#its not trouble oops

[domoz]

I'm calling this one, "Intro to an AU that, if/when I actually write it, will take place much further in the future than this, and also possibly be from another POV"

When Hashirama comes of age, they throw a party.

He's thirteen, so much younger than civilian families do it, and despite that he's already been running missions and fighting in battles for years now. Already killed men more than twice his age, though he'd cried about it for weeks afterwards.

He sits rosy cheeked and smiling through the first hour, so pleased to have everyone's attention on him and the blessing that is his mokuton. He's fidgeting by the end of the second, and to all of his son's surprise, Butsuma dismisses them all to go enjoy themselves at the feast rather than have them sit there and endure a tea ceremony.

Back then, Hashirama had been much more obvious with his scheming and had leaned in and whispered about how he bet he could get them to throw him another party when he turned twenty. Kawarama and Itama had nodded in eager agreement, and Tobirama hadn't said anything which meant he did too. They'd ducked between legs and under tables and huddled up together under lantern light to share soft buns swiped from their baskets.

When Tobirama comes of age, he dies.

They weren't any talks of planning a party, and asking for one wasn't even the beginning of a thought on his mind. Itama's funeral was two months ago and even if someone had asked, Tobirama would have refused one.

He wakes up on his birthday to a strange half light outside, and he peers out a crack in the door to find that a thick fog has formed some time during the night, obscuring everything more than a few meters away and casting everything in a monochrome blue-grey. The whole world feels muffled, like this, and Tobirama finds it at once eerie and oddly peaceful.

But he can't let himself indulge in it for too long. The sun is up, which means chichi-ue will be up, and breakfast will be soon. So he dresses himself and goes to the kitchen and… It's empty. Untouched, even. No sign of father, nor of the auntie that normally would have come and gone with food by now.

Troubling.

Chichi-ue would only break his usual routine for an emergency, but it must not have been one bad enough to wake his sons for. Or at least not him, but he might have brought Hashirama, depending… Tobirama experimentally stretches out his chakra to see if his brother is still asleep, but what he finds only makes him frown deeper. Hashirama's chakra feels as muffled as everything else does, not in the way it curls in on itself with sleep, but like there's something blocking him off from feeling it fully. A layer of cloth that keeps him from finding the edges.

Tobirama doesn't pause for even a moment before turning around and marching right back the way he came, until he's at the door to his brother's room. Chichi-ue would expect them to handle their own affairs, even without him there, so it's best if he doesn't let Hashirama sleep in, anyways. Refusing to acknowledge the way his heart is pounding, he slides the door open.

It's not Hashirama's room. Or, it is his room, everything is arranged in the way he likes to keep it, only it's like it's suffered years worth of neglect in a single night. Tree roots have broken in from the ceiling, the door frame, from cracks in the wall, and around them other wild growth has sprouted making the room look more like the forest than even the garden around the house.

Despite his chakra sense insisting that Hashirama is in his futon, to his eyes his brother is not there. Instead there is a white shape, maybe the size of a cat, but it lifts and turns to look at Tobirama when he opens the door. Its face is blank and smooth, except for two empty holes where eyes should be. 

Tobirama slams the door closed. So it's a dream, then. He thinks hysterically, or a genjutsu. But when he flares his chakra as strongly as he can, nothing changes, and when he pinches himself all that results in is a red welt rising on his pale skin.

If it's not either of those then… Then Tobirama really needs to find someone and figure out what this emergency is about.

Forcing himself to breathe steady, he slowly stretches out his chakra sense again, ignoring the way it insists that Hashirama is still asleep in his room. Probably, he needs to find someone who feels real to his senses -- which happens so immediately that Tobirama snaps his chakra back hard enough to make him wheeze.

It’s in the next room down, the room he's only been in once since the funeral. His senses must be broken, he thinks, because they've just told him that Itama is inside, delicate flower-bud new-growth chakra the same as the day he died.

Like he's compelled, Tobirama pads down the hallway to Itama's room. His hands don't tremble as he reaches out to open the door, but his stomach lurches despite his best efforts.

This room isn't as overgrown as Hashirama's was, and there are chimes and charms hanging from the ceiling that Tobirama doesn’t remember being there, but he doesn't have eyes for that. Because sprawled out on his futon, the way he had in life, the way that always made Chichie-ue scowl and reprimand their youngest brother like it was something he could control, is Itama.

