#i need to be shot old yeller style
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austeenbootler · 2 months ago
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I’m gonna eat gravel
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austeenbootler · 7 months ago
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my rat man and his greasy boyfriend
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i’m taking my horse’s sedative i can’t take this anymore
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pikslasrce · 9 months ago
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i am one minor inconvenience away from losing it. btw.
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voidfartm · 3 months ago
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i need to be taken out back and shot old yeller style
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mycroftirl · 22 days ago
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If I had a nickel for every trans guy I met who named themselves after a Sherlock Holmes character I would now have two nickels which isn't a lot but it's funny that it happened twice.
Friend you should have just taken me out back and shot me Old Yeller style
(jk)
If it helps, I'm shortening it to just Myc because I was Big Brained enough to realize "ooohhhh yeah no I need to be able to get hired for a job"
I'm curious if the other person is a Sherlock or someone else
Fiance and I spent a good minute rattling off various names
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whisper-my-serenade · 1 year ago
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wayward son
a theoretical todd anderson origin story
word count: 5937
cw: non-consensual kissing, f-slur, period-accurate homophobia
Todd sat himself at the top of the staircase, careful not to make a sound lest his parents hear around the corner. They spoke in hushed, angered tones; they spat his name like that of a plague. It was as if he was a misbehaving dog that they couldn’t put down, but some other form of containment had to be found. In that moment, he might have preferred if they just shot him Old Yeller-style.
“Aren’t there religious places we can send him? Places that are equipped to deal with things like this?” his father was saying, exasperated. 
“No, no, everyone knows those don’t work. Besides, people would ask too many questions about where he’s gone,” his mother huffed. He thought it surprising that she was against a religious school, seeing as she was the one who dragged them all to church every Sunday. 
His father sighed, the heavy, long thing that Todd knew he did as a quiet way of telling people to shut up and do whatever he said. “We’re running out of options, Lorraine. We need somewhere that will keep him in line. A military school, maybe?”
“Ha!” his mother cracked. “Could you imagine? He’d be crushed like a bug.”
There was a stiff moment of silence. Todd could feel the heavy, humid summer air creep through the open windows. 
“Why don’t we just send him to Welton?” his mother suddenly replied, and Todd inhaled sharply, almost breaking his silence with a yelp. Please, anywhere but there.
“You can’t be serious,” his father retorted. “After what he’s done? You remember why we didn’t send him there in the first place, don’t you?”
“There’s no better place to get him in line and make sure he gives our family a good name. That’s what that school was made for. Besides, his grades are up enough, I think.”
“I don’t know. He’s not really the Welton type, is he?”
“Do you have any better ideas, Robert?”
Todd waited for the reply with bated breath. Even then he could feel his future being determined right in front of him. 
“Oh, I suppose not. It’s as good a school as any.”
☽ ☼ ☾
Todd Anderson was, at Balincrest, a leper. He was quiet, anxious, had a bad stutter and some awkward nervous ticks that made the other boys call him names usually reserved for asylum patients. But Todd was not a fun target—he had something most other boys his age lacked, that being the emotional maturity to know when to not rise to the bait—and for the most part he was left on his own, reading his infinite novels in some dark hovel and completing his schoolwork silent and alone in a corner of the common room. The teasing, when it did come about, didn’t bother him much because he was as aware of his faults as anyone and no one could punish him for them as he already punished himself. For some reason, though, the one that got to him the most was ‘mute’. It was not that he couldn’t talk, it was that there was no one in the world he felt he could talk with.
Ever since he was a small child, people had very few good things to say about Todd. With his parents, it was always some form of inferiority to his brother, a high cliff of a standard he could never quite climb to the top of. Gone were the days of the two boys dressed in matching outfits, playing games of knights and dragons in their grandparent’s sprawling backyard; now it was only Jeffrey did this and you didn’t. Going to different schools meant Todd only saw glimpses of his brother in the summer, when his primary job was staying out of his family’s hair. Todd didn’t know what Jeff thought about the matter. He also didn’t care.
