#im still trying to process what even was happening

[xobunni0]

𝒾𝓂 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇𝓈 — Valentine day 1

𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰 𝐱 𝐟!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

౨ৎ 𝐈𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡… shadow reminds you that even though he struggles to show it, his feelings for you aren’t going anywhere.

short one bc im sick 💔

the apartment was quiet, you and Shadow sat across from each other on the bed, legs loosely folded, a comfortable distance between you. the dim lighting cast a soft glow over his dark fur, highlighting the sharp edges of his features

but tonight, it was different

you had noticed it before how sometimes, no matter how close you were Shadow seemed miles away. it wasn’t coldness not exactly, but something deeper like he was carrying a weight that even you couldn’t reach.

and it had been happening more often lately.

the silence stretched on between you and Shadow, heavier than before. even after his quiet promise to try, there were moments when he still slipped away moments when his thoughts pulled him somewhere you couldn’t follow.

and it hurt.

it wasn’t something you wanted to admit, even to yourself. you knew Shadow wasn’t the type to be openly affectionate, and you had never expected him to be. but when he pulled away, when his eyes drifted past you like he wasn’t really there it made you wonder if you were fooling yourself. If what you had with him was real

or if he was just holding on out of convenience

you sat on the bed knees pulled up to your chest, watching him as he stared out the window. his posture was tense, his mind clearly somewhere else. the city lights reflected in his eyes, but you could tell he wasn’t seeing any of it

Shadow had always been distant. you knew that from the start. but knowing it and feeling it were two very different things

Shadow was beside you, close enough that you could feel his presence but not close enough to feel him. not in the way you wanted.

you had always been there for him. When he became lost in his head, you stayed. when his nightmares woke him in the middle of the night, you never asked questions you just reached for him letting him know he wasn’t alone. when he disappeared for hours, sometimes days, you never demanded explanations. you simply waited.

but how long could you keep waiting for something that might never come?

“You’re thinking too much again” Shadow said his voice pulling you from your thoughts

you glanced at him. he was looking at you now but not in the way you wanted. it was observation not intimacy. he could always tell when something was on your mind but he never reached for you first. never touched you just because he wanted to

you swallowed your fingers gripping the blanket. “Do you even care about me Shadow?”

the words felt heavier the moment they left your mouth. Shadow stiffened his red eyes narrowing slightly not in ange but in confusion.

“Why would you ask that?” he said

you exhaled, shaking your head. “Because you never show it” you admitted your voice quieter now. “I’m always here for you. Always. And I don’t expect you to change who you are but… sometimes I wonder if this even means anything to you. If I mean anything to you.”

Shadow was silent. His gaze flickered slightly, as if he was processing your words but the longer the silence stretchedthe more that ache in your chest deepened.

“I know you’re not the kind of person who says things outright,” you continued, your voice barely above a whisper. “And I never needed you to say the words. But I need something Shadow. I need to know that you care, that I’m not just wasting my time hoping for something you’ll never give me.”

His jaw tightened and for a second, you thought he might look away. But then finally he spoke

“I do care” he said, his voice quieter than before. “More than you know.”

Your breath caught. “Then why don’t you show it?”

Shadow exhaled sharply his hand running over his quills. “Because I don’t know how,” he admitted, and for the first time, there was a rawness in his tone that startled you. “I’ve spent my life fighting, surviving. Affection isn’t something I’ve ever had let alone something I’ve learned to give.”

Your chest ached at the quiet confession.

“You could learn” you said gently. “I don’t need big gestures of love Shadow. I don’t need words. Just… something. Anything to let me know I matter to you as much as you matter to me.”

Shadow looked at you for a long moment, something unreadable behind his eyes. slowly hesitantly he reached out.

His hand brushed against yours fingers curling over your own not tightly, but on purpose. It was such a simple touch but from him it felt like everything.

Your breath hitched slightly as you squeezed his hand in return.

Shadow’s gaze softened just a little. “I’ll try” he said but this time, you believed him.

because tonight he was already starting.

