#i ripped out my own heart

[amariram]

𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦’𝘴 𝘢 𝘨𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯

𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦’𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘨𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘯

𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘺 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘺 𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴

𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘦

[clouvu]

Nothing in the world belongs to me But my love, mine, all mine

[capseycartwright]

oh what a terrible honor it's been (to learn that my blessings are things you call sins)

Hey God, it's me, Eddie. I hope you don’t mind that I’m sitting in your house thinking gay thoughts.

Eddie couldn’t help but giggle to himself as he thought the words. If he couldn’t be a bit silly while having a sexuality crisis in a Catholic church – when could he? 

Christopher leaves for Texas, Eddie goes back to therapy, unearths an emotional lockbox he had been fourteen years old when he buried, and has a lot of thoughts about how Buck is sunshine incarnate. In hindsight, it probably should have been obvious he wasn't straight.

ao3 link

t’s been a long time since Eddie Diaz had set foot in a church – of his own accord, at least. He’d been to the christenings and communions and confirmations of all of his various nieces, nephews, and cousins, he’d sat stiff in the pew as he’d watched friends, and family get married, trying his best not to remember how own wedding day, the way Shannon’s hands had shaken in his grip as they promised to love each other until death do them part, both of them young, too young to understand the covenant they were signing up to. Eddie had been there, for all those occasions, but he hadn’t gone to mass, or even sat in a church, just because he wanted to in a very long time. 

He wasn’t even really sure if he wanted to be there today, but it was a Thursday, and Christopher was in Texas, and Eddie wasn’t working, and he’d been having an extended mental breakdown for the last few weeks, and before he knew it, he was sitting in the pew of St Brendan’s Catholic Church, listening to a softly spoken priest with an Irish lilt to his accent – faded, after years in America, Eddie presumed, but still there, noticeable in the inflection of certain words – recite the Our Father. 

Eddie had never been to St Brendan’s before, but it felt like every other church he’d been to in his life. They didn’t all look the same, necessarily, though they followed the same format, rows of uncomfortable wooden pews and an altar decorated in gold, as opulent as it was suffocating. Eddie had thought it beautiful, before, the way Catholic churches were decorated in gold and jewels, believing for so much of his life that the wealth honoured God – but living life had made him learn the grandeur and displays of wealth were nothing more than indicative of the wealth the Catholic church had hoarded while their devout followers starved, all in the name of faith and of God. True faith didn’t need to be gilded in gold to be sincere, he’d decided.

Eddie had never been to St Brendan’s before, but mass was the same. It didn’t change – though the wording of some of the prayers did. He’d sort of been checked out of being a regular churchgoer by time they had changed some of the prayers, only discovering the difference when he confidently started to recite it wrong at his youngest niece’s communion, his mother fixing him with a glare so icy hell might have frozen over under the power of Helena Diaz’s gaze alone. He’d never learned the new ones, not really, and so Eddie just recited the one’s he’d learned for his own confirmation, the words falling from his lips, muscle memory more than it was faith now. 

Our father, who art in heaven – hallowed be thy name . 

Eddie couldn’t help but laugh, a little, as he murmured the prayer. Hallowed be thy name. He knew the prayer talked about God, their holy father, but the prayer had always made him think of his own father, of the way Ramon Diaz was a hallowed man in his own right, how he parented with an iron fist and expected to be obeyed. 

Things were getting better now, with his dad. Maybe – maybe that was part of the fear. Eddie had always been afraid of letting people down, but more than anyone, he was afraid of letting his father down – of seeing that look of disappointment set into every crease of his father’s face, an expression he’d been on the receiving end of for more of his childhood than he’d like to admit. Eddie had tried so hard to make sure he was never on the receiving end of that look again, but nothing he had ever done was good enough – not marrying Shannon, not the way he had tried to take responsibility for his young family, not the army, not the man he had been when he’d come home from Afghanistan. 

Distance had lessened the number of disappointed looks, but Eddie knew that was because he was simply not seeing them anymore; he was sure his father sometimes frowned at the phone when they’d finally call, silted conversation about Christopher and life at the firehouse the best either of them could muster. 

It wasn’t perfect, but it was getting better. 

At least it had been, until his parents had taken Christopher with them to Texas. It hadn’t helped their relationship – but it hadn’t hindered it as much as Eddie had expected either. He was never going to thank them, for the way they had swooped in, ready to take Christopher at a moment’s notice, but he could thank them for giving his son the space that he needed to process. Eddie couldn’t give him that space, right now, but he was grateful someone could. Still – he would be ready to drive to Texas at the drop of a hat when Christopher decided he was ready to come home.

