#lives and souls of the party

[heybiji]

dandelion casually dropping traumatic information while insisting that instead of killing the problem wizard they simply burn his tongue

[fatedroses]

More than just the Demon.

[michyeosseo]

Do you know why she is honored as goddess? Bedridden for a long time due to her incomplete celestial roots... a deity everyone thought could not be saved... Lord Xingzhi came to take to the Extranatural Heaven. And cured her. Therefore, the Divine Realm's Heavenly Lord gave her a title: Luotian Goddess – blessings from the sky. The girl blessed by the [ancient] gods.

Li Jia Qi as YOULAN

THE LEGEND OF SHEN LI (2024) 1.17-1.19

[crtter]

Speaking of Iyami! I’ve seen some people speculate on the current ages of the sextuplets and Totoko and Nyaa-chan, given how Nyaa-chan’s baby is all grown up now, which implies the characters are aging in real time and I just happen to be neurodivergent enough to have been keeping tabs on how old the characters have been getting as the years go by, so I might be able to shed some light on the subject.

First of all! The characters from -kun that had established ages were the Matsuno brothers and Iyami, being 10 and 36 respectively. Totoko, Chibita and Hatabō are often shown in the manga and 60s -kun as being in the same class as the sextuplets, so they’re probably about the same age as them as well, although sometimes they’re portrayed as either older or younger depending on the story.

The timeskip between -kun and -san is never outright stated. What’s officially mentioned is that the sextuplets are “older than twenty” and that “it’s been about ten years” since -kun.

However! We have a more concrete number when you take into account episodes 3.5 and episode 4 of season 1, set in 2015. In episode 4, Matsuzō claims he’s been married to Matsuyo for 24 years. Taking into account that having children out of wedlock is very uncommon in Japan (it’s becoming more normalized in recent years, but it definitely carried more of a stigma 20-odd years ago), we can assume that the sextuplets were younger than 24 as per season 1.

Episode 3.5 helps us narrow it even further: in it, Todomatsu claims he rented adult DVDs five years before, which would only have been possible if he was at least 18 then, since that’s the age one has to be to purchase pornographic material in Japan.

Taking all this information into account, we can infer that the sextuplets can’t be any older than 24 and were 18 five years before 2015. This gives us a solid number for their age: 23 years old, as of 2015!

Until now, though, it hadn’t been confirmed that the characters were aging in real time but seeing that Nyaa-chan’s baby has aged since her last appearance in season 3, I think it’s safe to assume everyone has been aging as well! That would make the sextuplets as of 2023, 31 years old and Nyaa-chan’s baby, who seemed to be a few months old as of her first appearance in November 2020, around three years old!

[weallpartyatybcpatricksfuneral]

fun youngblood chronicle idea: patrick dies of his injuries in the phoenix music video and the only thing keeping him alive is the drugs from young volcanos/demon possessing him

[twigby-art]

The Father: an undead War-priest.

I really love painting grime and details into characters XD.

Concept art under the break

[darlinjester]

POISON KOBRA GHOUL

[mocksyoucondescendingly]

i think i feel brain sick

[hum--hallelujah]

you rise in your heart when you're breathing - 1.5k words, Jet and Poison hurt/comfort

Things can get foggy in the desert.

Jet Star can't remember parts of his own life. Things are a blur to him, facts and conjecture blended together until he doesn't know which way is up. He thinks it's a trauma, mental, thing more than a trauma, physical, thing. It started after the accident that took his eye. Like the chemical burns fried his brain along with one of his eyes. He tossed and turned mostly unconscious for most of a week after it happened. Sometimes he doesn't know what of that was dreams and what's real memories.

He knows he was born in the city. His parents were named Maria and Arthur. They were doctors. He has some of their books, stowed away when he ran for the Zones, still, dirtied and fingerstained. This is why Jet Star is the medic of the Four. He grew up around these things. No amount of blood can faze him, even pouring from his best friends.

He sometimes can't remember the events leading up to his departure from Battery City. He knows his parents are dead. He left after they died. He can't remember how they died. They weren't replaced, like Party and Kobra's mother was. Jet isn't ever sure if he came home to bodies on the floor or to an empty apartment. The versions are mixed up in his brain.

