restored in the last hour. ground crews are working hard to repair things, but there are many, many areas that are entirely inaccessible that may not receive these fixes for several more days if not weeks. i'm afraid my own neighborhood might become one of those areas if repairs don't get to us soon, and since we're much more rural i have a difficult time trying to be optimistic about it.

we're very far inland. i guarantee you damn near everybody here was expecting a little more rain and wind like we usually get during hurricane season, if they even heard about the hurricane beforehand in the first place since most people only got about a twelve hour notice before landfall- after several major areas had already been flooded. our terrain protects us from most major weather events- most locals have never encountered a single tornado or legitimate tornado warning in our entire lives. nobody i've talked to or heard from about it seems to have had any idea that it would be this bad. everybody's wishing that they took it more seriously, but we've never, ever had to before. i've seen people comparing it to Hurricane Katrina and honestly i'm not sure if that's all too inaccurate. today while looking for a single working gas station i drove by a military helicopter parked in front of the elementary school i went to when i was little.

please for the love of god, talk about us. talk about the good memories you had here or the beauty of our mountains, and talk about how devastated we are as we watch historic structures, buildings, and entire towns get wiped from the face of the earth like they were never even there. stop dismissing us as uneducated hicks and rednecks and hilllbillies and fucking help us.

r/Asheville resource/updates megathread (Asheville is the largest city in western North Carolina)

How to set up disaster roaming for cell service

WLOS Live updates

Duke Energy power outage map

WNC Landslide Map

Hotels accepting locals

Emergency shelter locations

I live in western North Carolina so all of my own resources are centered around that. If anybody from the other impacted areas has additional sources they'd like to add, please don't hesitate to do so.

[arsenicflame]

Bonus round! Do you use a queue tag?

[sophfandoms53]

Anyway shout out to Dewey who constantly looked like he was having the worst time of his fucking life in the pitches

Just an 11 year old pissed off at the world it seems😭

[riviclouds]

*pets him with a slightly damp toothbrush*

[meteortrails]

law and luffy are so fun bc the fundamental basis of their relationship is that they were both there for each other in one of their most isolated, life changing moments of grief, and they’re the only reason the other survived it. they may not necessarily know all that much about each other, but they do know parts of each other that not even the closest members of their crew (their family) know now. like obviously by the end of dressrosa law sees and understands the reason luffy’s crew follows him, but I think a less obvious truth is that when law saves him luffy sees and understands the reason law’s crew follows him. I just think about luffy’s instinctive faith and trust in law on punk hazard; he looks at law and understands that as much as he pretends not to be law is fundamentally the person who saved him before he is anything else. and I think they both kinda struggle to categorize the specific and unique way in which they are important to each other (although admittedly luffy stops caring to much much sooner LOL), bc it IS different than their relationships with their crew or their family. not necessarily any more or less meaningful, just different. and idk i guess i just think it’s all very sweet, in the end, that they managed to find each other like this.

[imnotditzy]

Billy and Marvel have very different fighting styles.

For one, Billy treats every fight like a street fight: nothing is off limits. The boy will bite, scratch, kick, and claw. He fights dirty, and he will throw anything he can at you. His moves are unpolished, based on pure instinct or what matters in the moment, which makes his moves unpredictable — atleast until someone finds a pattern.

But Marvel, they fight in the ancient technique of Pankration. (Pankration is an Ancient Greek fighting technique, which is a combination of wrestling and boxing. It used to be in the Olympics and apart of Ancient Greece battle technique. It has limited rules and sometimes fights resulted in death. Olympic wins were usually counted by submission or knockouts. It is also said Heracles and Theseus used this fighting method in myths) The fighting style’s devastating and outright brutal. But it gets the job done, and is very intimidating—meaning it’s the perfect fit for the Champion of Magic. But for a friendly superhero? Not really.

It’s not like Captain Marvel can win here either, it’s between fighting like a street rat with no rules or fighting like you’re still in Ancient Greece, when everyone lacked entertainment and morals. Which are both pretty bad, because the choices are:

Captain Marvel, the superhero whose never uttered a curse word in public, gotten rude or actually expressed any strong negative emotion, clawing at a supervillain like their on the verge of death and the one thing they’ll do before slipping away from the world is taking the villain with them. They’re kicking, thrashing and…biting? Biting. They are kicking, thrashing and biting using pure fight or flight instinct with sparse strikings of lightning pounding down from the sky. or

Captain Marvel, the guy whose nickname is “The Big Red Cheese” and poorly hides a grimace every time someone uses the nickname, kicking a supervillain square in the stomach, then picking them up and throwing them on their head. Once the villain’s down they’re over extending their shoulder, then the other, before putting them in a stranglehold...

Both ways are just…

wtf?

Neither are really expected and I can’t imagine which ones funnier.

