#i understand that grief is hard

[stormsandskies]

idk if i’m ever going to get over the fact that Maddie never got a chance to really grieve Daniel.

Like he died and her parents grabbed all their stuff and moved away, to a new town where Daniel didn’t exist and then they checked out. They disappeared into their grief leaving a young (i think 9-10 year old) Maddie to raise her younger brother, to press bandages and kisses to skinned knees, to hug and hold after a scary dream, to teach to ride a bike.

Maddie was too busy raising her brother for her parents she never got a chance to grieve properly, her grief buried just below the surface, and Buck knew she was sad, but not why. Then she married Doug, and she still didn’t get to grieve. She was too busy walking on eggshells and worrying for her baby brother who was wandering the world aimlessly.

Then she ran, and she still didn’t get to grieve the pain from Daniel being shoved down low so she could get through. I don’t think Maddie truly grieved Daniel until after she told Buck, I think that grief was just sat in the bottom off her heart locked away fighting to come out, but Maddie was too busy trying to stay afloat to release it.

[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.

[heartorbit]

make a wish! 🍃

happy 1st anniversary, in stars and time 🤍

[rustedhills]

Disney, releasing Wish: "so it's all about legacy--the new generation surpassing the old, overcoming the evils perpetuated by them, relinquishing singular power... and there's an old man in a tower, uh... animal sidekick, i guess..., ah... magic...?

Miyazaki, just out of frame, sledgehammer raised:

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

I'm of the mind that Shi Qingxuan would have the will to ascend a second time as a god especially one for the people even more so as he thrived with other beggars and was still able to gather them to help Xie Lian. I think there is just something very strong in him as a person even without Shi Wudu manipulating their fates. He is still able to persevere just fine and able to come back stronger despite his own sadness. And I think that's pretty great despite it all he wasn't broken down.

[thwispsings]

the idea came to me in a migraine induced dream but now im obsessed with the concept of a mu qingfang who knew the abuse bunhe was going through at the hands of og!shen qingqiu/shen jiu and did his best to treat the kid whenever he could (and bring his concerns to zhangmen shixiong, which were obviously very much ignored) and his constant worry over the situation means that when the qi deviation happens he is suspicious of shen qingqiu’s changes for all different reasons and very much protective of luo binghe -who is a sweet child and an earnest disciple who seems to always find the most incredible medicinal herbs to bring to his mu shishu as thanks for the care bestowed upon him- which means that when the whole shen qingqiu dying thing happens instead of bad mouthing luo binghe or fighting him at every chance he does his best to come over and keep an eye on things to try and help him and make sure luo binghe won’t kill himself trying to bring shen qingqiu back because he remembers that earnest kid and he’s witnessed luo binghe’s devotion to this shen qingqiu first hand and knows there is no way that the kid who cried when ning yingying found a bird with a broken wing and begged mu qingfang to fix it and the kid that would always borrow medical texts and try to find new herb combinations as if it was a game between him and qian cao disciples is actually doing anything nefarious to shen qingqiu’s corpse.

anyways in this essay i will-

[kkoct-ik]

rewatching a dr2 lp and i honestly never noticed how much hajime dissociates. i almost wanna make a masterpost

[gutfaced]

☕️ katniss’s parents

katniss was horrible towards her mother until she was put into a situation where she'd be forced to empathize with her. it is absolutely unforgivable to me for her to have swore at her incessantly when she was treating gale (in which katniss did nothing to help wih if not predominantly making it about herself/which i understand because she was also injured,) but she held no understanding of her mother's grief until it again, hit her, and just about a decent amount of understanding of her job and what she'd go through as the town apothecary. katniss did admire her mother's skills and her ability to be hands on, but a lot of the time she would undermine her instead of appreciate the parts of her she did have left.

when it came to katniss’ father, i believe she saw him through rose-colored glasses. a hunter, a good singer, a miner — the first man in her life. but i feel like she gave more credit to him than her mother who had a wider and more impactful job in terms of district care. her father is the dead one, and despite her mother living (and being in a state of deep widowing,) it's almost like they've both died in a way. only she chooses to favor one.

but when mrs. everdeen is doing her job as a healer and a mother, katniss is still indifferent. nothing will bring back her years of childhood lost from becoming the family breadwinner, but nothing will change the fact that her father died. and nothing could change the fact that her mother grieved. nothing will change the fact that things went the way they did, but no one was at fault for what happened. which includes mrs. everdeen, even if she didn't cope in a way that was healthy for her children.

[grimmweepers]

life comes at you so fast

[2sw]

You got to wake up. because if you don't, then trying to keep that dream alive will destroy you! It'll destroy everything!

Supernatural S8E08 Hunteri Heroici ( + S8E06 Southern Comfort )

[bonefall]

Voted for Bumble bc of course but also if you think Alex would not pspsps Bumble you are wrong. If they could communicate they would go to therapy together /s

If then could communicate they would go to therapy together

/GEN

Kyle/Green Lantern resurrects her but then he becomes convinced that she's not the same person she was before the incident, OR SOMETHING SOMETHING Black Lanterns aren't ACTUALLY bad they're just misunderstood Grim Reaper types, in either case Alex ends up breaking it off with Kyle because they've become very different people.