Todd never particularly excelled in school, either. He was shown to be reasonably bright in class, and was always reading far above his grade level, but his test scores were horrendous, and, worse yet, he failed every presentation he was ever assigned because he simply could not do them. His throat would close up, lungs gasping for air he seemingly could not find, and his mind spun recklessly out of control, trapping him in a distant subconscious where he could not be reached for anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour. To his parents, the attacks were another form of embarrassment. Not only was Todd not as smart or socially skilled as his brother, he was also mentally diseased. When he was a child, he’d often sought the comfort of his parents when his mind slipped away from him. But he was sixteen now, and knew better. The Andersons always chose to suffer alone.
That wasn’t to say he had no skills whatsoever. In his younger years he wrote wildly imaginative stories, taking bits and pieces of all the children’s fiction he read to create new worlds of his own to escape to. He wrote little now, burnt out from years of essay writing, but still read ferociously all manner of literature, from low-brow science fiction to the most classical of poets. And, if nothing else, he was quite a good soccer player.
It wasn’t that he enjoyed the game—far from it—he just happened to have the skill and anger needed to push his way to the top. Of all the nicknames he was called, no one ever called him sensitive, because he could kick circles around any other player at the school and glare at them like an angry watchdog as he did it. It was a way of release, maybe, but an unfortunate one, because if Todd hated anything, it was having eyes on him. 
Which is why when he ended up on Balincrest’s varsity team his sophomore year (the only one, at that), it filled him with such immense dread that the school nurse thought he’d caught the flu. His first day in that locker room, suddenly surrounded by burly, sweaty upperclassmen who joked about shotgunning beers and assaulting women (another area where Todd lacked expertise), was one of the most unpleasant experiences of his life, and when the coach asked if someone would volunteer to spend a few minutes after practice packing up the equipment, Todd leapt at the chance. Anything to get out of that humid, musky room for a few minutes longer. Too many eyes.
☽ ☼ ☾
Todd had never spoken to Isaac Parker in his life. Isaac was junior, handsome, with golden blonde hair and warm hazel eyes that had the unique ability to convince girls that he was somehow different from every other reckless, immature teenage boy that tried to wiggle their way into their hearts (and skirts). He was also a favorite among the staff, but in that friendly, charismatic way that kept the name “teacher’s pet” off his back. Everyone knew he was destined to be the soccer team captain his senior year, because God had never made anyone else so perfectly for the job. The sun smiled upon this boy. 
It was a spring evening, one of the first warm ones after a brutal northeast winter, that their paths first crossed. Practice was wrapping up, and Todd was skirting off to the side of the field to begin his now usual job of cleaning up when, from over the field, he heard Isaac’s melodic voice joking with the coach and a word of thanks for his help in response. Suddenly, Todd was not alone with his stack of cones. Golden boy Isaac was there, too, an Apollo next to a cowardly mortal. 
Balincrest’s sports equipment shed was a small thing with a corrugated metal roof that pinged like a glockenspiel when it rained and had bits of chipped-off white paint lining the ground underneath it. Inside, it smelled of wet wood and stale sweat and was barely large enough to accommodate more than one person. The boys worked wordlessly stringing the practice equipment to the walls, the close confines meaning Todd was cautious with his every step so as not to draw the attention of the leader. The single bare lightbulb above them flickered as a moth wove its way around and around.
Todd was suddenly aware of the stillness behind him, and when he finished his job and turned around, he found Isaac staring at him with an unreadable expression. Todd suddenly felt an immense weight in his chest, a giant, red-hot star on the verge of bursting. Before he could even open his mouth to speak, Isaac took both sides of his face in his hands and pressed their lips together.
It was a searing, burning feeling. Isaac’s hands and mouth were hot and slick, their noses crashing together as Todd tried and failed to stumble backwards, caught by surprise. Isaac held him there for an unbearable moment before releasing, keeping his eyes closed for a second longer as if reveling in the feeling. Suddenly they burst open, and in the dim glow of the bulb, looked black and full of rage. Todd’s own eyes were stuck wide, breath frozen in his throat. 
The silence was deafening. Isaac suddenly crowded him up against the wall of the shed, burning fingerprints into his arm as a stern hand pointed into his face. “You say a word, you’re dead, got it?”
Todd nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak. 