Tobirama swallows hard. He doesn't dare move and break the moment. If this is a dream, it's an unexpectedly kind one.

Yet moments stretch on into minutes and nothing shatters. Itama remains right where he is as Tobirama carefully crosses the room to kneel down next to him.

His younger brother snuffles and rolls over onto his side, able to sense a presence nearby, but not yet paranoid enough to wake because of it. Tobirama reaches out a hand -- it still does not tremble, but his throat feels suspiciously tight, and his eyes are burning -- and drops it onto Itama's head.

Itama grumbles, but that is enough to wake him, albeit slowly. When he squints open his eyes and sees Tobirama, though, he sits up all at once.

"Nii-san! Oh!" He exclaims, and then he lurches forward and hugs him. Tobirama hugs back, tight, of course he does but-- He hadn't noticed it before, but like this it's strikingly obvious that Itama is cold to the touch. He can feel no pulse or breath, even though he continues to ramble on.

"I meant to be awake to greet you, but I didn't think you'd started getting up even earlier! Sorry, that must have been pretty freaky." His words pass through Tobirama's ears like water. Itama died, and now Tobirama is here, able to speak with him and hold him again. Does that mean he's died as well? An assassin slipped into his room and killed him before he could even wake?

Itama pushes out of Tobirama's arms and onto his feet, but he stays close, frowning down at him. He's so small, still so small. Two months might have made a world of difference for a child his age.

"I died." He chokes out, because he can't think of anything else over the tide of shock. I'm dead, I've died, I've left Hashirama alone.

"Eh, uh. Not exactly. This is something else." Itama says. He reaches out with tiny cold fingers to tug at Tobirama's arm.

Tobirama blinks. Swallows hard.

"But, you--" Died. He chokes. Is this, then, some kind of retribution Itama's ghost is seeking on him, for failing to get to him in time to save him? Tobirama will admit that he's deserving of it. And so he lets Itama frown and pull him to his feet, out of his room, out of the house entirely, into the fog covered Senju compound. Though, he talks the whole time

"Shigure-sama says I'm supposed to help you. I mean, I was always supposed to. I guess it's pretty lucky that I can, still." Itama chatters, heedless of the way Tobirama is fighting not to break out into shivers.

He tries to focus on the words, but he can't. So he looks at the buildings, but they're not where they should be, and when they pass by them close enough to get a look at them through the fog, they're all wrong; older, and where some are missing additions that they have in life, others have rooms, even entire stories that they didn’t have yesterday.

Distantly, Tobirama can't help but note that Itama is leading him to the graveyard.

"It's normally more lively around here, but I think everyone's staying inside, since Shigure-sama is being dramatic." Itama turns at him, and smiles and waves a hand around to stir up the fog. Tobirama… Grips his hand tighter. He doesn't know what else to do.

He missed that smile.

Itama squeezes back and keeps pulling him along. "Also it still is really early, so there's that, too. Hopefully I can introduce you to everyone later? I mean, no one will actually be mad at you for going to see Shigure-sama first."

Tobirama has stopped trying to make sense of his words, but the wash of them is comforting, in a way. Maybe that's even what Itama is trying to do, but it can only help so much. They're in the graveyard now, and there are shapes in the mist that look more like humans than grave-markers.

One of them bends close enough for him to get a good look at them. It's Hinoki-san, who died last fall, and as pale as the mist around them. She smiles at him.

Head swimming, Tobirama fully expects Itama to lead him to his grave, or maybe Tobirama's own, but instead he walks straight past all of them, and onto the path into the woods behind.

Tobirama doesn't visit the shrine often, but the path is longer than he remembered, and the trees are taller.

"Itama." He says, so quiet that it's almost lost even in the near silence of the woods, "Who is Shigure-sama?"

"Oh! Uhh…" Itama rolls his lips between his teeth, and Tobirama very nearly tells him to stop, because it's a bad habit for a shinobi to have. But that -- doesn't matter any more, does it? The admonishment sinks into his stomach instead. "He's like the boss around here, I guess? Definitely the oldest and strongest, so."

