#ignored it and kept working

[bloobydabloob]

About isolation

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

i'm not trying to start anything, but i just saw a post criticizing misha collins for not choosing to quit spn when the network was homophobic and he was "profiting from homophobia" and i just think it's kind of... wild? that young people think that a person could just. decide to not work for a prejudiced corporation when they have a family to provide for?

i don't know, i don't even really want to debate or go into it more, but it's just kind of surreal to see opinions from people who weren't there in 2013 when misha collins was literally the only person willing to support not just destiel shippers but actual queer and trans and ace fans. i have no doubt that he saved lives through the care he showed to vulnerable young people who desperately needed to see someone give a damn about them. he's significantly flawed in many ways, but he will always be a saint in my eyes for how much he cared.

like i just don't think that people accustomed to this modern era where hardly anyone blinks over two men kissing on tv can understand what it was like when we were mocked and silenced, when we weren't allowed to breathe the word 'destiel' without getting booed, and misha was the only damn person who spoke up for us. the only one. who was probably risking his job in saying the things he did.

things have changed. that's wonderful. don't judge people surviving previous eras by the standards of today.

[buwheal]

uhh more of that warmup page i do for breaks lol. The real question is how do i mimic this in the pixel askbox style..

[aflamboyanceofflamingos]

In order to turn a very embarrassing moment of my life into something funny have this stupid Timbern au:

The Drakes are alive so Tim is still on track for being the heir of D.I. but is interning at W.E. for the summer because Bruce offered a position

Bernard has been interning at W.E. as well, for volunteering hours

The both work in a small, newer branch of W.E. that focuses on cultivating more information about Gotham’s history

Bernard’s there because it's the most teen focused thing and Tim’s there because he wants to figure where exactly the Lazarus pit is under Gotham so he can mess with Ra’s

They are currently stationed at an old house that was made into a museum which is managed by Wayne Enterprises, but since most of it is a museum there are only a few rooms to actually work, however it being a teen thing it’s very much choose your own hours so that prevents too many people from being there at once

Tim, who doesn’t want someone to come in a see the fact that he’s already finished cataloging all of the 2023 Donations to the museum and is instead using the time to further research the numerous curses in Gotham and/or watch Demon Slayer, is very happy about this fact and only comes at either the earliest or latest times so he gets a room to himself and only has to pretend to be going through boxes when someone checks on him

Bernard immediately messes up Tim’s plan

He’s always there- morning, night, even when Tim changes up his schedule

And no matter how many how many empty rooms there might be he always finds Tim and sits with him, even the time Tim tried to hide in the attic under the guise of organizing a couple boxes up there

Being the paranoid idiot that he is Tim assume that Bernard is a from the League of Assassins and enacts a 46-step plan to figure out what he’s planning (read: stalks him) and in the course of it ends up falling in love

Meanwhile on Bernard’s side, the first week of the internship he walked into the room Tim was in and wanted to be friends with the cute boy

The reason that he kept finding Tim was that he was talking to Dick Grayson, his gymnastics instructor, and Dick had realized that the boy in question was his honorary little brother and told Bernard that “Timmy’s shy, you just have to break down his walls to get to know him” and tells him when Tim’s going to the museum

Dick is well aware of what Tim thinks the situation is because he’s the one Tim rants to, but he thinks it’s funny and will make for a great story to tell at their wedding

[treasureplcnet]

also quite obsessed with karl being as detached from the story as he is. there's nothing that makes him have to be the detective that has to be involved, but he unknowingly dooms himself by agreeing to work with the KYAL cult. every other detective basically deals with elias head on except weissman, who only meets him right before he kills him. like he's right when he says "by my choices" because everything that leads him to being mixed up with the mannix cult is himself. it's the gambling debts and the choice to do the dirty work for an organisation he knows nothing about. he's the only one that doesn't encounter that body doing police work and it's specifically because he's told to cover it up. he gets himself into the mess and eventually fixes it but the fact that esther always dies in the doomed timelines and he's always too late even if he starts wanting to change things ("till this child. esther.") it just makes me very ill

[aeide-thea]