[year2000electronics]

i think obsessive/selfish/misguided love or “harmful” love in general as an antithetical theme to gravity falls’ theme of love and family makes so much sense. if you think about it, a lot of the conflict in the show is born out of selfishness and obsessiveness and loving people as objects or means to an end. obviously, you have the big examples like gideon for mabel and giffany for soos, but every time both sets of the pines twins have butted heads, it’s usually been because of that too. just in like, a different way.

stan and mabel are both relying on dipper and ford to stay anchored to them forever to secure their happiness, and even though it’s a totally okay thought to have and dipper and ford weren’t in too much of a rush to consider their feelings, it’s a bandaid solution at best! dipper ends up NOT leaving because that’s the right thing for them but it’s not totally because the pines twins are a “set of two” who can’t be separated. it’s a decision they make mutually! mabel even says that she would be okay with dipper taking the apprenticeship, she just needed a minute to be frustrated!

and then of course you have stan and ford where stan leaving ford meant stan would lose his only friend, but even in their adult years, they clearly still love each other (ford and stan both apologizing profusely every time they land a devastating enough hit) but their selfish desire to have the other admit they’re the “villain”, to have a scapegoat to blame a whole series of factors on, overtakes them and buries that love. even as old men they’re still trying to get something out of the other before anything else (ford’s house and name, stan’s “thank you”). stan and ford want to love each other deep down so badly but this giant means to an end is in the way

you even see that sort of motif with characters like dipper and pacifica, where dipper’s crush on wendy almost always has negative results because, not only can it never be due to the age gap, but every time he tries to court her, it’s usually in the way a prize is to be won. he makes an itemized list of a process that is “guaranteed” to impress wendy, he literally brakes the laws of space time just so robbie won’t date her (as if one single snow cone is keeping him from his success), gets a job at the pool just so he can hang out with her, and jumps at the opportunity to prove robbie is evil. etc etc. and with pacifica it’s clear that her parents’ love is very transactional and conditional. if EVEN that.

so the fact that book of bill is setting up bill to be like a clingy ex to ford- more than that, it’s setting up ford to be the only human bill cares about THIS much! it feels like the ultimate way to tie bill to that theme of how love can harm as much as it can heal. like, he’s always been an obstacle to the pines’ happy ending, but this way, we see his reaction to love in his psyche play out, and you understand why he’s the opposite and obstacle to the pines. the stan twins hurt each other and it takes an entire show’s worth of growth for them to fix it. gideon hurt mabel but him letting dipper and the group into her bubble proves he’s willing to change. bill hurt ford and he throws a temper tantrum and denies everything, trying to use force to get things back to the way they were because in his own twisted way he really does love and care for ford. i’m sure even a traumatized millenia old dream demon could change but for now bill doesn’t! and that kinda makes him and ford’s relationship the perfect tie in to the themes in the show

[itachanta]

Vash's glasses going glint

[im-smart-i-swear]

"Pinepaw, I'm so happy to see you."

@barrenclan (sorry for being obnoxious. You posted the issue like 2hrs ago and i'm losing my marbles already. I hope youre happy with yourself)

[dizzybizz]

ms jay herself (and apple)

[nelkcats]

New place, same fight

Danny loves his friends, they have been with him since they were little and they have experienced too many things together, things that have helped them grow, things that only strengthen their friendship. Because Sam and Tucker were everything to him, as he was everything to them.

But at the same time, Danny could admit that he hated his friends; not always, but there were times where they wouldn't stop fighting, where they forced him to choose. The halfa could understand, Sam and Tucker had different world views, they saw different things and occasionally Danny thought they only got along because of him.

That was okay, he learned to live with them, to be the center of their arguments. And when they moved from Amity to Gotham, when they decided to rent an apartment together and go to the same college (which miraculously had all their majors), he thought everything would be fine.

It was idiotic of him. Because at the time he could only see a repeat of what had happened in high school; Sam was having a protest about the cafeteria menu and Tucker had organized the meat lovers (again), and the halfa knew how it was all going to end.

The point is, Danny was tired of repeating the same cycle, a cycle that apparently included Waylon and Poison Ivy fighting in the cafeteria at his new college (and how the hell did his friends manage to get the Rogues of Gotham into their fights?), so when he saw the people in bat suits he exploded.

When Sam and Tucker turned to ask his opinion he shook his head, pointed at Lunch Lady, who had her arms crossed and decided it wasn't his problem before disappear. Literally, no matter if half of Gotham was calling him meta, he was tired.

Red Robin gawked at him before turning his attention to Lunch Lady, who was gathering all the meat around her to form a giant meat monster. And Danny decided it wasn't his problem.

Apparently, Sam and Tucker decided that the bats could take care of it before they looked worried and started looking for Danny. It became obvious that the bats needed help when Danny looked at a giant meat monster two hours later, the halfa arched an eyebrow in dismay, weren't they supposed to be professional heroes? Lunch wasn't even trying...

[saradiation]

It's 2/22 today so you get a Sollux :D 💛

[telanadasvhenan]

Slaps my lavellan this bad boy can fit so many abandonment issues

edit: uploaded the right picture lol

[eeepgrove]

First kiss

Just a quick heacanon that won't leave my head...

But I so imagine Damirae first kiss as a complete accident. They're lounging by the shore outside Titans Tower enjoying the tide and each others company. Nothing new for them when Raven turns to look at Damian, maybe he's saying something but pauses as Raven looks closely at him lingering on his face. Damian stops what he's saying on the verge of asking her what's wrong as she starts to lean in into his personal space. This whole time he's kinda holding his breath. He'd recently come to terms with the fact: Yes, he does have a crush on his best friend. He feels her hand on his cheek and our Boy Wonder puckers up and leans forward closing the distance between them.

It's a brief kiss- a peck before they pull apart. Now they're looking at each other in shock but before Damian can say anything Raven giggles and tells him he had sand on his face. Damian's flustered because he just impulsively kissed Raven and on top of that he misread the situation. It just makes Raven laugh more before she leans in and kisses him again.

[callme-aprilroseisha04]

heyyyyyy if u didn’t notice I’ve been thinking about the tadc puppeteer au a lot haaaaaaaa