This is part of why Party is de facto leader of their crew. Jet cannot trust himself anymore. He has to remind himself who he is when he wakes up in the morning. Has to stare in the mirror and work hard to recall why he only has one eye, why the skin of the right side of his face is mottled and puckered and the eyelid melted shut. Sometimes he wakes up lying on his good side and panics before he remembers, thinking he's gone blind in the night.

Maybe it's a mercy that he can't remember that his parents died because of his deception, or the moment the Trans-Am's engine came to its detonating point. Maybe it's a mercy that he can't remember the pain he's accidentally caused himself and others. He never means it, but it always happens. This is why he can't trust himself with leadership.

And Party Poison is a good leader. All charisma and color, with a mind as sharp as the decadent glint in his eyes when he finds the missing piece of a plan. They've made it this far because Party has brought them here. Jet thinks that Party is beautiful. He'd once thought he was wickedly smart, able to wean himself off of City prescription pills at the small age of ten and plot his own escape at eleven. Then he met Party Poison.

Jet can't remember how they met. There's not even a piece of that left in the patchwork of his own brain. In his memory, it goes from one day he was on his own, a Zonerunner, lonesome smuggler just himself and his car, and then the next there was so much more color. Party's always been on the smaller side. A couple years younger than Jet, but he's larger than life. It's always been like this. One day Jet was alone and the next Party was there, with a little brother hissing and spitting before he learned to make space for words.

They'd never have been friends without fate. Poison isn't the kind of person to make friends anyways. Not with someone who can never stay. Sometimes Jet believes in the Phoenix Witch. He has to, when there's no other way they could have found each other.

Some days are particularly bad. Accumulation of trauma, stress, and exhaustion take their toll. Jet has to sit on his bed, staring at the floor, for several minutes just to remember why he's this tired. They'd saved those girls, though. Barely teenagers, bound and gagged in the back of a neutral's rig. Not a Zonerunner. No one who claims that title would smuggle kids for that kind of trade. The last thing Jet remembers is dropping the kids off with Gertie. They'll be safe there. He thinks Poison drove them home.

He blinks, trying to clear the blurry feeling from his eyes. ...Eye. He presses the heel of his hand into the good one, soaks in the familiar darkness. It catches him off guard sometimes. He feels unfamiliar to himself. A stranger in his own body, like the him that had two eyes has just been transplanted into the body of a him that only has one. When did he get an eyepatch? Who painted the lopsided glitter-glue star on it?

If he thought hard enough about it he could sort out the answers. The Girl. The Girl painted the star on his eyepatch. He spent an hour looking for it and receiving faux-innocent denials of knowledge from everyone else until she brought the little piece of leather out from behind her back and proudly handed it to him. But everything feels fuzzy and dull, uncertain. He sits with his head in his hands, willing himself to leave his room and join the others even though he might hesitate over names he's known for years. He can't do it. It's too blurry and tiring.

There's a knock at the door. He doesn't answer it, but it clicks open anyways. It's Poison. It's always going to be Poison.

"Ah, shit," says the well-known voice. "Bad day, huh?"

He nods, head still in his hands. "Fuck, Poison," he whispers, and feels Party step forward and crouch down in front of him. He opens his eyes. Eye. Drops his hands between his knees. Party could take them if he wanted. He probably won't. "Who am I?"

"That bad, sweetheart?" Party asks, voice surprisingly quiet for a person who's never once turned down a volume knob.

"It's just... fuzzy. Blurry. I know, but do I really?"

Poison looks up at him, and then unexpectedly reaches out, takes one of his hands. The other one raises to rest at the side of his head, halfway in his hair. "You're my Star," Poison tells him. And maybe that's all he really needed.

Jet nods his head sideways, bumping Party's hand. Poison isn't very touchy. It's always a choice. "You know, I still don't know how I met you," he murmurs.

Poison laughs, a soft, lyrical sound. Jet loves when Party is loose like this, sweet like sugar. It doesn't happen often. Most times, Party Poison is a flashbang, a firework. Wild and free, louder than the bombs they set off and brighter than the sun. This... is the sunrise, soft against Jet's skin.

"Sandstorm your fifth or sixth year outta Batt," Poison says, like it's the hundredth time he's told this story. Maybe it is. It probably is. Jet watches as Party's face turns misty with memories that Jet's missing. It's sad, in a way. Jet wishes he knew this. "You had the 'Am already, parked her to wait out the storm. I was at Tommy's, tryna make it back to the Kid before it hit but I didn't make it. I couldn't barely breathe by then. You saw me somehow," Party pauses, head tilted to look side-eyed at Jet.