Laundry stripping may be popular in certain circles, but it's important to understand the science behind the deep-cleaning practice before you decide to give it a try. Ultimately, stripping some fabrics (like silk and wool) can actually do more damage than good—and utilizing this method too frequently can prematurely age your garments. […] [Cleancult CEO Ryan] Lupberger advises against the practice altogether, especially if you were considering Borax. "It's one of the products people often use to strip laundry, but is also an irritant. It can lead to skin irritation or a rash and respiratory side effects," he says, noting that there are concerns for exposure to humans, as well as pets. […] The shock of laundry stripping is the water—the process results in a dark, seemingly disgusting pool of filth. In reality, this discoloration is largely caused by hot water leeching the dye in your clothes, causing them to run. Stripping can, however, help remove dirt, lingering body oils, detergent residue, and hard water minerals; together these soils do contribute in part to that brown-gray water, says Lupberger. According to Tide scientist Jennifer Ahoni, "Our research and laundry expertise suggests that there are more effective methods to remove build-up on fabrics." Per Tide's findings, continues Ahoni, the stripping process can actually cause issues with many textiles. "The mechanism by which washing soda precipitates out water hardness can actually form new soap scum residues on fabrics," she says. "Additionally, we have learned that low wash pH is an effective method for soap scum removal, and washing soda raises wash pH—which is the opposite direction." Not to mention the fact that washing soda can also deactivate some detergent components, preventing your wash from getting extra clean in the first place.

[dirty-spiced-chai]

under the weather

painted with wine on a white tee

(it faded to nearly gone after a single wash. it kind of looks like a scar now. this is just a memory of what it once was.)

[therabbitreaper]

Anyone wanna start an argument with me on whether prospero was valid in his outburst at ada after the manor lesson?? /j

Cause I’m definitely normal about that and won’t defend him till the day that I die.

[incesthemes]

as i've rewatched seasons 1 and 2 of supernatural i've been pondering and hypothesizing reasons why john was so adamant on not letting sam know about his destiny. why he was so intent on keeping this secret, why he didn't want sam knowing about monsters, why his role in their hunts appeared to be research-oriented and thus away from the action. my perspective on ignorance and censorship is that it enables further harm, so if john were going to effectively protect sam, it would stand to reason that sam should have a comprehensive understanding of his destiny and what he's up against: give him the tools to fight.

this is obviously not the route john went, so then i have to question why that is—what about censorship was so appealing to him that he thought it not only the best way to keep sam safe, but perhaps even the only way to keep him safe, based on how he begged even dean to keep sam's fate a secret from him in his final words?

so i got to thinking. namely, about the fact that azazel wants sam to be hunting: he killed jessica with the intent to drag him back into the life, which implies that if sam is hunting, he is going down the path azazel wants him to go—he's following his destiny. this aligns with the everpresent theme throughout season 1 that hunting is a monstrous lifestyle, that hunting turns people into monsters. if sam is destined to become a monster, then hunting is the most sure-fire way to get him there.

if azazel wants sam to hunt, then john would need to take the logical opposition and keep sam out of hunting—so, he wouldn't tell sam about monsters until he has to, he'd give sam more passive roles once sam is participating in hunts, he'd train sam in self-defense but not explain why. and importantly, he wouldn't talk about mary, who is the root cause of this lifestyle, the impetus for their revenge quest, more than he has to. if the goal is to keep sam as far away from hunting as possible, and if john is someone who thinks ignorance keeps someone safe, then this more or less explains most of how sam was raised: on the fringes of the family, excluded and sheltered.

but weirdly enough, it wasn't until i was reading east of eden the other night that i finally understood the perspective being presented: late in the novel, the character lee says "when the first innocence is gone, you can't stop."

it made me remember that sam picks. he is a character who wants to understand the world around him and his place in it. if something is bothering him, he turns it over in his head until it consumes him. dean places doubt in sam's head in 2x10 and it obliterates him by 2x11. he's convinced he's going to become some horrible monster because he never stops thinking and trying to figure things out. when his memory is wiped in 4x17 and normal guy sam wesson finds out his coworker is the guy from his weird dreams, he pursues him relentlessly until they're back hunting. when he discovers the wall death put in his mind to keep his hell trauma out in season 6, he pushes and can't stop until it starts crumbling around him. he's intelligent and clever and he wants to know everything. and when he doesn't know, he picks.

and the only way to stop a person like that from picking is to not let them know that there's something to pick at in the first place. that's what the quote from east of eden means: once you catch wind of something, you want to pursue it until you're satisfied. curiosity kills the cat.

and what john is up against is fate itself. something that isn't supposed to be messed with, something that's supposed to be unavoidable. so trying to thwart it is tricky business. he has to be careful.

i think working under that logic his response makes sense, even if it wound up being a self-fulfilling prophecy anyway—sam was always going to find out, and sam was always going to pick. there was nothing john could do in the end to stop it, and trying to keep sam ignorant only made him that much more desperate to know. but that's the great tragedy of it all: john was given an impossible choice, and he's a deeply flawed character. he did what he thought was best, and it only made things worse.

i like this interpretation because it ties all of john's choices together really well; it explains a lot about his character and gives a nuanced and rather reasonable explanation for why he did what he did: a dad who wants the best for his kid does what he believes will set him up on the path to success. when the first innocence is gone, you can't stop—so john does his damnedest to keep sam innocent, even to his dying breath.

the problem comes down to that someone's damnedest isn't always good enough, and that sometimes someone's damnedest ends up benefiting the enemy instead.

