#or my inability to stop

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[sylenth-l]

Old men fighting

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Sponsors of this post: @zalia for sending the request and @makoredeyes for writing the amazing series of Risen Red's adventures 🙌❤️‍����

[wonkyyhonkytonkk]

IM AT THE COMBINATION PIZZA HUT AND TACO BELL

[aficionadoenthusiast]

i sincerely hope that will's casting looks as much like walker as possible so that the 'not his type' jokes finally die and everybody realizes percy isn't his type not because of hair color or any other physical attribute but simply because nico has outgrown that part of his life and has to let go of it in order to move on. like. please recognize it for the literary symbolism it is. it is important to me that y'all realize this.

[volatilemask]

swag

[offkilterkeys]

I don’t know how to feel about this Eridan because reasons.

[luckthebard]

I don’t know why this is something we apparently need to re-explain to parts of the CR fandom every few years, but if I see one more post that implies that the way Samuel Oscar Riegel is approaching his character’s faith journey is “culturally Christian” I’m gonna McFucking lose it.

[anglerflsh]

guy who is handling his first time experiencing being Mad so terribly

[2kuro2tori]

VANDER AND SILCO PARALLELS

Resquested by: @lullabyes22-blog

[thestarsarecool]

“Paul said he’s going to do the Hall of Fame speech. I really think I’m doing it just to give Paul a night out. He likes to keep busy.”

— Ringo Starr, on being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Rolling Stone, April 15th, 2015

“I don’t know [why we’re reviving it now]. Paul must’ve had a slow day. He says, ‘You know that track we did? Do you want to work on that?’”

— Ringo Starr, on the ‘final’ Beatles track, Variety, July 7th, 2023

[skibasyndrome]

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[nyxfaei]

Give this post a like if you’d be interested in a malevolent twitch drawing stream starting around 10 or 10:30 EST

[lemongogo]

do i finish dunmesh tn ..

[alicentflorent]

I initially found it strange that we Lucy Gray doesn’t seem too affected by what happened in the games, she says through music that she’s not going to let the capitol take anything from her and she’s not going to let the games change her or break her. Lucy Gray is a survivor, Because of this you could say that she’s accepted that she did what she had to to survive and she tried to do the least harm as she possibly could. However I find it hard to believe she never got angry or upset about what they put her and the others through, that she never thought about her friend jessup and the other tributes that she got to know, who died horrible deaths.

But then I realised WHY we don’t get to see her feel anything about the games and it’s victims. It’s because we only see the story through Coryo’s POV and he lacks the capacity for empathy. It’s that inability to empathise with people that stops us from witnessing Lucy Gray’s trauma and grief. He doesn’t think about what she went through, he never asks her about how she feels about it or even about how she’s feeling in general. Lucy Gray never confides in him or brings up the games herself because (perhaps unconsciously) she knows he won’t understand or truly empathise and therefore, he wouldn’t be the person she’d choose talk to about how she’s feeling.

We don’t see her trauma because snow never cared about her trauma, he only focuses on how they fell in love during the games, not the horrors of it or what the girl he believes he loves had to go through, despite having a small taste himself of what it would have been like for Lucy during the games despite having a front row seat when he went into the arena and had to kill a person to get out alive, but he lacks the capacity to empathise. Despite his front row seat to Lucy Gray’s trauma as well as the injustices, and poor quality of life that she faces in district 12.

[dixons-sunshine]

Fanfic authors that can draw are on a whole different level and I bow down to their greatness. Just know that I aspire to be that talented and that I envy you so much (in a good way).

[starculler]

strap in for this week's fic flavor: the failsafe episode of season one of the young justice cartoon except the simulation just won't. fuckin. end.

(fics that inspired this at the end)

If I ever did sit down to make my own fic, I'd split it in 3 parts:

The Simulation: bits and pieces of the 40 years Dick lives after most everyone he knows has died

The Return: the immediate aftermath and healing from the trauma of having not-quite-actually lived a whole life only to wake up and find out it was all fake. nothing traumatizing about that whatsoever.