"Okay." Tobirama says softly, and Itama nods and keeps pulling him along. It's not much longer before the shrine looms out of the fog. Tobirama mechanically follows Itama's actions as they stop at the fountain to wash themselves -- it's a bit redundant now, isn't it? -- and then to the haiden, where he claps and bows and shouts "Presenting Tobirama-Senju to Shigure-sama."

Woodenly, Tobirama bows with him, but he can't help a sideways glance at his little brother. No one ever taught him to announce someone like this, he's sure, and he spoke far more confidently than he would have if he'd been made to do such a thing in life.

For a moment, there is nothing, and then reverberating in his bones, "Ah. Well at least he knows his manners even if he knows not his purpose."

Tobirama looks up -- and up -- and up. He had been half expecting --insofar as he could think enough to expect anything -- Shigure to be the ghost of some monk. A shrine keeper from ages past who's duty had kept them here past their own life. What he sees is not a human, but a long whiskered snout, mother-of pearl scales, silt pupils, antlers, a serpentine body that stretches back into the mist that is expelled with each breath.

That -- is a dragon.

Tobirama should kowtow or something, shouldn't he? But he freezes, for once deeply resenting that he has only ever been trained to react to surprises with violence.

There is a rumbling sound. Tobirama isn't sure if it's a growl or not, and all he can really do is force himself not to respond with a panicked noise of his own.

"You are too early." The dragon says, impassively, "You will come back here after you have your human understanding of things first, as it should be."

And then the dragon is suddenly there, in front of him, faster than its size should possibly allow, and its claw is pushing into Tobirama's chest, and it should hurt, but it doesn't. He squeezes his eyes shut on reflex and the only thing that pierces him is bone-deep cold.

When he blinks his eyes open again, he's in his room. The light is warm -- normal morning sunlight, much later than Tobirama would ever usually wake and --

He can't help it, he gasps, entire body wracked with shivers so bad he can't control them. And he's -- at an odd angle. Propped up on something that's not his pillow and being dragged even higher even now.

"Oh, Tobi, are you awake? Are you okay? What happened? Ah, you're so cold." …That's Hashirama holding him together. but he really shouldn't be, because Chichi-ue is here too, watching it happen, arms crossed. Though, he doesn't look particularly angry or even disapproving. Mostly, he just looks… Resigned.

"I--" he tries, but his whole body spasms with another round of shivers, and Hashirama pulls him closer, like it will help.

…It doesn't hurt, though.

He wishes he could relax into it, but he can't with father watching. But with Hashirama rubbing at his back, it's easier to take measured breaths. Enough to help his body relax a bit, even if it doesn't actually make him feel any warmer.

"Had a dream." he gets out, voice still shaking with cold.

Tobirama thinks he should explain more, except chichi-ue closes his eyes and says, "I figured as much." And then, "Pull yourself together and get to the shrine. You'll have new lessons there starting today."

He turns and leaves without saying anything else, even though Hashirama says, "Huh?"

It explains nothing. Tobirama is starting to think he understands, regardless.

[petrichorium]

I wanna do a fun lil selfship event where I make moodboards for my moots but also the last time I attempted that I simply did not do Any 😔

[madame-mongoose]

I think they're cross training me in another department first so that way they can have me snitch on the current person working there akdhsj

[dandyshucks-moving]

there's this one photo I've seen floating around a few times with the words "I wish we could've met as kids, you would've loved the softer me" and I think about it every now and then

so ... art ʅ(๑ ᷄ω ᷅ )ʃ

[donuts4evry1]

i am suddenly struck by the urge to write a light novel

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[doublekanble]

Hi. Read your fic WHAT THE FUC- (/POS ITS SO GOOD??) BRUH I WENT INTO IT BEING LIKE "oh I'm just curious as to what this'll be, I'm sure it's just like some short self indulgent thing" THEN GOT STABBED LIKE TWELVE TIMES OVER. INSTANT FOLLOW. OH MY GOD.

its actually IS self indulgent! just in the opposite direction! i want him to kiss me so badly but i also want him to hate me until its all he knows its a bit of trouble really

[nixknacks0-0]

(⁠✿⁠^⁠‿⁠^⁠) thinking about that one scene in my fic

(⁠✿ʘ‿ʘ) realizing it's a few chapters away and also not written

[cathalbravecog]

if the update tmrw is another arg or just an overhyped Nothing Sandwich Dissappointment update again im going t

[crow-doc-with-a-pen]

ITS THREE AM DUDES AND I CAN'T SLEEP SO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, DRABBLE TIME BABY:

Gov frowned as he nervously rubbed his hands together. He was doing a favor for IDC which apparently meant playing piano for a few of her friends because she had apparently mentioned it one time and they were fairly insistent. And yes, maybe he would've turned it down anyway but he was easily manipulated by his sister.