[kitsoa]

The Dystopia That Made Trigun

Ya'll the problem with Triguns insanely long speculative sci-fi timeline is the conundrum of trying to imagine exactly how a dystopian Earth could get so bad that massive amounts of folks needed to yeet themselves blindly into space, but could become so advanced that they single-handedly solve the energy crisis and maybe confirm the existence of god at the same time.

I am not a very skilled dystopia engineer, and there are a lot of flavors but I'd like to think the revolution of Plants on Earth has the potential to alleviate a lot of the aggregators in a full (or seemingly imminent) societal collapse. I'm struggling to work ahead of late-stage capitalism doomer scenarios right now which maybe puts me at a century out. I'm placing Trigun's timeline at 5 centuries out, But the tech advancement can pause at like 3 centuries in since 2 of those are used for space travel before the Big Fall.

So let's hash this out together

Here's what advancements Project Seeds needs to launch:

bioengineering (prosthetics and augmentations)

cloning and gene editing capabilities

cryosleep technology

advanced space travel

gravity control

supercomputing

Here's the rough and estimated environmental factors to cause them to leave Earth:

Resource scarcity

Environmental decline (like global warming and loss of land, and mass extinction)

[speculative] imminent doom from societal factors [like nuclear war and geopolitical unrest]

We know based on the society formed on No Man's Land that capitalism is probably the most familiar and default system used by the immigrants. So we can assume that Project Seeds was created with wealthy benefactors at the helm not only looking for salvation but probably power and influence (cause capitalism gonna a capitalism)-- a true colonial expansion echo despite the optimism.

The Seeds Project strikes me as unaffiliated with a specific country or culture. JuLai and some of the ambiguous ethnicities and lingering languages suggest that it's multi-cultural with English being the primary influence. So it's not a state-sponsored project, but very likely independent-- another point to the wealthy benefactor line of thought. Despite that, those shuttles alone took decades to construct and governmental cooperation to launch so it couldn't have been a completely apolitical endeavor.

Then there's the population. The project's reach is insane, not just in talent, but passenger interest. I'm assuming children were not on board, so you are talking about countless able-bodied adults abandoning their lives knowingly for the promise of a better world. The environmental factors aside, the prep-time for the project had to have been decades in the making. That's a long time to keep the propaganda circling for the promise of better. That kind of interest fades as people age into different stages of life. (Depending on the scenarios we could be looking at a mass draft? Unlikely but very interesting). We know that the survivors of the Big Fall were not specifically tailored to create a society without the comforts they were bringing along or the government of No Man's Land would look a little more stable.

So, what kind of society could form such a vast space immigration project while simultaneously on the verge of collapse?

Well, a desperate one.

The logic follows that as the resources grow scarce and the inequality gaps create vast populations of suffering among disenfranchised people-- fascism rises, which broadly stymies innovation. It's a real roadblock to this scenario. So the jumpstart out of this would be either war or a scientific breakthrough-- or both. There's always going to be interest and innovation in DNA science as a part of the medical field. Even in heavy capitalism that is going to get a lot of money thrown at it. The only thing needed to create Plants is large leaps in gene editing and cloning.

I'll throw out a number, 50 years. We've got cloning and Jurassic Park stuff. Then boom. Angel Mummy discovery. Scientists create the First Entity. But at the same time, geopolitical tensions ramp up because of the destructive potential of this entity. (I mean the First Entity has the Drain ability, that's black hole powers. We're getting wars). But the Plants are developed off of that and the First Entity is destroyed in the Julai foreshadowing lab accident many years down the line. --We've solved the energy crisis and there is probably a huge boom in advancement-- probably those physic-defying advancements to boot. But we have our militaristic flashpoint in technological prosperity, all while the earth is raining hellfire, the cities are flooding, and mass extinction events are occurring. Enough to get Trillionaires with savior complexes to start making Project Seeds.

Aaaand they are probably funding the countless wars so people join the expedition.