☽ ☼ ☾
After Isaac left Todd with his mouth gaping in the shed, he apparently didn’t go back to the locker room, which Todd was unbelievably thankful for. There was an uncomfortable stillness in the empty room, and Todd felt like he had to constantly keep moving as he showered just to break the sensation. He watched the water wash away all the sweat and memories of touch from his body—the pink bruises forming on his arm, the gently protruding lines of his ribs, the soft, unaltered beating of his heart underneath them. He suddenly smashed the porcelain tile of the shower with his fist, leaning his head into his arms as hot tears began to well in his eyes.
It had been his first kiss. He might have been ashamed if there was anyone to ask him about it, but it wasn’t really that fact that made the embarrassment burn so hot in his chest so much as the fact that it had been a boy. And he hadn’t hated it, not like he should have.
His mother liked to say he was a ‘late bloomer’ and he would find his way into the arms of the fairer sex one of these days, but Todd knew well and good that he’d grown up faster than most and that girls did absolutely nothing for him. It wasn’t that he didn’t have “urges”—he, like nearly every other teenage boy, had his moments in the quiet of his bedroom or the roar of a shower—but he could never picture the face of another person in those moments, only the vague outlines of strong, square bodies and the calloused touch of large hands. If there was a word for this, he did not know it. Or maybe he did, and his mind just refused to connect them. 
He knew what he ought to do: go straight to the coach or the dean and declare what had happened to him, denounce Isaac’s actions with all the fervor and rage he deserved. It was violating, dehumanizing, and, in the eyes of the general public, outright wrong. Todd had done nothing. 
And yet a small voice tugged in the back of his head, asking the same question over and over. Why me? Had Isaac picked his target at random? Did he calculate his odds and decide Todd was the least likely to speak out? Did he just assume that because he was younger, he would be easier to push around and bully into silence?
Or could Isaac tell, in the deep, shameful way that social pariahs connected with each other? Was it something Todd had done that had given it away? How he sat with his legs crossed, like his father scolded him for? The books he read? The names he was called? His incessant loneliness? If he were to tell someone, would they know it, too?
Todd turned off the shower and held still for a moment, letting the water pool and drip off his limbs. He wouldn’t say anything—couldn’t. He couldn’t bear the shame of it, if word got out. He didn’t care for faggot and fairy to be added to the list of things he was called. And what would his parents say? The Andersons could never have a queer for a son. It was bad enough that he liked to read. 
There were different levels of leprosy at Balincrest: those that got you teased, and those that got you killed. Given the option, Todd would choose to stay in his current group, thank you very much.
☽ ☼ ☾
The next time it happened, Isaac didn’t say anything. It lasted longer, a tongue poking out and searching for leverage, but finding none. Todd inhaled the scent of sweet, fresh sweat mixed with cologne, his lips fighting the urge to give in and see what he could get out of this. It was not a mutual relationship. It was not. 
He walked back to his dorm that night to the abject chatter of lonely crickets from the woods, the spring moon high and gleaming above him. His heart was still pounding and his skin felt cold where Isaac’s fingers had gripped it. Todd didn’t think he’d ever been held so firmly. 
There was a part of him that was almost thrilled by it. There was no denying that Isaac had good looks and a movie-star charm, and if Todd had been a girl, he would surely be internally gloating for winning the boy’s affections above all the others. For all the times he’d seen his brother down far too much liquor or try to sneak a girl in through his bedroom window and never understood the appeal of the risk, Todd now felt he understood why teenagers pushed boundaries the way they did—there was adrenaline in it, a high that came with getting away with something. He’d never before had the chance to kiss a boy, and probably never would again. His father might call it “getting it out of his system”, as he did with Jeffrey’s various misdemeanors. And if it was to forever remain his dirty little secret, then so be it. Surely there were far worse things. 
☽ ☼ ☾
The longer it went on, the more routine it became. They put the equipment away in silence, not touching or looking at each other, and then Isaac would go still, and Todd would take it as his que to turn around and allow himself to be grabbed and pushed however Isaac wanted him. They would kiss for a few minutes (maybe longer, maybe shorter; Todd discovered that one lost a sense of time when doing a thing like that) and then Isaac would release him, avoiding his gaze, and flee the scene of the crime. Todd would leave a few moments later, shower, and gaze at the moon as he walked back to the dorms. 