And then Bumble's there

And then they go to therapy or Alex adopts Bumble, and then uhhh Bumble's like one of the superpets. Like Krypto the Superdog. Free premise go forth and play with it if ur a DC fan

[theotherrichardpapen]

...because any moment may be our last. everything is more beautiful because we're doomed.

[angelsdean]

ruthlessly deleting old 2021/2022 posts (not by me) from my dean studies tag like *click* un-incorporating that from my beliefs system! also the way SO many posts have me like ok uh-huh good aaand then say one completely wrong thing that loses me. it's so many posts.

[jacksmusesdrv3]

So I'm taking from one of my old theory posts - roughly: 'the Ultimate Hunt may be a group formed of the DRV3 cast after the world became increasingly hostile towards Ultimates' - and setting aside specifics of that for now, expanding on hostility to Ultimates, specifically.

Because this is... unnerving.

The 'kill the very concept of Ultimates' part reminds me, that during the Tragedy itself-

-you would get comments like this, in some rando's notebook, about the survivors of DR1's killing game and their affiliation with Future Foundation.

Although the general public (in this state) would typically not care to trade their convenient scapegoat for the nuances of who's to blame for what - like for starters, HPA and the Steering Committee for orchestrating human experiments and covering up murders - there are also-

-conspiracy theories in print, about the Future Foundation and its 'protection of the Despair', who were Ultimate students that Makoto wanted to save from the brainwashing. While Future Foundation has its share of... issues, this book is clearly propaganda, and in this case it's especially fucked up because Towa Group was very directly responsible for accelerating the Tragedy themselves.

This could be a very bad omen for the future of Ultimates, especially since Towa Group were highly influential and boasted their ability to reach the people. To say nothing of 99 other organisations noted in the Alexander Magazine as 'the most influential worldwide', at least one of which may want to fill the 'void' Towa Group left behind, and could gain just as much, if not more cultish fervour left unchecked.

All the while distorting events to the populace in their own favour.

Lastly...

One of the books suggested that it would be imperative to learn from the Tragedy. And sure enough, in the time of DRV3, there is a book with the Complete History of Hope's Peak Academy- the most thorough and comprehensive collection of details on the events, including organisations like Future Foundation. No doubt one of the things covered would be the first case, where one Leon Kuwata used his baseball talent to shuck a ball through a tight space.

Under these circumstances, it's reasonable to be a wee bit leery of there being 52 files in a lab, a large amount with bloody photos and documented notation of 'tricks that culprits used', then being prompted to ignore this detail - and HPA's existence itself - as 'fiction' on some uh, decidedly arbitrary evidence. Just saying.

[angy-grrr]

I try to not be hater, but then I see the stupid takes and get madddddd

This is just what I feel every single time I see those shitty opinions

[verfound]

FIC: "She Didn't Want That Day" (MLB; Lukanette; LBSC Lukanette Month 2024)

@lovebugs-and-snakecharmers is doing a Lukanette Month for September 2024, and we all just kinda tossed some prompts in the disco to compile a list?  We ended up with 71 prompts, so I decided I’d roll some dice to pick a prompt, do a twenty minute (ish, bc we all know sometimes they run away from me) sprint, and try to get some short fics out this month?

For Better or Worse AU - Whump, No Happy Ending, Mind the Tags, etc.

Read on Ao3

Prompt 60: “Love is a choice, and I’ve made mine.”

She didn’t remember the building looking so…normal before.

But then again, it had been a long time since she’d bothered paying it any mind.  She could barely…no.  Not barely.  She could remember all too well the last time she had been there – the last time her papa had let her be there.

His hand had been so big around hers, back then.  So much bigger than it had felt a few weeks before, when…

She still remembered the screaming woman inside, too.  Much as she wished she didn’t.

Still.

She had no choice now, did she?  She had made a promise, and Couffaines kept their promises.

It was a good day.  One of his last good days.

Looking at him now, you’d never know…but she did know.  And that was the problem, wasn’t it?  She couldn’t not know.  He hadn’t wanted to tell her at first – hadn’t known how – but now that the whole ugly truth was out there…she saw it every time she looked at him.

He was dying, and a large part of her…a mean, hard part of her that was only natural, growing up the way she had…she wished he would just get on with it.

“I need you to promise me something,” he said, his voice quieter than she ever remembered it being before.  Quieter even than Aunt Juleka’s.  He was looking out the window, his fingers moving idly over the old guitar in his lap as he watched the cherry blossom branches move with the early spring wind.

He had told her once this had been her mother’s favorite time of year.  Her mother had supposedly planted that tree, back when they��d first moved in to the old house.  Back before everything had ‘fallen apart’ – when they had planned on actually filling the place with a family, one that would have had a swing hanging from one of the branches some day.