Conclusion: Project Seeds is a corrupt colonial project manipulating the hopeful desperation of a beleaguered population, created by the ultra-wealthy to garner absolute control in a humanity reset.

Good thing Nai crashed the ships!

[utskushii-hito]

I have died infected by the Rakghoul plague because I wanted to know how the stages of the disease worked... I didn't think the second stage would have been fatal.

[puppyeared]

ive made myself more wet and pathetic

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

You think part of the reason why Phoenix didn't contest the whole forged evidence fiasco that got him disbarred was because he still hadn't reconciled his feelings about what he did during BttT? This bit:

Phoenix: (So I guess it's all over... The way everything ended... Was justice really served...? The man who risked his life to save Maya is being sent to prison by my own hand...)

Like, maybe the idea that he was "as good out there as any defense lawyer could ever hope to be", as Mia puts it, but it only left him feeling hollow sprung a sort of disillusionment with the courts that culminated in him being framed and just... accepting it. Because if justice meant letting a good man be jailed (or executed if you want the awful version of events), if he couldn't even trust in his own hand to bring justice to his clients and cases, then what's the point of it?

I don't know. I think it would have been nice to see him figure this one out.

[wiseatom]

hello !! byler with prompt 11 for kisses prompts maybe :)??

thank you for the prompt!!! this super got away from me, but i hope that you enjoy, and that it fits the prompt in a way you had in mind!!

kisses prompts #11: welcome home kisses

Objectively, nine hours is not a long time. Will knows this.

He’s tried to rationalize it every which way, every day of the week: it’s a single-digit number, he reminds himself, when he wiggles out of Mike’s arms in the morning and forces himself out of bed. It’s not even half of the hours that make up a day, he thinks, every time he glances impatiently at the clock on the studio wall and finds it’s still ticking that same, steady speed. You are being a giant baby, he chastises himself, out loud, when the traffic on the way home turns nine hours into nine and a half and makes him want to tear his hair out. 

Subjectively, nine hours is the longest amount of time in the world when every other hour of your day is spent with Mike Wheeler, and nearly every one of your days has been spent that way since kindergarten. 

(So he’s kind of dramatic. Will knows this, too.) 

It’s Saturday, which is Will’s Friday, and Mike’s everyday, because when you have the luxury of (kind of) being your own boss and (kind of) working out of your own home, you (kind of) get to set your own schedule. Will is both (kind of) jealous at the flexibility and (very) grateful that it allows for a more instantaneous reunion when he finally arrives home every day, nine hours of work and traffic behind him. It’s the promise of that instantaneous reunion that gets him up both flights of stairs to their apartment, feet (kind of) dragging and (very) tired and his heart (kind of, very) aching because he’s dumb and misses his boyfriend after nine hours. 

(Nine and a half.)

It’s fine. It’s fine. He’s at their front door, and he’s already got his keys out, and he sticks the right one in the lock on his first try, and he opens the door and he’s ready to be greeted by his boyfriend when–

Said boyfriend nowhere in sight.

Will frowns, toeing his shoes off and setting his keys down in the dish they have on the hallway table, a clatter ringing out as they settle into the glass. The lights are off, but the entire apartment is bright with the yellow-orange glow of the setting sun, streaming through the window with such intensity that it looks like streaks of fire tear through the room, patches of it setting the carpet and the empty couch and coffee table ablaze. He steps further inside, and the cat comes to greet him, rubbing her face up against his leg and purring loudly. At least someone cares that he’s home. He stops where he stands, letting her do a few figure-eights between his legs before he reaches down to pick her up, cradling her against his chest. She lets out a happy meow and nuzzles into him, and he scratches behind her ear as he wanders into the kitchen, just as Mike-less as everything else in his line of sight. 

Objectively: this is fine. Mike does not need to wait by the door for him. Mike doesn’t need to drop whatever he’s doing to greet him the moment he gets home. Nine hours is not a long time. 

Subjectively: this is not fine. Mike should be waiting by the door for him. Mike should be dropping whatever he’s doing to greet him the moment that he gets home. Nine hours is too long to be apart, and Will is going to lose it. 

“Your dad sucks, Carrie,” Will says scornfully to the cat, flipping the kitchen light on and then glaring down the hallway to the office door, where he assumes Mike is holed up typing away at the computer, careless to the fact that his boyfriend is withering away in their very own kitchen from attention and affection deficit. 

Carrie, who does not care that her dad sucks, rubs her head against his chest, which does not solve the her dad sucking problem, but does serve to make him wither just a bit less. 