[mortionsickness]

morston, a post (and a hidden narrative)

im not here to start any fights or provoke or be inflammatory, so please, if you’re here to beef with me, just move on. if you’re willing to hear me out for one humble post, though, I love you <3 let’s start;

ok, so first of all can we all be real for a second?

facts: arthur morgan and john marston are not blood related.

arthur and john met at 22 and 12 years old respectively.

arthur and john as of the end of rdr2 are 26 and 36 years old.

ok? ok! let’s continue, please;

in fanon, arthur and john are always depicted as being raised as close brothers, annoyed by eachother but overall best buds. this is cute! but not necessarily canon.

what we can learn from arthur and john’s interactions, is that they had some real animosity— mainly arthur towards john. as said in arthur’s own journal he only started to like john by close to the end of the game. I could dismiss this as friendly ribbing, if it were not actually written in arthur’s Journal, where his most personal thoughts are stored. this being said, i could still dismiss it, but humor me for my humble post (I’ll elaborate more on this later).

by the start of the game, arthur resents john, for three main reasons;

number one, john left the gang for a year, disregarding the loyalty to dutch that arthur treasured so deeply

number two, john abandoned his family, the family that arthur never got to have in eliza and issac

number three, and the most important reason to this post, arthur was jealous of john. feeding into the last point, jealous of the family that john has, and jealous of dutch’s favoritism towards john.

from what we know, there is no evidence that the two were close growing up at all. in fact, i’d even say there’s evidence to the contrary;

“I did it for Abigail, of course, in her own way, the finest woman I know, but also for Jack and I guess Marston himself. I kind of like him.

We’ve argued over the years, but I’ve grown to care a little for him. He’s less of a fool than he was,”

what we can learn from this passage is that arthur didn’t think much of john over the years, and that he’s grown to care “a little” for him. key word is grown. if the two were close growing up, like brothers, he would probably have more to say about him than that he’s grown to kind of like him a little bit.

once again, I could dismiss this as ribbing, but what reason does he have to do so in his own personal journal besides some kind of bizarre denial? he says he loves other characters straight up.

now that we’ve established that the brotherly childhood bond is, for the most part, cute fanon, I’d like to talk about the hidden narrative between these two characters, particularly through their relation to dutch.

what we learn over the course of the game, and through john and arthur’s conversations is that the two have, to some degree, competed for dutch’s attention.

john says this during chapter 6, for example.

from my perspective, it looks like dutch, their abuser (because yes, he is their abuser and not their father, i could make a whole other post about this), has pitted arthur and john against each other, or at least perpetuated the rivalry between the two of them.

by the end of the game, john and arthur have broken out of this rivalry, and learned to care for one another. this is the narrative that I enjoy morston by.

not of two close brothers who were in love at age 12 and 22.

I view it as a story of two victims of the same abuser who happened to grow up alongside eachother, resenting eachother all the while. of the two of them learning what was done to them was wrong, and breaking the cycle together, trying to move forward together, and finally growing to care for eachother through the process. this is why morston is not “problematic” or “taboo” to me.

as for the two of them meeting at the ages they did, what I have to say is this; let’s examine why we fear these situations so much.

in real life, we are uncomfortable (rightly so!) with situations like these due to the extreme power imbalance at said ages, and maturity differences. we’re scared because the adult may take advantage of these said things, in order to groom them into being a romantic partner later in life, even if they don’t outright date them as a kid.

as someone who has been groomed, let me explain; the reason why we are dubious of these situations is because we don’t know the older party’s intentions, and we assume they will take advantage of the power dynamic. in fiction, however, I believe this is different.

arthur morgan would never groom a child. we know this to be true. we know his intentions, his motivations, his soul. why do we assume in the case of morston that he had to have groomed him?

textually, john and arthur are 26 and 36 by the time they even begin to get along, with 0 evidence that they were remotely close at a young age. the two could’ve barely talked. were scared of something in this scenario that we’re rightly scared of irl, but we know the situation, we know the stakes, and we know that this is not a situation where john would be taken advantage of, because he is a grown 26 year old man with a wife and child by the time him and arthur even interact kindly with eachother. he had been an adult for 8 entire years.

fiction can effect reality, yes, but if people just widely understood that this is not a situation where the two of them would have any chance of getting together before they’re both well into adulthood, then it wouldn’t be a problem. because this is not a dangerous situation, for john or for anyone.

john was not groomed by anyone other than dutch van der linde, and that’s a fact. both arthur and john were groomed and this is a story about getting out, together. moving on, together. loving each other in the face of opposing forces, and purposeful wedges between them. and I think that’s a story that is a net good.