She didn’t remember that.

She had never met that Marinette Couffaine.

She’d been told she would have loved her.

“Of course, Papa,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if she meant it.  His lips quirked in a small, knowing smile – like he already knew she wouldn’t be keeping her promise.

“Make sure you visit your maman every now and then, all right?” he asked.  He had started playing that old song he always seemed to slip into, the one he had once told her was for happier times.  She had always hated the stupid thing – every time he played it he just sounded…stuck.  “She’ll need someone.  It should be you.”

“…I’ll try,” she said, though they both knew she hated the idea.  She didn’t understand why it needed to be her.  It’s not like her moth…it’s not like Marinette had any idea who she was, anyway.

“Harmony…” he sighed, his fingers stilling as he looked up at her.  He looked so…tired.  Worn.  “Please, sweetheart.  For me.”

She swallowed, her throat feeling too tight, and nodded.  She would.  For him.  Because she did love him, against her better wisdom.

…he had always tried.  She knew fathers who hadn’t even done that much.  Marinette was how she was because of one such father, if the stories – the ‘legends’ – of the great Ladybug were to be believed.

She had never put much stock in them, herself.  Sure, New York had its heroes, but magical jewelry?

It was a fairytale, and when you grew up with a mother who was batshit crazy…well.

Harmonika Couffaine had never put much stock in fairytales.

“Papa?” she asked after a long moment had passed.  After he had started playing again.  He hummed, and she sighed.  “Why…why do you keep going?  Why didn’t you just…you could have divorced her.  Found someone else.”

Given me a real mother, she thought bitterly.

“No one would have blamed you,” she said.  “It couldn’t have been that hard, given…everything.”

He stopped playing again, his gaze turning back to the tree.  That little smile was back on his face.  The one he got when he was thinking about her mother, of the way she used to be.  Back before she had been born.

“…no,” he finally said, leaning his head back against his chair.  “I suppose it wouldn’t have been.”

“But you didn’t,” she said, frowning.  “You stayed married to her.  You go visit her almost every single day.  You…Papa.  You put your entire life on hold for someone who doesn’t even remember you.”

“She remembers me, sweetheart,” he said, closing his eyes.  Harmony frowned, unconvinced.  After another moment, he took a deep breath and opened his eyes again.  “It’s not that simple, baby.  I couldn’t just…walk away from her.”

“You could have,” Harmony insisted, but he shook his head and turned back towards her.

“No, Harmony, I couldn’t have,” he said, his voice firm.  Stronger than she had heard in a while.  “Love is a choice, Harmonika Couffaine, and I made mine a long time ago.”

She looked away, and for a moment…it was so strange, but the heat creeping up her neck almost felt like shame.

“…of course, Papa,” she said, and the smile he gave her almost looked relieved.  He sank back into his chair, his fingers returning to his guitar.  Playing that same damn song again.

“Thank you, Harmony.”

…that was what had decided it, in the end.  The look on her papa’s face as he made her promise to check in on her mother.  Not every day, but…every now and then.  Just to make sure someone was.

Because that’s what he had worried about, in the end.  Making sure Marinette Couffaine knew she hadn’t been forgotten, even when Marinette Couffaine didn’t know anything else.

He hadn’t worried about his own daughter.

Of course he hadn’t – because love was a choice, and he had always chosen Marinette first.

…her aunts would tell her she wasn’t being fair.  They had been reminding her of that a lot the past few weeks, but she didn’t think that was very fair of them, either.  After all, they had known Luka and Marinette Before.  She supposed it was easier to forgive someone of their present when you could still be comforted by memories of their past.

Her Granarchy would just remind her it wasn’t right to speak ill of the dead, things being what they were.

…she would be kinder later.  When the hurt wasn’t as fresh.  When the grave dirt had given way to grass.  When she could remember their own good times without anger and resentment.

When the words Luka Couffaine is dead didn’t make her chest burn and ache like a fresh wound.

The breeze was warmer when it blew past her, tossing her bleached hair into her face.  She pushed it back with a frown, swallowing as she looked back up at the building.

It looked so…innocent.  Like any other house in Paris.

She remembered it looking…bigger.  More intimidating.

Scarier.

“All right, Papa,” she said, taking a deep breath of warm, late spring air.  She looked down at the flowers in her hands, her stomach twisting unpleasantly.  Cherry blossoms, because they had always been her favorite.  Her signature.  In pink, because she used to be pink.  And white, because…well.  Mamie used to say it was a funeral color, in her home country.

It had seemed fitting, when Auntie Rose had helped her arrange it in the shop.

“She’ll love them,” she had promised, squeezing her hand.  “She’ll be so glad to see you, Harmony.”

Harmony couldn’t believe that.

Marinette had never been glad to see her before.

Marinette had never known her before.

She took another deep breath and steeled herself.

“Ok, Couffaine,” she said, glaring up at the building.  “You made a promise.”

She took a step.