Whatever. Whatever. Who needs Mike, anyway? Not Will, who has very bravely survived the last nine and a half hours without him. He has a cat who adores him. He has a hand that’s cramped from drawing animation cels all day. He has… a box of Kraft mac and cheese in the pantry, he’s pretty sure. He can make this work. 

He goes to put Carrie down, but she promptly screams the moment she’s within three inches of the floor, so it looks like he’ll be cooking one-handed, then. Thankfully, his instinct about the mac and cheese is correct – there are actually two boxes, which is great, because then Mike can make his own damn food once he finally decides that Will is important enough for his time. The thought makes him scowl again, and when he retrieves a pot from one of the lower cabinets, he makes sure to clang and bang it into every other pot beside it, making as much noise as possible.

The ruckus makes Carrie dig her claws into his shoulder, but even after waiting a minute, Mike doesn’t poke his stupid head out of his stupid office. 

Stupid, Will thinks, slamming the pot into the sink and startling Carrie enough that she launches herself out of his arms, pushing off and away from his chest with all the force her little body can muster. All twelve pounds of her momentarily wind him anyway, and the sound of the bell on her collar jingles cheerily as she darts away from him. “Shit,” he mutters, pressing his hand to his chest where her claws dug into his skin through his sweater. He turns the tap on with more force than he intends to, scowling some more as water begins to fill the pot.

“Stupid,” he says out loud, under his breath, once the pot is full enough. He transfers it to the stove, flicking on one of the burners and reaching for the salt. He glances back to the hallway, where the door to the office is still closed. He nearly empties half of the salt into the water with how aggressively he’s shaking it. It has been nine hours and forty minutes, but he’s not counting. “Stupid,” he mutters again, and turns his attention back to the pot.

His mother’s voice comes to him, soft and kind: a watched pot never boils. Will huffs, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter opposite the stove. He sneaks a glance back to the office door, still closed, still no signs of life from beyond. A watched door never opens, his mother adds gently. That’s not even a saying, he shoots back, and then, quieter: sorry, Mom. I love you. 

She doesn’t respond. The water isn’t even simmering yet. A teeny, tiny bell jingles somewhere in the distance. The office door stays closed.

Objectively, Will is going insane.

(Subjectively, Will is going insane.) 

The thing is – yeah, he could march right down the hallway, bust down the door, and demand that Mike pay attention to him. He knows this, because he has done it before, and at that, often, and he has a 100% success rate of immediately distracting Mike from whatever it is that he’s doing and getting his undivided attention. It’s not at all a matter of whether or not he can.

It’s that he shouldn’t have to, because he was the one who sat in traffic, and he was the one who had to interact with other people, and he was the one who had to draw the same stupid lion over and over and over again, and he was the one who had to be away from home for nine hours, give or take. He worked all day. He shouldn’t have to work again just to get Mike to welcome him home. 

“Stupid,” he says very neutrally, not at all mad, and the loudest he has yet, speaking in the direction of the hallway, ringing out through the kitchen. Carrie sneezes twice. The water starts letting out a hissing sound from where it sits on the stovetop. A minute passes, bringing his running total up to nine hours and forty five minutes. 

Why would the office door ever even consider opening?

“So much for honey, I’m home,” Will mumbles, scathing, under his breath. The water finally rises to a boil, and he tears the top off of the Kraft box, flinging the torn cardboard somewhere on the counter. He does the same with the little packet of cheese flavor, though this toss is more careful, since he’ll actually need it later. Then he’s pouring the macaroni into the pot, and the office door still hasn’t opened, and he grabs a spoon from the pot they keep next to the stove, and every door in the apartment is still closed, and he starts to stir the noodles around, and there are still no doorknobs turning and hinges creaking and boyfriends leaving their fucking offices.

It’s fine, it’s whatever. Seriously. He’s not even mad, really. Nine hours and forty eight minutes without seeing his boyfriend, but what does it matter, right? Fucking objectively, that’s not even a long time, something most people wouldn’t even blink at–

The office door opens. Several more jingles ring out, timed with every little step Carrie takes to go greet her stupid, sucky dad. Will focuses every ounce of attention into stirring the noodles, and resolutely does not glance in the direction of the hallway. 

Mike coos at the cat. Seriously? Will thinks. 

“You’re home,” Mike says, as if this has not been the case for the last, like, eighteen minutes. And it’s like – okay, Will doesn’t know exactly what time it was when he got home, but eighteen minutes feels super right, and either way, it doesn’t matter, because there were at least nine entire hours before those eighteen minutes where they were forced to be apart by the cruel twist of fate. It’s certainly not Will’s fault that Mike decided to be crueler and twistier by enforcing an additional eighteen minutes onto their sentence.  