The Unintended Consequence: aka the twist I'd love to add and would hint to in the second part - finding out the simulation, through martian mind fuckery, pulled from the real world (and in many cases, from real minds). Dick meets a bunch of people he didn't think were real outside the confines of his simulated life. A bunch of rowdy, heroism-inclined teens across the years get to meet the sibling/friend/mentor figure they all dreamed up one night.

(actual idea snippets under the cut)

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Dick Grayson is 14 and most of the world's heroes have died. He planned a suicide mission that left him the sole survivor of a doomed team he helped found. The invasion may have been stopped, but is this really the price he wanted to pay?

The first face he sees in the infirmary is Roy's, and he has to close his eyes and just breathe for a few minutes because for one painful moment he'd thought it was Wally. But this isn't the world where his best friend miraculously survived alongside him. This is the one where he got his best friend killed and didn't even give him the courtesy of following behind him. Behind them.

.

Dick Grayson is 27 and has lived longer without Bruce than with him. The invasion's anniversary is always a tough day for him, but that morning seems especially harrowing. He'll get shit for it later, but can't resist stepping out onto the balcony of the manor's master bedroom (Bruce's old bedroom) for a smoke -- his first since he'd promised to quit if Jason, just 15 then, did too.

"Bad habits tend to pile up," he'd said, a rueful quirk to his tired grin. He'd tapped the cigarette twice on the railing and added, lower, "and this one's especially nasty, huh."

He inhales, watches the sun creep across the horizon, and lets acrid smoke burn through his lungs for a long moment before blowing it out in a small cloud. His eyes water, but he doesn't cough. It tastes just as bad as it did the first time he smoked one, not even a year after the invasion and treading water as Robin proved insufficient.

There hadn't been enough heroes to go around then, and Dick had been trained by one of the best. It hadn't been fair, but it had been his plan that had ultimately stopped the invasion. His shoulders everyone's expectations fell on.

He takes another drag, then smudges the lit end against the rail he's leaned on when he hears a boot scuff purposefully against the roofing above him.

"Todd and Pennyworth will be upset with you."

He doesn't turn around. Damian doesn't jump down to join him.

.

Dick Grayson is 54 and wakes up in a room full of ghosts. He hears his long-dead father-figure tell his long-dead team about a simulation they weren't meant to win. A training exercise gone wrong and only half a day spent under their mentors' careful, if slightly panicked, supervision.

He looks at his hands, watching the way his gloves crease when he flexes them in and out of tight fists. He looks at his team, their eyes a little haunted but shoulders slumped with relief even as they grumble. Batman's heavy, gloved hand settles on his shoulder and the weight of it is a nauseating mix of foreign-familiar.

He opens his mouth. Closes it.

Tears prick his eyes behind his domino mask, and he tells himself the suffocating, acidic void building in his chest is just some leftover side effect of the ordeal and not the grief-guilt of outliving yet another family (no matter that they hadn't been real in the end).

.

Dick Grayson is 16-going-on-56 and well used to the coincidences piling up between his simulated life and the real thing. Some of it -- missions and villains he remembers cropping up -- he's marked for Bruce to review and sort as he pleases. Some -- security for the cave, team building anecdotes, and training regimens -- he's shared with the team. And some he keeps only for himself.

Tim is one of those. He knows it's not fair to the kid (so much smaller now than he ever was when Dick lived his simulated life), but he can't help being selfish just for this. Tim is the one kid he's sure he didn't make up, and if Dick's taken to babysitting the kid just to be near at least one member of the family he built for himself in the wake of the worst days of his life .... Well, anyone who says shit about it can happily stand in line to have their teeth kicked in.

Despite this, it still catches him off-guard when he sees a familiar face pop up in one of Bruce's reports.

Jason Todd, caught boosting tires off the batmobile, is nearly the same age now as he was when Dick met him. He stares at the words, but none of them really sink in beyond the kid's name and address. He's moving before he's even made the decision.

He's used to the world kicking him when he's down - lived it for 40 frustrating years. But he has Bruce again. And things with Tim have been so good. And he's always been selfish when it comes to family. If he could just see Jason. If he could just meet him. If he could talk to him.

If if if if if--

.

Inspirations:

Circles in Shattered Mirrors by InfinityIllusion

Fine (But Not Okay) by CharlotteDaBookworm

Verisimilitude by mutemelody