So he agreed. He was pretty nervous, he genuinely couldn't remember the last time he had been around a piano, much less play. What song could he even play? What song should he play? He didn't know what music IDC's friends liked. He sighed, deciding that he would just run through a couple scales and patterns to warm up and see where he went from there.

He was suddenly reminded of a song that IDC had shown him a while back. She had said that it reminded her of him. Looking at the translation of the song he wasn't really sure what to think of that. Even though it had been so long, the notes came easily.

Niemand kommt rein und setzt sich hin

Den Fuss auf den Tisch, die Hand unters Kinn

Niemand ist hungrig, mein Frühstücksmenü

Niemand kommt immer zu früh

And the words flowed just as easily.

Niemand, ich habe Geschenke für Dich

Was wäre ich geworden gäb es Dich nicht

Meine gesammelten Werke, bitte sehr

Alles gehört Dir

He sank into the music, despite the somber tone of the song he felt himself smile.

Niemand, niemand kennt mich wie Du

Unbedingt, ich geb alles zu

Keine Enttäuschung, kein einziges Mal

Aber Dir ist eh alles egal

He felt himself relax completely as focused entirely on the gentle waltz

Niemand, siehst Du's ich wachse nicht mehr

Meine Hände sind Füsse, niemand schau her

Bald bin ich nichts und das was dann bleibt

Ist Deine Wenigkeit

He smiled, playing always felt like a dance in of itself, one that he hadn't realized that he had missed so much.

Niemand, was, was willst Du?

Immer bist Du hier

Niemand, was, was willst Du

Von mir?

Von mir?

Von mir?

He huffed, satisfied with his playing. His singing could probably use some work but that's why he was playing for no one right now. At least, that was what thought until he heard clapping that almost made him fall out of his seat and yelp.

He looked up to see IDC and a few others who he didn't remember the names of. He could feel the color drain from his face. He cleared his throat and adjusted his tie. "Umm. Hello." He didn't know what to say.

One of them, a taller man with strong features blinked, Gov noticed the faintest hint of tears in his eyes. "Hallo. You have very good pronunciation." The man spoke with a heavy German accent. Gov flushed and muttered a quiet thank you. IDC raised a brow at the two of them before grinning.

"One, told you he can play. Two, I told you you'd do fine. So three, you guys should listen to me more often." She said almost absent mindedly as she did something on her phone. She smiled at Gov, something mischievous in her expression. That didn't bode well for him.

He was quickly distracted from his sister by the other states and provinces. He ended up playing a few more songs, all varying in genre. They were all songs that the states had suggested he listen to at one point or another. By the time everyone was ready to split ways, his hands ached with every movement.

Favor completed, he flew back to the state house the next day, too exhausted to see the way IDC seemed to have certain glint in her eyes. It wasn't until he got back to the state house, tired and ready to collapse into his bed that he realized what his sister had planned.

He had barely set foot in the door when he was confronted by Louisiana and Florida. "Maid sha, how was the 'business trip'?" He put an odd emphasis on business trip but Gov was much too tired to care. He just shrugged and yawned.

He pushed his way past the chaos duo, intent of his bed when he stopped dead in his tracks. Someone was playing music, which wouldn't have been anything new or worrying if it wasn't his voice singing with the piano. He slowly turned back to Louisiana and Florida.

Louisiana was holding up his phone, where he could clearly see himself playing in the video. It was specifically a jazzy, nearly ragtime piece that Louisiana himself had shown the fed once. The southern state's mischievous grin softened. "I didn't know you liked it that much sha."

Gov felt himself blush even as Florida chimed in, "I didn't know you could sing or play. Where have ya been hiding this?" He sounded slightly scandalized but his tone was still light-hearted. Gov just shrugged, he hadn't wanted to tell any of the states, a cruel voice in the back of his mind always said that they would hate and ridicule him for it.

"We should play together sometime sha" Louisiana grinned at him happily. Gov nodded tiredly.