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

“Yup,” Will answers, clipped, mouthing popping on the p.

If Mike notices that Will is absolutely-not-at-all-pissed, he doesn’t care. “I missed you,” he says, all soft and sweet, and before Will can tell him to fuck off, because if he really missed Will, he would have been out here eighteen – nineteen – minutes ago, he’s coming up behind him, stepping into his space. His palms come to rest on Will’s lower back, sliding up and over his hips and stomach as his arms come to wrap around Will’s entire middle, pulling him back into Mike’s chest. He hooks his chin over Will’s shoulder, nuzzling into Will’s neck. “What are you making?” he asks, breath puffing out over the exposed skin at his collar. 

Oh, right. This is why he was so mad – the closed door meant he didn’t get this, Mike touching him and talking to him all sweet and lighting up at seeing him. Objectively, it’s a nice thing, to be wanted like this, held like this, loved like this.

Subjectively, he’s still pissed that he could have had this twenty minutes ago. 

“Mac and cheese,” he replies. He is horrified to hear that his own voice mirrors Mike’s, subtle and fond, that harsh edge Mike sidestepped smoothed over just with one touch. 

You’re better than this, he chides, trying desperately to channel the annoyance that has been by his side since he stepped in the door. 

“Gourmet,” Mike teases, swaying them back and forth, still hunched over him from behind. The comment should stoke the flames of his anger, but it’s hard to focus on that blaze when everywhere Mike is touching him feels like a thousand tiny fires of their own, burning and bright and scorching, just like the sunlight earlier. It is hard to be anything but delighted in their warmth.  “Enough for both of us?” 

You’re not, he reminds himself, all of the madness from earlier starting to scorch itself away. You’re really, really not. 

“‘Course,” says Will, light and easy, stirring the noodles. They might almost be done, by now. It doesn’t matter, because they are less interesting than they were thirty seconds ago. He sets the spoon aside and twists in Mike’s arms, lifting both arms up and wrapping them around Mike’s neck. One hand comes up to his nape, thumb brushing through the hair that curls there, while the other hangs off his shoulder, ready to go back to stirring if needed. He allows himself a moment to stare, studying Mike’s face for new freckles or signs of aging that may have happened in their awful, arduous nine hours and forty eight minutes apart. Then, because he has to, he says: “I’ve been home for twenty minutes, you know.”

Mike hums. “Have you, now?” he asks, and there’s a quiver in his lips that is just this side of too amused, and Will hates him, hates him, hates him. 

“Yes,” Will replies, haughty, swiftly reminded of how much Mike sucks, and is the worst, and doesn’t deserve any of the covers tonight. Not even a scrap. “And where were you?”

“I already answered that,” Mike says. His voice has dropped, still soft, but a little rough around the edges. Carrie lets out a mewl by their feet. Will should probably stir the noodles. He doesn’t move, except for his thumb, still tracing a path through Mike’s hair – back and forth, back and forth. 

Will wracks his brain for the answer Mike claims he’s already spoken, but his thoughts are sluggish, gone slow from the exchange of heady oxygen between their faces. He can’t recall anything. 

“When?” he asks, dazed.

Mike lets his smile run loose. “When I said I missed you,” he responds. He runs his own thumb along the dip in the small of Will’s back, the movement searing, even though the wool of his sweater. “That’s where I was. Missing you.”

Objectively, that doesn’t make sense. If he were missing Will, then he would have greeted him at the door, waiting there for Will to get home just the way Will had been hoping he would be from the moment he cut the engine in the parking lot. If he were missing Will, he wouldn’t have let the cat be the first to greet him, wouldn’t have let Will stomp around the kitchen and bang pots around and say the word stupid so many times that it stopped feeling like a word. 

Subjectively, Will stopped caring about the details of it all the moment Mike wrapped his arms around him. 

“Stupid,” Will mutters a final time, just for good measure, before pulling Mike’s face down to meet his.

When their lips brush, every single minute of their nine hours and forty eight minutes apart suddenly becomes worth it – the exile from bed that morning, the repetition of drawing the same cel over and over again, the ticking of the studio clock, the frustrating, non-movement of the traffic on the way home. They were all worth it, because here is Mike, with his chapped lips and his warm hands ready to reward Will for it all, to welcome him home without punctuality, but with a whole lot of personality. His mother’s voice floats back into his head, still soft, still kind: absence makes the heart grow fonder. Will laughs, right into Mike’s mouth, the kiss breaking with it, and thinks, go away, Mom, please, before pressing back into Mike with intention, insistent. Mike lets out a little giggle of his own, breaking it apart a second time.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, mumbling, muffled only because he won’t dismantle the kiss fully, and Will’s own lips are stopping the words before they can get all the way out. 