☽ ☼ ☾
The end came on a hot May day, the air still steamy even as the sun lowered in the horizon and sent beautiful orange beams across the brick walls of Balincrest. Campus was filled with the inspirited feeling of summer closing in around them, and the boys grew restless as the last agonizing weeks of school crept by. The soccer team played their best season in years that year, with Isaac as the star of the show and Todd as the overlooked secret weapon. Todd discretely smiled to himself when the coach told him it was a role he played well. 
It was one of the final practices of the season, and Todd almost dreaded it being over. There was a part of him that enjoyed being someone’s secret, and now the normal loneliness that came with being in his empty house all summer came with the added notion that he was losing his source of romantic gratification as well, as little romance as there was involved. He would miss the smell of the boy so close to him, the firm touch of his hands, the furtive glances Isaac would throw him when he thought no one else was looking. But Todd would get used to the loneliness, as he always had. And summer would end, as all things did, and Todd and Isaac would enter each other’s orbits once again.
After practice was over, they went quickly to their usual routine. Maybe the approaching vacation was affecting Isaac, too, because he seemed rougher, pinning Todd a little tighter to the wall and parting his lips with a little more force. It was sloppy and quick, as if time was running out.
It took a moment for them to react when the door of the shed opened, but when they did, the effect was immediate and brutal. Isaac jumped back, shoving at Todd’s shoulder as if to push him away even though Todd was already as close to the wall as he could get. “Get off me, fag!” he shouted, his melodic voice unfamiliar in such harsh words. Todd seemed unable to speak, turning towards the stunned coach in the doorway and hoping his shocked, pained face spoke for him. He lies. I didn’t ask for this.
☽ ☼ ☾
Todd watched Isaac’s parents approach the building from where he’d been locked in the infirmary all night. Their parents couldn’t come in for a meeting so late in the evening, but it was decided that the boys could not be trusted amongst the general population of the school, so they were sequestered at opposite ends of the building with only the occasional staff member for company. Both the dinner and breakfast that had been brought for him lay untouched on their trays. He’d been far too sick that night to eat.
He sank away from the window before he could see his own parents walk up, and counted the seconds between his breaths to fill the time until someone came to guide him to the dean’s office. It was an old trick some childhood doctor had taught him in a fruitless attempt to ease his anxious mind, but if nothing else it was good for giving him something to focus on until the worst of the misery was over. In-1-2-3-4-5. Out-1-2-3-4-5.
“Todd?” the nurse’s fluttery voice rang as the door to the informatory opened with a creak. Todd startled, tripping over his chair to stand and follow her down the quiet stone corridor. As they walked, she kept turning to him with her mouth opening and closing like a fish, as if she had something she wanted to say but couldn’t quite figure out how to word it. That made two of them. 
Todd had never been to the dean’s office, but his mind was incapable of taking in the details of the room as his sight narrowed in on the stern faces of his parents waiting for him. Isaac had beaten him there, sat next to his own mother and father on the far side of the room, gaze turned firmly down. Todd stood in the doorway for a moment, daring him to look up, before a hand forced his shoulder down into the chair that awaited him. 
The dean was a relatively young man, maybe in his mid-forties, with a clean-shaven face and sharply receding hairline that his horn-rimmed glasses did nothing to conceal. The soccer coach stood behind him, deep sadness on his face as he met Todd’s eye. He was probably as disappointed with this whole situation as anyone.
“Well, now that we’re all here, I suppose there’s no point in beating around the bush about the purpose of this meeting. I was told you were all briefed on the situation last night?” The dean asked, nodding towards the two sets of parents in front of him. 
“Yes,” came a small chorus, only Todd’s mother turning to look disapprovingly at her son. 
“Good,” the dean replied, pushing his glasses up on his nose as was his habit. He folded his hands and placed them on his impossibly tidy desk. “Now, we here at Balincrest of course do not in any way approve of such behaviors among our students, but I think you would all agree with me in saying that it’s in the best interest of all for this matter to stay strictly confidential.”
Four heads nodded.
“We wouldn’t want this to become a scandal even within the student body, because things get leaked and the like, so we need to forge a path forward that results in adequate discipline while also keeping gossip to a minimum.”
Todd deeply wished that his mother would stop staring at him with her piercing blue eyes. Her gaze pierced his skin and made him feel like salty sea water was flowing through him instead of blood. He tried to focus on the dean’s words, but could feel the panic rising in his stomach. 