Things were getting better, that was the thing. His dad called, every night, to update Eddie on Christopher’s day. Eddie could hear the familiar sounds of the Diaz backyard as his dad softly spoke, telling Eddie about how Christopher had been to the lake, with his cousins, and how he’d finished another book, and how he was helping Helena to make dinner, right then. It had filled the gap until Christopher had started to call Eddie himself, his voice tinny as he mumbled over the phone, things not quite back to normal, Christopher not willing to talk to him about anything except Marvel and Minecraft and how abuela’s tamales were better than Eddie’s, but better than they were, at least. 

Every time they were on the phone, Eddie reassured his parents that he was working on himself. He was back seeing Frank, every week, and at Frank’s encouragement, he’d joined a veteran’s support group. Eddie wasn’t exactly the picture-perfect military veteran he assumed he needed to be, to join a veteran support group, but the rag-tag group that met at his community hall every month weren’t exactly the flag-wearing, gun-toting veterans he’d expected them to be. James was a 63-year-old man from Massachusetts who ran the group – he had moved out to LA to live with his daughter after he retired and referred to himself delightedly as a stay-at-home grandfather. Luisa was a vet around Eddie’s own age, and she’d gone back to university after she got out of the army and got a fine arts degree. She liked to paint, and talked about her wife with a reverence and openness that Eddie could only admire. 

He hadn’t said a word the first time he went, and Buck had sat in the Jeep in the carpark, a ready-made escape plan for Eddie in case he decided it was all too much. Eddie had sat quietly as the group had chatted, drinking tea and coffee out of flimsy paper cups, and eating homemade biscuits – made by James, who, as it turned out, was quite the prolific baker – and he’d watched. He’d watched as the group had talked about their bad days, and their good days, and how they were coping with life after the military, and not a single glorious war-story was exchanged. 

That was when Eddie knew it was safe to keep going. He was never going to be a man who was proud of his service, and he didn’t want to have to attend a support group of people who’d talk about their time in the military like it was the good old days. He had spoken a little more, the second time he went – Buck doing his groceries, two streets away, rather than sitting in the carpark – and he’d introduced himself, his voice gruff as he tried to figure out what version of Eddie he wanted to present to the world. 

Eddie was still figuring that part out – the version of himself he wanted to be, that is. 

He was figuring himself out. That was the point. He was trying, he was really trying – and people could see that, Eddie was sure. His parents said they could, at least.

Which was why he was here – in a church not dissimilar to the one he’d attended every Sunday in El Paso growing up – on his knees, praying to a God he wasn’t sure he actually believed in for guidance. 

read the rest on ao3

[yea-baiyi]

say what you want about svsss but hands down the most distraught i have ever been while reading a mxtx novel is after the bing-ge extra. what do you mean he asked shen qingqiu to come with him. what do you mean “it’s not fair”. what do you mean he looked back.

[heymacy]

Alright, shithead, this is, like, the 200th time I'm calling and you're not pickin' up. I'm starting to get fucking homicidal. Call me the fuck back, Ian.

[ddocson]

hi. have more ranchers :) (smile of pain)

also vague tango hair explanation here

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance - Braig / Xigbar

[its-your-mind]

JUST FOR THE RECORD.

the way Madam E talks is in fact Incredibly Extra (alex said somewhere that yeah duh that was the point) but also.

as a person who sits in a pretty diverse classroom of 12-14 year olds all day.

some of the Kids These Days do in fact talk like that. All the time. To everyone. No matter what. Front-facing camera not required.

The other day one of the individual-units-of-chaos-for-whom-I-am-responsible-for-8-hours-each-weekday asked if I had done anything fun over the weekend and I said "oh I just went for a short hike in the national park" and he straight up did this:

like. LIKE. madam E's tone. her inflection. her little trill on the end of words... some of the slang was a tad dated (though that does sort of make sense, if Madam E is ~5-10 years older than my gremlins-disguised-as-preteens) but I literally got whiplash every three minutes because all I could visualize for Madam E was a rotating cast of the like. Seven of my kiddos who talk EXACTLY like that.

which I WILL SAY. did make the horror hit home Just A Bit More Than Usual.

[sunciv]

how did hinata cope with hoshiumi becoming kags teammate. i wouldve died on the spot. burnt from the inside with the fear and hurt of being replaced

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

@val-the-bun you are Evil. You are evil putting this in my inbox.

More were-harpy Vaggie but it's sad now and everything HURTS (copy pasted here bc the format in the ask got effed but i refuse to suffer this alone)

val-the-bun asked:

And then, of course, *the trial happens*.

And *the absolute shit timing of the fallout*.

Charlie is too stuck in her own spiral while vaggie just... Tries to hole up on her own (her usual 'nest' was in their suite. But she didnt want charlie to have to deal with her).