Will blows out a puff of air, which makes Mike pull back, a bigger laugh spilling out of him. “Stirring the macaroni,” Will answers, because he’s not about to tell Mike that he was thinking about his mom while they were kissing. Before Mike can answer – or call him on his bullshit – Will swivels back around, retrieving the spoon from the counter and giving the macaroni one last, halfhearted stir before he’s moving it off the burner entirely and turning the stovetop off. 

“Very mindful of you,” Mike comments. He stays attached while Will grabs the pot and turns around towards the sink, both of them somehow sidestepping Carrie, who is still hovering by their feet. 

“One of us should be,” Will bites back, but it’s a playful thing, and Mike knows it. Will reaches up to the pot rack that hangs above the sink to grab the strainer, and makes quick work of letting the water wash down the drain. Normally, he’d carry on, would move to grab the butter and milk from the fridge and the abandoned cheese flavor packet from the counter, but Mike is (kind of, very) preventing that, so he leaves the strainer with the noodles in the sink and turns back in his arms, smiling up at him. 

“Yeah?” Mike asks, also clearly not caring about the mac and cheese anymore. He lifts one of his hands to Will’s face and runs his thumb over Will’s upper lip, smoothing over the hair there. “You gonna shave this off, then?”

Will actually does scowl at him, now. “You like the mustache,” he says, and it is meant to be a defense, but it comes out as a demand. 

Mike laughs again. “I like you,” he corrects. His thumb does another pass, sweeping over the hair again before trailing down to Will’s bottom lip. Will shudders. 

“You love me,” Will revises, more correct than Mike’s correction. Mike’s thumb stays on his lip as it moves with the words.

“I love you very much,” Mike confirms. He brings his other hand up to cup at Will’s face, and he cradles it in his hands as he tilts it back so that he can kiss Will again, dry and warm and just as much his home as the walls around them and the cat with her belled collar dancing at their feet and the macaroni sitting in the strainer behind them. He pulls away too soon, but it’s to plant a kiss at the corner the corner of his mouth, the apple of each cheek; to trail them along his jaw, behind his left ear, and then along and behind his right; and all the way, between each one, two words: “Welcome home.” 

Objectively, he’s a little late with the sentiment.Objectively, the macaroni is getting cold, and it’s going to be hard to mix in the cheese flavor. Objectively, just like one of her fathers, Carrie is quickly approaching the point where she is not going to take kindly to getting ignored much longer.

Subjectively, Will doesn’t care, and pulls Mike’s mouth back to his.

[buwheal]

Bro the askers treat spamton so much better on that askblog.

While over here we send him drawings of his joints and tell him "go puppet boy go!"

Honestly I love seeing the difference.

LOLLL they do… and maybe a little bit of that is my fault based on the ones i choose because im really picky with the ones i do answer (being nice to him, in this case) because there are SO many people who are trying to make him feel better, but ultimately they always bring up something or other to remind him of the shit he’s gone or is going through..

..Like,, “so you know how youre always failing and you’re uh… maybe alone with the (physical) things you’re going through? Yeah? Well ive failed too. Sometimes. Hope you feel better after i just reminded you!” Kind of stuff. Obviously im very much exaggerating what people say but YIPPPEESS its like they’re trying to get him to cry or something. I appreciate their efforts and how much the care but damn i dont think that they’re thinking about how that’d sound to him, especially since his immediate thought towards things like that is that its ingenuine.

I think less of Loki’s audience wants to see him suffer. A lot of mine do. LMAO. The difference /is/ funny.

[newspecies]

HI this is my thousand word ramble about Rocky and his relationship with other characters and my thoughts in general. I'm normal about Lackadaisy I promise.

Calvin

Calvin and Rocky are cousins that grew up together, with Rocky being 5 years older. The mini comics all make it seem like he spent most of his time there and later he says “it was home more than home was.” (Lackadaisy Breakdown). The cousins wrote to each other while Rocky was traveling around and Calvin kept them all inside a box instead of throwing them away. Aunt Nina tells Rocky "[Calvin]'s the only one in all o’ creation who'd follow you" (Lackadaisy Somersault) so they're clearly extremely close. Calvin lies to his mother several times to keep Rocky out of trouble, even when it's about something illegal. Despite his moral compass and the fact that he almost went into law enforcement, he's working with Lackadaisy and regularly shooting at people presumably just because Rocky wants him to (and because Ivy's there... but in the beginning it was for Rocky). They strike me as having more of a sibling relationship than a cousin one due to growing up so close.