“I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that it’s not sensible for the both of you to stay at this school,” the dean went on, glancing between Todd and Isaac, only one of whom was actually looking at him in return. “I’m not at liberty to say whether one or both of you were truly at fault for what happened here, but I can assure you that this matter will not end up on your permanent record regardless of what path we decide upon.” The dean directed his gaze at the crown of Isaac’s lowered head. “Now, Mr. Parker, I know the stakes are pretty high for you. Next year’s soccer captain, a chance at valedictorian, a full ride to Duke, I hear…”
Todd’s father now also turned to him, indignation on his face, and Todd suddenly understood what was going to happen. He would be expelled from Balincrest (not in so many words, of course) not because it was his fault, but simply because Isaac had more to lose. Balincrest could handle losing a mute leper with no connections, but could not handle losing its golden boy. He also realized in that moment that nothing he could possibly say mattered anymore. Any chance he had at redemption was lost when he did not fess up after the first incident. 
The adults kept talking, Isaac’s mother even jumping in in defense of her son, but Todd had stopped listening. He’d never felt so small, so useless, such a burden on everyone else around him. He was a fool for thinking this would never come back to bite him—his ability to be invisible only lasted as long as his ability to keep his head down. No wonder his parents couldn’t seem to stand being around him: he was too dumb to even get away with the smallest of infractions. Jeffrey had the charisma to make his misbehavior seem natural, fun, misguided but ultimately entertaining. Todd was not charming enough to get away with anything, not smart enough to choose a fault that was not so taboo, not wise enough to keep from being a stain upon his family’s good reputation. He would be, from that day forth, forever marked by them as a mistake, a printing error on the Anderson family tree, a pariah, a leper. Ghosts, though invisible, were difficult to forget. 
☽ ☼ ☾
Todd’s mother came into his room without knocking to get his laundry, though he’d been home for only a few hours. She couldn’t stand a single inch of the house to be untidy. 
Todd was curled on his bed with his old beat-up copy of The Secret Garden, wishing the story could whip him away to a magical alternate universe as it had when he was a child. But if that day had proved anything, it was that his youth was gone from him without him even knowing it had slipped away. Welton. Fuck’s sake.
The long car ride home had been predictably tense. The first thing his parents were upset about was that he’d forced them to rearrange their schedules—his father missed an important horse race he had bets on (those bets turned out to be fruitful, but that didn’t matter), and his mother was meant to attend a vital meeting of their church’s women’s council that she’d now have to ask Evelyn Peterson for the notes from, and you know how I despise that woman. Next they were distraught over the fact that he’d been kicked out of Balincrest, which was such a wonderful school and they’d worked so hard to get him accepted there despite his shortcomings and now they’d have to get another place to take him that would be father away and more expensive and why couldn’t he just be good like Jeffrey?
For the longest time, they carefully avoided the reason why he’d been forced to leave, and he could mostly tune their chatter out because it was less about scolding him and more about hearing themselves talk. Eventually, though, their words started sticking out in his brain and he couldn’t help but listen.
“...never imagined that I’d raise a son that would do such a thing,” his mother was saying, obsessively fixing her hair in her small compact mirror despite not a single strand being out of place. “And so shamelessly! I thought I’d taught you better than that.”
His father glanced at him from the rear view mirror. Todd glowered at him in return. “Did you really do it, Todd, or did that older boy rope you into it?”
Todd wasn’t sure how to respond. Either of the black-and-white answers would be a lie, but his parents were notoriously not ones for complexity. He cleared his throat. “I-it was all him.”
“Hmph,” his father huffed, turning his eyes back towards the highway before them. The day was aggressively sunny, and the asphalt shimmered in the light. “I thought as much. He had a guilty look about him, that one.”
Todd said nothing.
“But you know that’s how the habit starts, isn’t it? Someone leads you into it and you just get hooked.” His mother suddenly turned to look over into the backseat, waving a nagging finger in his face. “And you listen to me now, Todd. That kind of thing cannot be tolerated in any decent society. It’s a nasty, unhappy way of life and it’s best to condemn it now before it’s too late to turn back. Do you understand?”
Todd nodded, and it seemed to satisfy her. 
“And if anything like this ever happens again,” his father said, his voice growing low and gruff with shame. “We will not hesitate to beat it out of you with any means necessary.”
