#no because i would actually DIE

[ptersparkers]

spoiling is aaron's love language for sure! he spoils the crap out of reader as the other anon said, he spoils Jack and other future bbs too so much! (but ofc not in a bad way)

Aaron just loves being a simp for his loves!! :3

you, sweet anon, are totally correct.

aaron definitely knows the boundary between spoiling you and jack versus giving into your every demand. with you, he likes taking you to different restaurants around the city and buying you certain items you've been talking about (whether to him or with a friend).

with jack and future kiddos, he obviously wants the best for them (savings, college fund, etc) but he also indulges them and takes them on mini vacations when time permits, clothes, toys, etc.

bonus: aaron has a babygirl he can't say no to, no matter how much he tries.

[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

[bet-on-me-13]

Steph's Year of Recovery

So! Danny noticed that a new face had made it's way into town. Two new faces actually, an older lady known as Dr Leslie, and a girl about his age called Steph.

He first met them when he was at the hospital for one of his parents. They had stood too close to an explosion again, and he met them while he was in the waiting Area.

Dr Leslie was a strict but obviously caring older woman, who seemed to be the one taking care of Steph as a kind of maternal figure, or maybe more like an Aunt. She greeted him simply and then walked away to talk with the Secretary, leaving him to talk to Steph.

Steph was a blond girl in a Wheelchair, and he could see bandages piking out of her clothes as he talked to her. She explained that she had been in an Accident a few weeks ago that left her wheelchair bound for a while, and that she had come to Amity for their surprisingly good Medical Centers.

He and Steph got along really well, and by the end of it he asked her for her Number so they could continue talking later. They stayed in touch, and when she was finally permitted to leave the Hospital, he introduced her to his friends. They all got along like a House on Fire, both figuratively and in one memorable case very literally (Vlad had pissed them off okay!)

Eventually Steph recovered enough that she moved from a Wheelchair to Crutches, and their shenanigans got even more chaotic (Vlad hadn't even pissed them off, this time was just for fun)

The only thing Danny could complain about was the fact that Steph was hiding something from them.

She said that she had been in an Accident a while ago, which was why they had come to Amity in the first place. But Danny knew it was more than that.

He could sense lingering traces of Death coming from her after all.

...

Steph honestly loved her current life.

Sure she had lost everything, her home, her health, her friends, her life, but she had gained new things too! Like Danny and the Gang! They were honestly some of the best friends she had ever had, and for some reason they just clicked with her instantly.

Danny was interesting and funny, Sam was vegan and a badass, Tucker was smart and witty, they all fit with her personality perfectly! It almost felt like she bad been friends with them for years. (She ignored the way her heart skipped a beat when she saw them)

But she still couldn't shake the sense that they were hiding something from her.

She knew it had something to do with the Ghost Problem in the town. And wasn't that a kicker, there was a whole Supernatural Ghost Outbreak in this Town and nobody knew about it. Dr Leslie had said that Amity was off the map enough to hide from Bruce, but she hadn't mentioned it was hidden from the Justice League itself!

Danny, Sam, and Tucker definitely knew more about it than they let on however. Whenever a Ghost Attack would happen, at least one of them would rush off with some practiced excuse and return after the Ghost Attack was over all dirty. She could guess what was going on, and she really didn't like it.

(This had killed her, she had died doing what they were doing, she didn't want to lose them)

Eventually she had to confront them, coincidentally on the same day they decided to confront her.

"Are you Vigilantes?" / "Did you die?"

"..."

"What?" / "What?"

[yourlocalabomination]

The darkness will spare my soul.

[volchiitza]

clearly trying to stop fixating on "productivity" has actually improved my focus

[ilk-insolence]

Raph Is A Great Strategist

Numerous times in the show Raph has shown to have a preference for straightforwardly punching his problems away rather than think up a more complex solution. Like how his immediate fix to getting Mayhem out of the mirror in Mystic Library was to punch everything in the bathroom but the mirror. However, when Raph understands the situation requires more in depth strategy, he’s shown to be an incredibly capable tactician.

(long post ahead!)

In nearly all the plot heavy episodes like Shadow of Evil, Many Unhappy Returns, and the season finales, Raph gets moments where he’s highlighted for his strategic thinking. In Insane in the Mama Train, he’s the one who figures out which eyeball-button goes to the front car with the dark armor, because “‘it was the only button [the Foot Clan] didn’t want me to press!’” [21:05]. He’s also the one who came up with the scheme to defeat all the (known) combatants in the train, with Leo specifically attributing Raph as the deviser during their mind meld [19:46]. In Many Unhappy Returns, after spending a single night waylaying the Shredder, Raph formulated a plan using all the tricks the team learned, seamlessly transitioning the mystic collar Leo acquired into it [19:53], to defeating the Shredder. Additionally, he’s repeatedly called for a retreat during fights, like in Shadow of Evil, Shreddy or Not (Finale pt 2), and the movie, when he can tactically recognize that a battle couldn’t be won. Each time, the show/movie implied that that was the right call, for the family to lose the fight but win the war.