[dennistakesamentalhealthday]

the nancy boy thing is just so fucking insane because like. they broke from the spelling of this name to do it but also incorporated it into the spelling of his name with n for nancy (possibly showing how he associates it with himself). but the license plate could have been any letter and that letter could have been any word and they chose b for boy. they could have cut to the license plate from any letter in dennis and they chose n for nancy. and we already know the way dennis spells out his name/words in this scene is very important metaphorically they showed us with that alternate D.E.N.N.I.S. system he gives us so.....they did that on purpose and drew attention to it

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

one thing abt being disabled/chronically ill that some people don’t get is that sometimes body maintenance that ensures you have the absolute minimum amount of function can also be something that takes away a lot of control and autonomy. you can argue till the cows come home that making those decisions to try and help yourself (or realistically to try to make sure things aren’t worse than they already are) is something that exhibits control and autonomy and stuff, but they can be so limiting in practice because they’re things that take up so much time but have to be done to do anything else

[fellhellion]

90s run PAD has this rlly annoying trend where he very often write a female character being in love w miguel and suddenly her entire character shrinks down to the scope of what drama this provokes and it's near continually in service to the narratives of men (Gabriel and Miguel interpersonal drama for example). even when there are actually interesting things to be mined from this angle like w lyla its like. this is a pattern w you dude.

[cinnabeat]

i love how kh games are just sometimes psychological horrors

[phagodyke]

looking up info on keloid scarring is so helpful. thanks man I didn't think of trying that one

[danothan]

i keep wondering why my schedule has been so wonky lately as if i didn’t quite literally get into a car crash less than a week ago

[gibbearish]

> be me

> never send asks bc im scared ill mess something up

> type up lots of asks but never end up sending them

> finally type up an ask i feel like i can send

> check over it a dozen times to make sure im not missing anything

> send

> didn't actually read urls right

> sent ask to wrong person entirely

> mfw

[mell0bee]

perhaps i shouldnt say anything bc im not caught up but that imogen design..... hmmmm.

[lady-caden]

Sometimes I rlly do love my fam

[platinum-horizons]

4

edit: 4 was NOT supposed to be there i dont know how it happened

Like I know we all love making ADHD seem cool but like, don't forget it's actually a disability? My ADHD is bad enough I've nearly been evicted for forgetting to mail the rent check to the property manager, I've forgotten to pay the utility bills and had my water or power get turned off or had to pay fines bcs I missed a credit card payment. Once I was supposed to cat sit for a friend and I lost the house key she gave me but didn't realize until she was already out of town, and she had to call the apartment office to get someone to give me the spare so her cats would have food for the week. When I'm unmedicated I can't even get myself to shower half the time, forget eating or cleaning. Before I started living with my fiance I'd just like, not eat for days because I didn't have anyone to remind me to eat or go buy me food. I've forgotten to turn the stove off so many times and ruined kettles and tbh been DAMN fucking lucky the house didn't burn down. I've done stupid, impulsive shit that's nearly gotten me KILLED. I can't remember to close the shower curtain reliably even through my fiance points out every single time I forget, and he's almost out of soap rn bcs for the last MONTH neither of us have been able to remember to order more once we get out of the shower.

I've had such bad memory my entire life that to this day someone suggesting I forgot something because I simply didn't care enough is a legitimate trigger that, in the worst cases, makes me have a breakdown.

I get that for some of you this is just something that makes studying hard or you forget to take a pee break when you're playing Minecraft or whatever, that's still a valid struggle and you do deserve help and understanding, but like, ADHD is a disability. It's disabling. It's not impossible to improve and learn coping skills, meds help a lot, there are great accommodations out there(LIKE CLEANING SERVICES), but not every case of ADHD is the same, and a lot of them are pretty ugly ngl, and just because you managed to do something doesn't mean someone else is gonna be able to manage it too, or that they're being lazy for struggling. And that obviously doesn't mean ADHD people have a free pass to never work on themselves and make everyone cater to their every need or whatever, but we do deserve some understanding when we explain that our disability is actually disabling in ways that aren't palatable to you. So like, idk, maybe don't immediately recoil in horror when you find out that someone with ADHD can't keep their house clean. And for fucks sake don't ridicule them for it.