☽ ☼ ☾
“Todd,” his mother said as she grabbed his abandoned school clothes and folded them before placing them in her basket. “It’s been decided that you’ll go to Welton in the fall.”
She looked at him as if expecting a response, so he shrugged his shoulders. “Okay.”
“This is a very precious opportunity. You cannot afford to waste it.” No, you cannot afford to waste it, he thought.
“Okay,” he said again, and went back to his book.
☽ ☼ ☾
It’s a nasty, unhappy way of life. Those words rang in Todd’s ears as Saratoga Springs, New York entered a steaming hot summer. Todd spent most of his days locked up in his air-conditioned room with his books, the monotony only broken by him sneaking out to get meals, showering before bed, and his weekly excursions to the library to stock up.
While there, he occasionally tried to dig for things that mentioned his condition (he’d decided to call it a condition now—the American Psychological Association deemed it a mental disorder, alongside schizophrenia and social personality disorders, which was what made people psychopaths), but found it difficult to research a subject that seemingly no one wanted to talk about, and God forbid he ask the librarian—she was the one adult he knew that didn’t currently hate him. There was a report from about a decade prior that said homosexuality was far more present in society than most would like to think, and the long, drawn-out trials of a writer arrested for sodomy, but other than that, Todd could find very little that was not about the Bible, and no way in hell was he reading anything about the Bible. He laughed at the thought that it might burn when he touched it.
If he got bored of his books but was too scared to leave the safety of his room, he would stare out the window. It faced their large backyard, and most of the time when he looked out Jeffrey was back there playing soccer with his friends. It was their summer tradition, and Todd remembered the days when his mother would push him out of bed and out the door to “play with them” while she did her weekly top-to-bottom house cleanings. Todd usually ended up half-watching, half focused on his book from the edge of the open grass where they played. The older boys mostly looked upon him with anything from bemusement to outright contempt. No one wanted to be stuck playing with the lame little brother, least of all Jeffrey.
  The exception to this was a boy named Christian Woods. Christian went to Welton with Jeff, and Todd knew they went head-to-head in just about everything—academics, sports, girls— and yet despite their competition, they were the best of friends. Christian happened to be a pretty big literature buff, and always had some comment or another about what Todd was reading when the boys stopped playing for a few minutes to cool off and drink Mrs. Anderson’s lemonade. Whatever Todd said in return (often very little), Christian smiled, flicking the cover of the book and telling Todd he had good taste before leaping up and joining his flock again. 
Todd used to think about Christian a lot, back when puberty was first hitting him and his body ached with unfamiliarity. Christian’s dark eyes and fluffy walnut hair tended to pop into his head at the most awkward times. Stupid juvenile crush, he told himself now, but the word crush felt odd, even in his head. It wasn’t a crush, that was the thing ditsy girls had when they wished Jimmy would ask them to the prom. No, this was just a symptom of his condition—the one that appeared to be chronic and incurable. He liked to think himself wiser now at sixteen than when he’d been a few years younger, but Christian’s smile still made his heart flutter the tiniest bit. Unhappy. He could see that part.
☽ ☼ ☾
Jeffrey seemed to pop into Todd’s bubble more and more often as the summer went on. It was his last summer home before he started at Harvard in the fall (which their parents never failed to remind them of), and it seemed he finally decided to take an interest in his younger brother before he left for good. 
Because Todd had magically been let out of school early, he’d been able to be there for Jeffrey’s graduation from Welton and get a glimpse of his new home for the next two years. He watched as his brother marched across the stage with that despicably fake grin on his face, then zoned out until a point near the end where it was Christian’s footsteps and smile. He shuddered at the thought of it being him up there in front of all those people.
 After the painfully long ceremony was over, Jeff walked right up to his family and gave each of them a backbreaking hug. Todd didn’t remember the last time he and Jeffrey had been that close, but however long ago it was, they certainly hadn’t been the same height as they were now. It scared him a little, the unfamiliarity of this creature who shared his blood. 
When they’d arrived home, Jeff asked all the usual questions about school and how had summer been and was he excited for Welton and why did they let him leave so early? His mother shot him a furtive glance to warn him not to say too much, but Todd needed no reminder—he wouldn’t let that secret out if they tortured him for it. He shrugged as his only response. 