"Alright, but maybe so other time. Right now I need sleep." The two southerners nodded and let him go to sleep. Gov fell asleep with a warm feeling in his chest.

[thatfizzyyyy]

i recently started doing my eyebrows in a very basic yet effective kind of way and now I want to do my eyelashes but I have to actually get mascara for that ... i would like recs if anyone has any

[myhsterie]

guys i have a fun little secret :)

i read the fnaf script back in october 2022 at my work :)))))))

& i get to see a test screening a month before it releases :DDDDD

i am bound by an NDA to not say anything about the script but what i CAN say is that many of your theories are wrong :P but i think that was expected

will come back to this when it fully drops so i can compare and contrast earlier versions with the final product! i will have had access to two (2) previous drafts of it so there will be lots to discuss

[the-force-awakens]

newbie anon is right. to me, you’re the royalty of the poe dameron fan club/defense squad. your word is the law.

lyra

I mean, wouldn't necessarily say that of myself? Fndjdkd I mean, I don't even consider my word law, I'm constantly teasing apart his canon and reconsidering my own perspectives on elements of it and my stances on certain headcanons or how I want to extrapolate from canon — y'all got a pretty good look at my thought process with the bloodburn thing. I went from a hard "oh no" to a "hm wait if I think about this-" in the span of about ten minutes after going to research things. That's just how I operate, I'm constantly just fiddling with my own fictional sandbox.

Honestly, the only thing I really do is just focus on stuff that is reiterated a bunch? Like if it's in the movies, that's canon, and if something goes against it...well it's probably not canon, but with expanded material it gets trickier.

Like, personally, I do not consider anything in the visual dictionaries "canon" besides the little character details like Poe breaking his arm as a kid, just simply because a) the writer for those dictionaries really doesn't seem to like Poe at all, b) the tlj dictionary completely rewrites Poe's storyline to make it seem like fanon's interpretation of his actions in tlj were correct (they're not), and c) despite freefall almost definitely being in development at the time, the tros dictionary cites Poe being with Zorii for way longer than he was.

What I do count as canon is the stuff that gets backed up frequently by other bits of material. I consider the novelizations - even if I don't personally vibe with the tlj or tros ones - to be far more canon than, say, the last two arcs of the Poe comics just because they're more closely tied to the movies + you have the sequence of events in the tfa novel reiterated in the flight log, and the book that shall not be named is closely tied to those last two arcs of the comics, and the rise of skywalker + star wars.com has retconned it. twice.

There's still plenty of things I don't get about him! Sometimes my friends will just point out an angle I had never considered before (such as @/dameronalone who is a Poe expert - poexpert? - in her own right and gets him on a level that is simply just 😘🤌 amazing and showstopping, just to give one example) and it makes me reconsider things!

Mostly, I just like gathering facts abt him because I like tucking away information on things (or people) I love, and I like making sure I stay on top of things + read all his stuff because back in 2018-2020 sections of the fandom had a nasty habit of taking scenes of his out of context to make it seem like they were ruining his character, and after believing that for about a year just to find out it wasn't true fhdjdkddk left me determined to make sure I knew absolutely everything abt him so I wasn't duped again lmfao.

[piplupod]

counselor has called in sick I guess (she's not "in" today) so.... at least I don't have to sit in her chair and lie about how I'm doing to avoid being put in psych ward ? a win and a loss I suppose (also I was absolutely about to forget to bring the distress tolerance booklet she wanted me to bring so fhdjdl perhaps this is a saving grace)

[bumpscosity]

read abt the poole pyramid yesterday and ofc since i have gravity falls brainrot there was no way it wasn't gonna get dream demon-ified. The thought of this Weird Thing just stalking random kids is really fun to me and really gets the creative juices pumping

I like that it looks different during the day vs at night, maybe it can see better during the day but it's harder for it to hide itself

I was gonna use a 2D shape closer to what the story describes but i thought the bit of pyramid poking out of the middle would make an interesting "beak" like what was described in the second sighting

I just threw this together real quick on my phone before i hit the hay so i'll probably mess with this more on my pc tomorrow but for now i think this is a good starting point

[2blokesgoforaswim]

page 16 is done but i fucked up the dialogue so i need to fix it before i post lmao. tomorrow (later today cuz its like 2am)

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