Charlie is curled up on vaggie's side of the bed, buried in blankets while she questions if anything they had was real.

While vaggie is in agony for the first time in three years since she'd started changing. Every fiber of her being wants to call for charlie. Yearns for that safety... but instead she bites her tongue and just curls in on herself, alone in the room she hastily barred shut. ~~She deserves this. To be alone.~~

Not sure which hazbin is the one to hear vaggie's pain and tries to check on her (let's go with angel and husk).

The hasty barricade she put on the door isnt enough. Not when the others are trying to force it open.

Vaggie tries to scream for them to go away. The last scrap of clarity she has before that warning turns into a predatory *shriek*. Vaggie's monster form tears apart the already falling barricade, and bursts into the hall.

'WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!'

'Fuck if I know, just run! Angel, hurry up!'

Vaggie is *tearing through the halls*, jaws snapping after Husk and Angel. They manage to hit the lobby, Husky grabbing Angel and flying like his life depends on it.

Meanwhile monster vaggie leaps after them... *right into the chandelier*.

Charlie hears the sound of that distant, shattering crash down below, and she *realizes*. Suddenly those painful worries have to get shoved down as charlie bolts out of their room.

'Please dont hurt anyone. Please, please, *please...!'*

Charlie's heart sinks as the shadows around the hotel start to writhe, and radio static fills the air.

'My my, what a surprising turn!'

Vaggie is *shrieking*, thrashing against shadowy tendrils as she tries to claw at Alastor.

'Now now. *Stay down*'

A rap of his cane, and vaggie's practically being crushed into the floor.

'What the fuck is wrong with you?!'

Husk is holding Angel back, looking away as Alastor starts to raise his hand. He cant watch this...

'Let her go.'

Alastor freezes when he feels the tip of an angelic spear under his chin.

There, standing at his side, in her full demon form, *is Charlie*.

'Ah, miss Charlotte. Lovely to see--'

'Let. Her. *Go!'*

For a moment, everything is quiet except for the sounds of vagging struggling, her talons digging into the floor. She's bleeding, golden blood pooling on the lobby floor... *And dripping from the claws on Alastor's hand.*

'Oh, very well. Good luck!'

Vaggie is snarling when Alastor lets her go. She starts getting ready to pounce when Charlie steps in front of her, spear in hand. Vaggie starts backing away, looking less like a predator and more... *like a cornered animal*. Her whole body seems coiled to run away as she keeps backing up, snarling and shrieking more in warning than anything else.

'Was it a lie?'

Vaggie shrieks at her, swiping at the air in the hopes Charlie would stay away.

'When you told me you didnt know what this was, was it a lie?'

Angel starts to step forward, but husk grabs his arm.

'Just let them do this...'

'Did. You. Lie?!'

Vaggie backs right into the wall, feathers flaring with a hiss.

'Was any of it real?'

Charlie can feel the tears on her cheeks. But what she wasnt expecting was to see tears in Vaggie's eye... Even as she snarled, and shrieked, and snapped her fangs, she was crying.

Charlie presses forward, Vaggie raising up over Charlie with a hawk-like screech, talons lashing out... But they dont connect, her talons *trembling* as they stilled inches from Charlie's face, her own spear aimed at her chest. Vaggie's eye is wild and afraid, but Charlie can see the *pain* there, too. She let out another shriek, closing her eye like she was bracing for the inevitable...

[itissadbutitsmy-artblog]

this is an old comic i cant get the dialogue to feel right but i get feelings about finn sometimes why do he and jake reincarnate together every time to be together next to each other every time only for Life to chuck his soul across the ocean so he had to suffer to find jake

anyways glob seems like hes like. prophecies-man up on mars. so like. he knew about finn. he knew he was floating up to ooo and needed to meet his parents so he could be the golden hero. of course there were prophecies about finn. of course glob knew. and he wanted to watch

[sforzesco]

CAESAR AUGUSTUS AND MARCUS LICINIUS CRASSUS

this is about the spolia opima that crassus was robbed of lmao. like, yeah okay octavian could've asked him not to claim it, but nevertheless. a kind of theft happened there.

Fact and Fiction: Crassus, Augustus, and the Spolia Opima, Catherine McPherson

[wynandcore]

Okay I wanna show my favorite piece of Uprising concept art, it’s been in the back of my mind ever since I saw it

Look at that.

[userautumn]

Everyone on the other side of the fandom is so busy trying to own the BTs to realize that we haven't had a really GOOD Buddie scene since Season 6.

[leojfitz]

young royals rewatch: season 1, episode 6

You're the Crown Prince. And that's a privilege, not a punishment. Yes, but I didn't ask for this!

[judas-isariot]

I too would change my hair black and do violent cage fight if my Dom-Femme rich wife divorce me.