And it’s not just that Raph is good at strategy when he’s pushed to be more serious; the show characterizes him as passionate about creating plans, he enjoys doing it. Literally in the first episode, Mystic Mayhem, after the turtles’ initial plan failed of getting Splinter out of the living room to touch his Do-Not-Touch Cabinet, Raph immediately started devising a new plan that involved “ten chickens [and] a gallon of rubber cement” [9:35]. It was convoluted, sure, and they didn’t end up using it, but it was inventive and the opposite of reluctant. This is also shown in Bug Busters, where Raph planned out dousing Mikey in honey to attract the oozequitoes [2:52]; Snow Day, with the idea to freeze Ghost Bear like in Jupiter Jim Pluto Vacation 4; and Raph’s Ride-Along (and also Bad Hair Day), where Mind Raph created multiple schemes to get the criminals arrested. The show wouldn’t have made Raph be so creative with his plans if they were trying to characterize him as someone who didn’t like strategizing.

So does why Raph do stupid shit sometimes where he doesn’t think things through at all? Well, even though Raph is good at strategy and enjoys doing it, it’s clear his immediate impulse is still “punch the problem in the face”. In fact, all the turtle boys contain the fascinating dichotomy of being incredibly smart in some areas, and the dumbest teenagers alive in others. Just look at Donnie. It’s also how Raph is a loving protective older brother, and the guy who shoved Leo into a wall so hard he disappeared in one frame for shits and giggles (The Mutant Menace x). None of this means that Raph is bad at strategy though.

tldr: Yeah, Raph has a lot of dumb and, frankly, insane moments in the show, but he’s still an incredible tactician who’s plans consistently saved his family and sometimes the world. He's a great strategist.

[vvanillavveins]

"I’ve tried spending more time with dad in my dreams and in my art. But he’s- god, he’s impossible. Just give me a straight answer, man. A word, a gesture, a look at your face even. I think he was like this in real life, Cecil. I think his ambiguity, his vagueness, is why mom hated talking about him. He's not enigmatic or magical. He is fucking frustrating. All these cryptic images, but I don’t think there’s much to understand about an absent father."

[caramelldansenu]

[blue-mood-blue]

I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.

And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.

What about a version where it’s not coincidence at all?

Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t want to be.

Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked “what happens next?”

They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.

Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.

Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.

It’s one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. “Tells” is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.

(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)

Death feels very real after that.

The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.

The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how it’s still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isn’t there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t matter.

(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)

Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what he’s been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?

(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters don’t get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)

Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...

…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…

And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.

“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.

Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.

(Shang Qinghua wants to say “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)

“I know,” he says instead. “I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”

Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”

[legacysam]

congrats to The Terror for actually being slightly gayer than tumblr led me to believe, a thing that has never actually happened ever

[eerna]

me explaining why Will/Elizabeth/Jack love triangle was a perfect little one-movie arc that wasn't present in the final movie because it was never about choosing and instead just about dynamics and character development so they all outgrew it by then

[smile-files]

if clover did survive ii17 via her luck she'd definitely kill herself

[warning-heckboop]

Was going to write a little ficlet to go with this, but. Vaccine tiredness is killer.

A little bit of art for the FOP Nature au by @bunnieswithknives. I cannot recommend checking it out enough.

[bees-pees]

nadolig llawen (merry christmas)!! here is my gift to you 🤲 i love this poster so i redrew it :)

[haze-of-hyperfixations]

a concept. to consider. what if. what if there was a Remember Them reprise after the Thunder Saga. "We are not to let them die in vain" except he's the only one left so it's "I am not to let them die in vain." and there's no backing chorus of his men. because. they're all dead.

and the line takes on a whole new meaning now that he's the one who chose to let them die.

(not in vain. it can't have been in vain, it can't have been for nothing. i have to see her. i have to see her, because if i don't make it home, those men died for nothing. the ends always justify the means. i can justify anything as long as it ends with Penelope and Telemachus both in my arms again. but if it doesn't-

but it will. it will. it has to.)

and our- ... -and my comrades will not die in vain...

[gunstellations]

itll be alright