"Your hair," Jet says softly, and reaches out to catch a strand of fiery red between his fingers.

Party smiles. "'S what you always said."

Jet hums. "What then?" He asks.

"By the time I'd hacked all the sand outta my lungs you were in the backseat thumping my back, helped me get my breathing back. Never planned to be friends with a smuggler," Party says, and shrugs. "Musta been fate." A wry smile that lights up the room. Jet puts all his focus on that smile. "Kobra freaked when we went back for him," Party continues. "Thought you'd nabbed me, tried fighting you off. Took him a while to warm up to you. Remember that?"

Jet nods. Kobra had been wary of him for a long time when the three of them first joined up. It wasn't until shortly before Ghoul joined their crew of three that Kobra started to consider him a friend. Jet's always considered Kobra a little brother. "Yeah, I remember," he says.

Party is quiet for a few seconds. Jet can hear them both breathing. "You okay, Jettie?"

Jet sighs. "Fuck, Party. I miss knowing all this." He doesn't know when he started forgetting. He just knows it happened. Sometimes he can claw his way back, but sometimes the more he fights it the worse it gets. He needs someone, sometimes, to lead him out of it. And that's Party, bright blazing beacon through the desert. Jet thinks he'll always find his way to Poison. Or Poison will always find him.

"Don't," Poison says, standing, still holding Jet's hand. "I got it for ya. C'mon." Jet follows, snagging his eyepatch on the way out of his room.

Kobra and Ghoul are up and clattering haphazardly around the front of the Diner as they recount and act out how a clap went down, eliciting shrill giggles from the Girl. Ghoul sees them first and stops playfighting, tilting his head in a silent question that asks, is stuff okay? Kobra freezes with his hands still formed into finger-guns, then shoots a lopsided grin and a chin-up nod their direction. "Yo, Jet."

Jet smiles back. The Girl scrambles off of the countertop where she's been seated and slams into his legs full-force with her arms wrapped around him. Party drops his hand. It's brighter out here and burns off some of the fuzziness around Jet's mind.

That's the real reason Jet isn't in charge of this operation, and never could be. It isn't an operation, it's a family. And Poison can always lead them out of the fog, into the light.

[apollos-olives]

my mom went to a party and brought back a ginormous bowl of roz b haleeb and i accidentally called it roz b laban....... guys...... the egyptians..... they're manipulating me...

[ronnyraygun]

Haven’t shown y’all my Earth where Frankie’s a trans lady and Danny sees Ghosts. [There’s more to it but, like….this is the most relevant info for the doodles.]

[sleepingfancies]

forgot how quickly most people scoff at the idea A) of souls B) that plants have souls

[funderberker-thefrog]

listening to the intrepid heroes talk about high school experiences and stuff is kinda funny as a non-northamerican person, bc when i remember what i was doing at the bad kids' age and its

i had already graduated high school by the time i turned 17

i was always just a boring nerd with overprotective and overbearing parents

no money to do much outside of waiting for college to start

i wasn't allowed to work bc. reasons

closeted af + on a shitty relationship

so me being 17 can be divided in two periods:

sad. rotting in bed. coping mechanisms: musicals and a guy that wasn't good for me, apparently.

baby's first semester on premed/medschool/whatever. sad. stressed. really just nightmarish times.

it's not a big deal that i don't relate, bc actually i do, but i just find the difference funny lol

[alwaysconsuminggrapepantamain]

enjoy the chaos results of my friends mcr dream.

[mr-divabetic]

Just wanted to share this amazing experience from last night's Soul Train Tribute to Luther Vandross. We kicked off the free outdoor screening of the Luther: Never Too Much documentary with a Soul Train Dance Line, and it was genuinely heartwarming to see so many people, including those using mobility devices, participating with such an upbeat attitude and joyful spirit.

It's reported that as high as 80% of non-traumatic lower limb amputations happen due to mismanaged diabetes. Regardless of how or why someone experiences a lower limb amputation, it can stop them from wanting to take care of themselves and their diabetes self-care in the future. Allowing these people to still participate in social events and gatherings could boost their morale. .. Moments like these remind me of the incredible resilience and determination of people facing challenges. Witnessing someone joining the Soul Train Dance Line on her scooter made me smile and brought back many beautiful memories of our past events.

I can't wait to return to more outreach events soon to spread positivity and help everyone glamorize good health!