[inbabylontheywept]

i once accidentally dated someone for a few months. its very difficult to explain how this happened, but the gist is that i thought we were hanging out, and she thought we were on dates, and it was just a very painfully highschool thing.

she was a little bit confused that i hadnt tried to pull any moves, at all, even a little. like, didnt even try holding hands because, and i cannot emphasize this enough, i did not know we were dating.

so, halloween rolled around, and she thought, you know, why wait for destiny, when you can grab it? so she hit me with a clue by four.

babylon, she said. babylon. my mom's gonna be out of town on halloween, and im gonna have the house to myself, and it's going to be kind of lonely. would you like to come to my house and watch scary movies with me?

you know, kind of a netflix and chill thing. except, and i cannot emphasize this enough, i did not know we were dating. also autism. so i took it at face value and said: oh! yeah! thatd be fun! and she thought she got her point across, but she didnt and it was a mess.

skip forward to halloween: my family has a block party every year, right? and at that point i was too old to really trick or treat, but we still wore costumes for our role in the block party, which in my case, was handing out cotton candy. so i took the first shift, and my costume was this homemade abomination minion thing. i had full yellow body paint, and goggles, and a bald cap, and overalls. the kids who saw it were like, uh, hm. overly realistic minion. and adults were like, oh, some kind of hills have eyes hillbilly with jaundice. very scary.

(it was not my best costume.)

my little brother swapped me out for second shift, and i was getting ready to change out to head to her house when i was like: no, she'll get a real kick out of this. this is one of the worst things i have ever worn. so i kept it on and just brought a change of clothes thinking i could shower real quick and change at her place after she saw my nightmare getup.

so i left after that, got there, knocked on her door, and she said come on in. so i went in, and there was this very long hall with an abrupt right turn into her living room where the tv was, and i went down the hall, and i made the turn, and my field of view went from beige drywal to her, on the couch, naked. naked in the paint me like one of your french girls pose. super naked.

i panicked. this was my first time seeing a real person like, full on sex naked,which is a totally different beast from other kinds of naked. you see one kind of naked and you think yeah, im ready for all the kinds of naked, but you arent. i wasnt at least. i really wasn't.

so my brain crashed to BIOS. she also crashed to BIOS, but for different reasons. of all the ways this could have turned me, having me show up in yellow body paint and overalls was pretty pretty low down the list.

so we sat there a while, and you know, she wasn't getting any less naked, which really wasn't helping me get my brain sorted out. it really wasnt much of a surprise when she got her bearings first and started asking questions.

"babylon," she said. "babylon. what are you wearing?"

and i was like, kind of rebooted, but i was nowhere near full functionality, so symbolic language wasnt loaded in yet. i had nothing running but my trusty autism.exe, so i said

"overalls"

and she looked at me like i was the dumbest person in the entire world, and i looked at her like she was the first naked person i had seen in real life who got naked specifically for me, and my upper level cognitive process went: "listen man, we are not going to get our shit together as long as 80% of your brain power is devoted to not blinking. you gotta get out of here."

and if id communicated that, maybe things would have been less of a mess, but instead i just kind of turned around and walked back to my car. i figured i could drive a few loops around the block, get my brain in order, and figure out what the hell we were gonna do.

the only thing i had said to her since arriving was, again, overalls.

first loop around, i was like: oh god fucking damnit. oh shit. oh shit. shes gonna get like, an eating disorder from this. oh no.

second loop around i was like: oh NOOOOO oh WHAT THE FUCK oh SWEET JESUS PLEASE. i dont wanna go back man. i just wanna bury this and forget about it. please. please. let this bitter cup pass from my lips.

and after my third loop, i went and i knocked on her door again.

she answered it this time, and i counted my lucky stars that she'd changed into some pajamas. she was all teary eyed which was the saddest thing ever, and we sat down in her kitchen and talked. it was pretty bad - i figured out we'd been dating, and she figured out that trying to jump from home plate to 3rd base is considered ballsy in baseball, least of all dating. no real winners there. and i can remember after all that, we sat there a bit a bit longer, just steadying ourselves, and i was like "well, im actually really glad we figured that out. guess i'll see you at school tomorow' and she said "WAIT. wait."