Jeffrey didn’t seem to want to let it go. He knocked on Todd’s door that evening, a piece of Todd’s favorite German chocolate cake in his hand as an excuse, and asked again: why was he home so early?
“Did something bad happen? At school, I mean,” he said as he placed the cake down on Todd’s desk, pushing a stack of books waiting to be returned to the side. 
Todd froze. “No,” he replied quickly. “Nothing happened.”
Jeffrey was clearly still suspicious. “No one picked on you there, right? ‘Cause if you were defending yourself—”
Todd cut him off. “I don’t want to talk about it! Nothing happened!”
Jeff seemed startled by the outburst. “Okay,” he said slowly, backing towards the door. “But, just so you know…if you ever need to talk, I’m here, okay?”
“I don’t need to talk.” You’d hate me if you knew, he thought bitterly. 
“Okay,” Jeffrey said again, turning to leave. “Oh, and Todd?”
“Yeah?”
“Make sure you take that plate down when Mom’s not around. You know she’ll flip if she finds it up here.”
☽ ☼ ☾
In August, he got the letter. 
He’d started venturing out of his cave more and more, often walking to a spot deep in the nearby woods and laying out a blanket on the ground to read. Being around Jeffrey and his loud, laughing friends hurt too much now, especially as he saw his brother’s life slowly packed away, awaiting the coming move. When September came, who would he be? Same old meek Todd, only now the new kid at a school where the other boys had been building relationships for four years and running. A new kind of leper. 
He thought of Isaac sometimes, and wondered if he was having as miserable a summer as Todd was. Had he told the same lie to his parents that Todd had, that it was all the other boy’s fault and he wasn’t culpable? Did he play soccer with his friends or lock himself away? Did he feel the same pit of dread in his stomach at the thought of going back to school?
It came in a heavy cream envelope, the paper thick with wealth typical of schools whose pockets were lined by the lower echelons of the upper class. It was the same paper as Balincrest, the same typewriter script, only the stamped school seal at the top was different. 
Todd Anderson, read the top line. We are thrilled to have you join us at Welton Academy for the 1959-60 school year.
At the bottom was a school schedule laid out in a neat little table, on the next page was a map of the school and its grounds. The one line that inexplicably stuck out to him was one in the middle of the first page, in plain print.
Room #: 205. Roommate: Neil Perry.
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divinesolas · 4 months ago
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I’m listening to a ton of TikTok whimper audios, hoping to find one that sounds like Jace
I need to be taken outside to my backyard and be shot in the back of the head like Old Yeller style
FUCKKKKKKK you couldnt even torture this out of me
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butchdykekondraki · 8 months ago
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thinking about that stupid ass fictional character again . i need to be taken out back and shot old yeller style
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siphonophorespiral · 1 year ago
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I need to be taken out back and shot old yeller style tbh. It'd fix me
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earth4angels · 4 months ago
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Harry is so beautiful I’m actually crying because I’ll never have him or anyone that good looking like I need to be shot old yeller style
he’s so beautiful i’m not biased but he’s the best face card in the cast ✋🏻🙂‍↕️🤚🏻 (i adore that lil sunburnt man)
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austeenbootler · 8 months ago
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i’m about to eat dry wall i’m so fucking deadass right now wtf
why would you point this out @precious-little-scoundrel 😭😭😭😭
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orlamccools · 7 months ago
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i need to be taken out back and shot old yeller style
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funsizearsonist · 1 year ago
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need a job where i dont have to talk to anyone and there are no managers or they at least do not speak to me or look in my direction or acknowledge my existence and also where i can listen to my tunes. Not that I Hate my job just that it is a slog and also when i make any sort of mistake especially when a manager is there my anxiety immediately tells me i will be taken out and shot old yeller style. Also i could spend that time lingering or lounging or with friends or on this hellsite or anything else honestly. I am so so scared for my future that i will never find a job/career that i enjoy/that interests me enough to not be completely miserable after like 5 months.
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jonahs-bizarre-adventure · 2 years ago
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i need to be taken out back and shot old yeller style that would fix my problems I think
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bacchilles · 4 years ago
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it’s hard to be a girlboss
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smalltownfae · 3 years ago
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Top five problematic tropes from your favorite authors you'd want shot ala Old Yeller-style?