Aunt Nina

Nina does not have a very high opinion of Rocky and she makes this very clear. She trusts him not to get Calvin into too much trouble but she doesn't let him stick around when he stops by. He’s under no illusions that he’s welcome at her house (Lackadaisy Somersault) and he tells Ivy that “[his face]’s only abided in small doses” at Nina’s house. He starts telling Ivy there was a small family tragedy and "it had an author... and with already ink-stained hands, i signed my name on it" which means that something bad happened and he either was to blame or took the blame and that is the reason he left Missouri, "so time could dull my fresh reminder face." (Lackadaisy Breakdown). My guess is that this family tragedy had something to do with his mother because his father was alive at least a little bit after he left because he was sending letters and stopped (Lackadaisy Correspondence) his mother is only mentioned once, in Lackadaisy Breakdown, described as “chasing Red Death” Red Death is not a real sickness and its instead from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. This could mean that his mother had some sort of bloody sickness. My guess is tuberculosis. It was one of the biggest causes of death in the early 1900’s and one of its most well known symptoms is coughing up blood. Sorry this is supposed to be about Nina and I kind of went off the rails there. Anyway I don’t think Nina hates Rocky at all; she still does his laundry and lets him visit and lets him drag Calvin around. But she doesn’t trust him and makes sure he knows that.

Mitzi

Some people seem to think Rocky has a crush on Mitzi, and him threatening Wick certainly gives the impression but I heavily disagree and I think he sees her more as a mother figure. He clearly looks up to her and seeks her approval constantly; he goes out while extremely injured and hiding that injury from her (Lackadaisy Deliria) presumably because he realizes that the pig farmers' attack on Lackadaisy was his fault and he really wants to fix it. His behavior towards Wick strikes me more as a child really not wanting a step parent. As the audience, I know that Wick is basically incapable of evil (he has killed once and it was a duck and it still haunts him) and Mitzi is the one taking advantage of their relationship, but from Rocky's perspective Mitzi is just an innocent widow looking for companionship and Wick is a weird rich sleazeball. I honestly don't think Rocky is aware of Mitzi's own sleaziness, and if he is he’s ignoring it to the best of his ability. but Mitzi likes having Rocky around. Every time she's upset over something and Rocky starts joking around she immediately starts smiling more (Lackadaisy Proposition, Lackadaisy Haggersnash). She’s undeniably fond of him, despite his many shenanigans.

Mordecai

Okay this one is a little bit more out there. “But Rotten!” You may argue, “Rocky doesn’t actually know Mordecai! They only interact like once outside the mini comics!” Yes dear reader but consider this: they have so many parallels. They are opposites on the surface; Rocky is silly, Mordecai is serious. But looking closer they have a few things in common. Mainly: TRAINS!!!!!!!!! They both have recurring train motifs and it makes me insane. For Mordecai he met Atlas on a train (Lackadaisy Thaumaturgy), and for Rocky he has a drawing of one on one of the letters he sent to Calvin (Lackadaisy Correspondence) and he said his father worked on the railroad (Lackadaisy Breakdown). In relation to the trains, they both left home at a young age and wrote letters home. They also both seem to have a habit of gaining enemies; when Atlas met Mordecai he was running from people (Lackadaisy Bookkeeper) and Rocky’s… everything makes making enemies extremely easy for him. These two have PARALLELS and I need everyone to know!!!!!

Rocky

This last section is about Rocky himself! First off, to state the obvious: Rocky is extremely impulsive, he doesn’t seem to think about the consequences of his actions whatsoever and it gets him into all sorts of trouble all the time. He’s not oblivious though; in Lackadaisy Posterity he immediately jumps to the conclusion that he ruined something, he just didn’t remember it. Rocky puts on a show of being confident and sure of himself but the moment his walls are torn down in the Posterity and Breakdown pages he’s calling himself a horrible person. He is extremely aware of how other people feel about him; even though his exclamation of “they tolerate me” in Lackadaisy Palaver is framed as a joke, it feels pretty real. A lot of people don’t like Rocky and he knows this. I don’t remember where I was going with this. Just know that I’m obsessed with Rocky and I’m thinking about him always.

In conclusion