"lets watch shrek 2."

so we did and it was horrible. we did not look at each other. we did not say a word. we just sat in stony silence, while shrek 2 played in the background, and when it was done we shook hands. i think we might have been able to salvage that as a friendship if it hadnt been for shrek. as it was she turned white as a sheet and ran away every time she even got a glimpse of me at school, and that summer she moved to a new state to live with her dad. all her friends said she moved just so she wouldn't have to go to school with me anymore, and i dont actually think they were lying.

every time i hear relationship counselors talk about how important communication is, and i'm tempted to roll my eyes, i look back and go, alright. alright. theres probably some poor bastard, somewhere in the world, who doesnt even know that hes married.

and god help him when he figures it out.

other bad dating story here.

[arolesbianism]

There's smth rly fun abt having stories based off of dreams because you just have a bunch of dream based worldbuilding that you just sorta have to work with now. Like oh a ring of infinite dragons run through the earth eternally consuming eachother? Guess I have to explain that now. Also that's sick as hell why didn't I think of that while awake

[inkskinned]

you said you were stuck in a time loop, which was fine. i feel like late-stage capitalism has us all in a time loop, ammiright? you came barging in at 5:33. in the morning. i hadn't even processed the idea of coffee.

but you had this look of utter panic in your eyes. terror like the ocean. you grabbed my cheeks. im in a time loop.

i don't know why in movies the first reaction is to deny it. when someone is panicking like that, it's not appropriate to ask them to calm down. it didn't matter if i believed it, what mattered was that you believed it so much that it was consuming you.

so here we are. i pour you some of the dark roast. "you look like utter and entire hell," i say.

you push your fingers into your eyes. "you always say that."

i try to think of something funny to say that i wouldn't have said on previous time loops, but jokes don't land without the proper timing (lol). "remind me to think -"

"-yeah, of a joke that only works in the future. and before you say anything, i know you're pissed i just stole your punchline." you bolt the coffee, which is wild. it's very hot. you don't seem to notice.

i blow on mine to cool it down. i both am very pissed at you and also i can't see you in this amount of panic without wanting to help. but i'm also not really sure what we are, not since i saw you kiss her like that, no offense. it just was like, kind of rude when you knew i liked you.

and besides. i'm just like, barely a person. i write omegaverse fanfiction. i love the concept of a time loop, but what the fuck am i gonna do? send an alpha in there? i open my mouth.

you point at me. "you're about to ask why me. and then say some disparaging shit about yourself. i'm just a nerd who plays dnd or something. that self-own is slightly different each time." you sigh. "i know you think you can't really help me. i don't know who can help me. i only came to you because you fucking believe me." you check your watch, sigh, and throw your head back. you cover your eyes with one hand. "i've come here on 26 separate revolutions," you say. "you have believed me every time. and yeah, i have no idea how you fit into this but i just -" you sigh again. "i just like fucking talking to someone about it."

"do you need more cof-" i start, but you're already holding the empty cup out. i frown at it. "you're not getting any more until you promise not to bolt this one like an animal."

you laugh a little and sit up, pushing your hair out of your face. "okay, that's new dialogue. but to be fair to you, i'm not usually this rude. i'm still pretty new at all of this." you check your watch again. another sigh. i guess you're cruising for a personal best in the Sigh Olympics.

i almost tell you im not an NPC but i've played enough video games to know i'm very much an NPC. i pour you another cup. "so what happens in the loop?"

"really bad explosion." you mutter into the mug. you put your elbows on the table (rude) and bury your face in your arms like an angsty teenager. one hand floats up while you talk, because evidently you literally can't talk without your hands. "i have to save the day and there's this bomb and i have no bomb training and it keeps moving, you know."

"do i die?"

you peek up from your arms. "yeah. bigtime. you keep trying to run or stay or do anything and you always super die."

"oh."

"to be fair, like, everyone dies in it though.... so you're in good company."

i hate that you make me laugh. i hate that being around you always feels tingly and strange, this electric tension between us. something that is evidently (given how you stuck your tongue down a stranger's throat literally 3 days ago) (well. 3 for me) super one-sided. i take a sip of my coffee and close my eyes.

i die today, i guess. a little spark of panic starts at the top of my hands and starts whipping up my wrists.