I don't know the name of many tropes so I will just describe what is common to happen and that I dislike. I am fine with most things and the problematic aspects depend more of the way something is presented than that element in itself.
1 - Paedophiles presented in a good light. This goes for Robin Hobb and her male adult characters that end up with minors way younger than they are. This is especially true for the character named Reyn, but Hobb uses this so much. Liveship Traders and Rain Wild Chronicles are the worst offenders. I also think "Fledgling" by Octavia E. Butler is going the same way, but I haven't finished yet. The excuse given is that this vampire that has the body of a 10 year old is actually 50 something so it's alright if full grown adults have sex with her (no, it's not. Not for me and I wish I didn't make movies in my head while reading). Honestly Butler has problematic content in her other works but so far it has always been well addressed so this one so far is really disappointing. "Daughter of the Forest" by Marillier also has a minor/adult relationship and so does "Fire and Hemlock" by Diana Wynne Jones. It's way too common especially in fantasy and I am begging authors to stop this bullshit.
2 - Consent is not sexy. Another Hobb one, but I like to think she got a little better at it given the character of Alise. A lot of female characters seem to not like men that actually care about consent. Althea is the main one that comes to mind for her reaction to Grag being careful compared to Brashen and their awful first time together that she apparently liked and it was so messed up. But, besides female characters there is also the shady situation of how Sedric's relationship with Carson started. Sedric did say yes, but I am not sure that counts as consent given that he had just attempted suicide and was in a vulnerable state, you know? The Xenogenesis trilogy by Butler also has a lot of consent issues but given the alien perspective and that the humans keep addressing the issue I don't find it as problematic there.
3 - No women left single/Everyone must pair up until the end of their lives. Hobb has this issue once again. Let women be single! Sometimes it doesn’t make sense for them to end up with the ones they end up with. This is especially bothersome and obvious in the Rain Wild Chronicles. There is also the fact that Fitz never seems to move on from Molly, ignoring the message of wiser characters like Kettle. The first love is forever is a really tiresome trope in fiction given how unrealistic it is in real life. Juliet Marillier absolutely has this problem too, but she writes romance and I think it happens even more often in those books. It’s not enough that the main characters have to end up with a man, their sister also needs to have some. Both often use the same love interest forever and ever and if something happens that separates them, they mourn their loss until the end of their lives and never fall in love again (unless first love interest was evil then it’s ok to be together with someone else).
4 - Queer/Queer-coded characters are evil. Look, I like a well dressed gay villain, but it’s a problematic trope. Why must the good guys be identified by wearing potato sacks? Hobb often makes her well-dressed characters evil and they are often queer-coded at least (Regal, Illistore, Dwalia, Hest, Kennit...). There are a few exceptions, but often if it’s noted that someone wears perfume and spends time caring about their clothes and hair they will turn out to be evil or at least not very nice at first (Malta, Sedric). This can include Terez from First Law because even if everyone in that world is pretty shitty, Terez often gets the worst end of the stick because not enough time was given for readers to understand her and she is just see as the men-hating lesbian. Meanwhile, the fans are still worshipping a mass murderer and a torturer. Then there are also people thinking Leo is the worst ever for what he did (even if that is on the fandom, but it’s still bothersome that 2 of the most hated characters in the fandom are gay). I can also include that one character from “Parable of the Talents” by Octavia E. Butler, even if he isn’t the main evil.
5 - Men and women can’t be just friends. If there is a deep friendship between opposite sexes it will more often than not lead to romance. I am not saying this doesn’t happen, but it doesn’t happen as often as fiction makes us think. I always had male friends. This makes me appreciate Rin and Kitay’s relationship in the Poppy War so much more because authors often refuse to let men and women be just friends. On the other hand, characters of the same sex can’t be in love. Are you joking? They have this deep bond because it’s the extreme power of friendship and nothing else. Who cares if that relationship is the most developed? Who cares if they are the first in each others’ minds? There is a character of the opposite sex waiting for boring interactions. I really had enough with this shit. Authors either learn to make characters of the opposite sex interesting and have a great dynamic with the love interest or just stop trying to force a character to be heterosexual, especially when it doesn’t make any sense that they are still hung up on a character they seldom see in their lives.
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