#it's not usually my go to

[1thesewordsaremyown1]

Courtesy of the spoilers and this post, a ficlet was born.

Buck stared blankly at his reflection in his bathroom mirror. The last time he had stood in front of a mirror in his formal uniform, he couldn't help but admire himself. He filled out the uniform nicely, and with his boyfriend beside him, teasing and flirting as they got ready to accept their medal, his face had been flushed with a happy glow. But now...

Now, Buck's face looked almost gaunt. He had dark shadows under his eyes, with the normally bright blue of his irises dull and rimmed with red.

Swallowing thickly, Buck looped the tie around his neck and attempted to knot it. Try as he might, he just couldn't achieve it - his fingers fumbled with the fabric, and no matter how many times he tried to shake them out, his hands couldn't stop trembling.

A dark shape emerging from behind him drew his attention away from his own reflection. Tommy stood in the doorway, sadness etched into his own handsome features. Stepping into the bathroom, he moved behind Buck, his arms reaching around his body to gently pull Buck's hands from the cursed tie.

"Here baby, let me get that for you," he murmured softly, and Buck allowed his arms to drop limply by his side. He watched as within a minute, his boyfriend's deft fingers had succeeded where Buck's fumbling fingers had failed.

Slipping his hands down to Buck's arms, Tommy gently turned Buck around to face him. With a final adjustment to the knot, he smoothed the tie down, his hands running over Buck's chest. Ordinarily, Buck would have given Tommy a coy smile and leaned heavily on some flirtatious banter at Tommy's hands on him, but on this occasion there was nothing sexual about this act - instead, it was comfort and reassurance through touch.

Tommy's hands moved up to cup Buck's face, and it was only when he felt his thumbs brush against his cheeks to wipe away the tears that he realised he was crying.

Closing the gap between them, Buck buried his face into Tommy's chest. In response, Tommy wrapped his arms around him, cradling his head with one hand and gently rubbing his back with the other. No words were said. What words were there to say? Instead, the two men stood in the middle of Buck's small bathroom, holding each other tightly, sharing their grief. Taking comfort in each other in these few moments of solitude before they had to head out and face the harsh reality that awaited them.

Bobby Nash was dead.

[canisalbus]

✦ Pebble ✦

[aroaceleovaldez]

i had a thought of "do people not know what AUs are anymore?" and then i remembered nobody explains fandom stuff to new people anymore so it is entirely plausible people genuinely don't know what AUs are and nobody has explained it to them, so for today's lucky 10,000:

"AU" stands for "Alternate Universe" or "Alternative Universe" (same difference) and is basically any thought scenario for a fandom that isn't canon and can't fit within the canon universe. If it takes place in the canon universe but something is notably different, that is typically what's known as a "Canon divergent AU," because it diverges from canon.

an AU can be absolutely anything. There's a couple of widespread pan-fandom au scenarios that often get thrown around, like coffee shop aus, genderbend aus, hanahaki aus (hanahaki is a whole thing in itself i'd recommend researching on your own), etc. One you might hear sometimes is "crossover AU" which is when you have characters from one fandom interacting with characters from another.

You can have as many aus as you want. They can be whatever you want and you can do whatever you want in them. It's a sandbox for you to play around in and explore how things would be different or how the characters would act in those circumstances or environments. Maybe they have different relationships with each other. Maybe they behave slightly differently. Or you can just say "Okay, [x] is true. How did they get here? How would things have to be different for this to occur?" which can also be fun.

If you are ever confused about why people ship something that seems completely out of the blue or doesn't make sense to you in the canon setting, there's a good chance they like it in an AU setting! Not everything everybody is interacting with is necessarily the canon! Not everybody wants things to exist in canon and just want to explore playing dolls in a different sandbox and that's okay. And their sandbox might look a lot different than yours, and that's also okay. You have the freedom to make your sandbox whatever you please. Do whatever you want forever. Get funky with it. AUs are fun.

Okay that's my schpeal. everybody go have fun and play nice now.

[ionomycin]

Grief

ref photo by @jawsstone

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[egophiliac]

GET LOVED, IDIOT

GET LOVED SO HARD YOUR KIDS HOLD HANDS AND POWER-OF-LOVE YOU BACK TO LIFE

sorry guys, this is just my brain now. this is going to be the only thing I think about for the next week at least.

oh and also this

FIVE YEARS IN AND IT'S FINALLY CANON 🎉🎉🎉

WE DID IT

[humming-fly]

was anyone gonna tell me shadow saved rouge's life in sa2 or was I just supposed to find that out playing the game myself

(this worked out as a rather fitting closer for the Final Day in Year of Shadow haha, hope ya'll have a fun new year! 🎉🎉🎉)

[such-a-daydreamer]

And then they explode

[hinamie]

together, we do the same thing again //

[leorians]

someone will die (of fun)

[nutnoce]

I've been laying down the lines again

[tawnysoup]

The one eyed Siffrin Wink™

[spyderschaos]

Race to the edge if they actually raced

[coddda]

I wish we could have met in some other way.

Lawlight Week Day 2: Soulmates

If you saw me repost and re-edit this several times uh No you didn't </3

Still frames/Individual gifs:

If you know what every frame is from you get a free cookie. by the way

[mushroom-punk]

playing his dress up games

[chiquilines]

As mentioned in the previous post, i have lost my entire mind