"shit," you say. you look at your watch and jump to your feet. "i have to go. if i can come back, i will. i am still trying to figure out when is best to do everything, you know? the order of stuff. maybe morning isn't good for us."

i look up at you and think about how you keep kissing me in the back of my car and in alleyways and in the dark. and i can never fucking get a read on you. and i also think about how incredibly panicked you look. how broken. how long have you been doing this? "i don't want to die," i say.

you glance downwards. "well, you're not really dead, you'll come back in the loop."

"but i will have died." my hands are shaking. i am trying really hard to stay calm.

you push your hands through your hair again. "i really have to go. i will have this discussion with the next version of you, though. it is like, something i am thinking about."

"but i don't get a next version," i say. i don't really have the language for this, because i haven't had 26 tries with you. i only have my memories: you, a week ago. drunk and telling me you loved me in my ear. you, kissing her anyway. you, months ago, throwing up on my birthday, whispering to me i ruin everything i touch, always, over and over. please don't ask. i can't ever fucking have that be you.

i run my finger along the rim of the mug. "i don't want to die in this one."

you seem baffled by this. "i get that but - time will reset, you'll be fine, you won't even remember we talked about this."

"but i know now." i stand up too. "i have to live the rest of this day knowing i could die. knowing i probably am going to."

"you could always die, to be fair."

i feel my hands get out of control. "earlier, you said i always say a different insult about myself. what if you're just going through different parallel universes and those are all just different - but real - versions of myself? what if you're not in a time loop, you're in a fucking universe loop?"

"if it helps, i've wondered this too. also, you're hot in all of them. if that helps."

i point at you. "no flirting. i'm trying to figure out if i die today."

"who's flirting?" you catch my wild hands and give me that long, perfect smile. like we're in this together. "i won't let ya die." you check your watch and sigh again. "well. maybe not this time."

i grit my teeth. you are so not making quips at me while i try to explain the existential dread i'm having. "does the time loop reset if i fucking kill you?"

"honestly i don't know how long it continues after i die, because i just wake up. it could be that the loop goes until the explosion for everyone, and we're all in the loop, or it could be that when i die, the loop restarts. when i die i wake up, is all."

i pull away from you and stalk into the kitchen and start doing all 3 of my dishes. "okay, first, you know i was joking. and secondly, this is exactly my point. you don't know if this is just a parallel universe. maybe in the ones where you died, the explosion happened and nobody reset and it's just you travelling." i have to stop and push the heel of my palm into my eyeball. "... how often have you died?"

i look at you. you look at me. you give me this very sad, halfway smile and a little what can ya do shrug. something in that action seems so old and weary that i want to burst into tears.

"i have to go," you say. "really. for real. there's this family of five i save from getting into a car crash. and i know it's like oh but we're all gonna die in the explosion anyway, what's the point. and..." you shrug again. "it matters to me, is all. at least i saved them for now. at least i saved anything."

you pad over to me and wrap me in a tight hug. you always seem so tall against me. i feel your cheek rest against the top of my head for a moment. for a second, it's just us, and the space is warm, and my heart is a little broken hare.

you leave me there, and i stand in my stupid badly lit kitchen with my stupid mugs. i think about you. i start texting my mom that she needs to get out of the city, but it feels pointless.

i don't know what to do. tomorrow is the same day for you. but i have to prepare to die in my today.

[paigemathews]

Whenever I actually sit down and start posting the next gen series, one of the things that I really wanna do is kind of... incorporate reader's choices into it? Not in big ways bc my plan is to write like a full season before I start posting episodes and that can affect it, but like. smaller beats.

One example is that I have an episode idea where there's a big emotional thing for three different characters and our resident empath has a discussion with each of them, but it's reader choice which scene we see. Another one is an episode where it's reader's choice for who gets hit with some kind of emotional puncture and just spews emotions everywhere. It'd be mostly character and relationship scenes for arcs that are already happening, but readers would have the chance to see their favorite or the one that they're most curious about up close on "screen." Not for every episode, but like. maybe once or twice a season or something. Idk, thought it might be interesting.