#real life not dreams lol

[diabloku]

Lucifer: *enters the hotel*

Alastor: I cast vicious mockery 😈

An animation my sis and I made for fun

Music is Perception Check by Tom Cardy.

[pebbleguppy]

i want to touch them

[claraoswalds]

The sky's a burnt orange, with the Citadel enclosed in a mighty glass dome, shining under the twin suns. Beyond that, the mountains go on forever. Slopes of deep red grass, capped with snow.

The Legend of Ruby Sunday // The Sound of Drums

[shopwitchvamp]

Witch Vamp is MARRIED

It's official, as of 7/28/24 Witch Vamp's business partners @jessdean & @themikeydeano are also partners for life 😎

[cuubism]

Zero [complex math verse]

cw for disordered eating eating disorder storylines can be very triggering so please mind this content warning as it applies heavily to the entire fic

---

Hob is almost to his data structures section—running a bit late, as per usual—when he gets a call from Death. He picks up as he’s rushing up the stairs to the Comp Sci building.

“Hey, Hob,” she says before Hob can even tell her that he only has like thirty seconds to talk, actually. She sounds fatigued. “Can you go pick up Dream from the Maths building?”

Hob pins the phone between his shoulder and ear as he tugs open the door. “‘Pick him up’? Is he okay?”

“He asked me to come get him, but I can’t leave this patient right now.” Hob can imagine her leaning against the wall, hand pressed to her forehead. Why didn’t Dream call him?, Hob wonders. He’s usually much more available than Death, at this hour. “I asked if he wanted an ambulance, and he said no, but if you can’t go get him then—”

“Wait, wait.” Hob stops in the middle of the hall, stomach swooping. Someone walking behind him swears as they have to swerve to avoid hitting him, but he ignores it. “An ambulance? I thought you said he was okay.”

But... she hadn’t said that exactly, had she?

“He will be,” Death says, which doesn’t fill Hob with much confidence. But he turns around and heads back for the door, heartbeat picking up with each step.

“I’m going now, I’m not far.” The undergrads are just going to have to cope with not having discussion section today. He doubts they’ll be too unhappy about it.

“Thanks,” says Death, with relief. “Text me when you find him? And you should bring some food, if you have it.”

Oh.

Fuck.

Hob had been afraid something like this would happen. But he can’t exactly force Dream to pick up better habits. Horses and water, and all that.

“Yeah, yeah, I will, thanks,” he says, and walks faster.

Hob is going to be upset with him.

The thought circles Dream’s mind as he sits crumpled on the bench outside the classroom he’d been working in, head on his knees, hands clasped behind his neck. Nothing feels real. Everything is spinning and swaying. He might pass out. He might throw up. He hates throwing up. Hob is going to be upset with him.

It’s exactly what he was trying to avoid by calling his sister instead. Death will be upset with him, too, but she’s chastised him before. Dream is used to it. The same words coming from Hob will be a different matter.

He should have known that she would be busy, and would call Hob. Even if she could come to get him she would likely call Hob after. He should have known. He sits with his head pressed to his knees and waits for the inevitable.

Either Hob was very close by, or more time slips past Dream’s notice than he realizes, but it feels like only a few minutes before he hears Hob’s footsteps coming quickly down the hall. He doesn’t know what it means that he can recognize Hob’s footsteps. Or that Hob had known which classroom to go to. The one Dream always prefers to work in.

“Dream?” Hob crouches in front of him, trying to meet his eyes, but Dream can’t lift his head from his knees. It’s the only thing keeping the world from tipping over on him. Hob lays a hand on his arm. “Hey, love. What’s going on?”

“‘m dizzy,” Dream murmurs, voice small. He hadn’t realized how much his shoulders were shaking until Hob touched him. He thinks that’s distress more than physical shakiness. But Hob’s presence soothes him more than he’d expected. Even if Hob chews him out, he doesn’t want Hob to leave. He wants Hob to hold him. He just wants Hob to hold him.

“Okay.” Hob’s voice is quiet and calm. He brushes Dream’s hair behind his ear, though it’s not long enough for that to do much. “Sit up for me for a sec? I’ll help you.”

Dream is helpless but to follow Hob’s voice. He starts to sit up. His vision is still spinning. Hob wraps an arm around his middle and bodily lifts him up until he’s leaning back against the wall, then sits beside him on the bench, their thighs touching.

He meets Hob’s gaze. Hob is close enough that he doesn’t appear to waver as much as everything in the background. He looks beautiful, he’s a savior, an angel.

Dream’s brain is not working very normally right now. Not that it ever is.

Hob looks more concerned than angry with him. But Dream doesn’t have much time to study his expression before he’s turning to dig in his bag and pull out his water bottle. He uncaps it and hands it to Dream.

“Drink that. At least half of it. Slow.”

He goes back to digging in his bag as Dream sips the water carefully. Hob is very steady, underneath the concern. No panic. Good in a crisis, Hob. That’s interesting.

Hob watches him drink the water, then hands him a package of cheese crackers he’d pulled out of his bag. Despite himself, Dream laughs, weakly, as he takes it. “Do you always have food with you?”

“You’re not the only one who forgets to eat lunch, I just accommodate for it.”

‘Forgetting’ is… not exactly it, Dream thinks as he picks open the package and takes a cracker, eating it slowly. He still feels more nauseous than hungry, but he knows Hob won’t let it be until he eats it.

No, he has witnessed Hob skip a meal when in the throes of some engaging problem, but he always makes up for it later. Or by carrying around snacks, apparently. Whereas with Dream… it is not exactly forgetting.

He eats the crackers one by one, mechanically. Barely tasting them. Fortunately, the food cuts the edge of nausea in his stomach instead of exacerbating it, and he no longer thinks he’s in imminent danger of throwing up. Or passing out. That would certainly upset Hob.

“There you go, love,” Hob soothes him. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

Hob could have gone into the medical field instead if he wanted to, Dream thinks, somewhat deliriously, swallowing his final cheese cracker. His bedside manner is very good.

Or perhaps this is just because it’s Dream.

The thought makes him want to cry, but he doesn’t. He just stays still as the world starts spinning a little less, and Hob takes the water bottle and empty snack package back and shoves them in his bag, then tugs on Dream’s arm.

“Alright, why don’t you lie down.”

“This is a public hallway,” Dream complains, albeit weakly.

Hob sighs in exasperation. “We’ve slept on classroom tables before. Besides, this is a university, everybody’s seen weirder shit in public than this. Lie down.”

Dream acquiesces, and Hob guides him to lie down on the bench, his head on Hob’s lap. It’s pleasant, like that, and the world spins less and less. Hob pets his hair, and Dream closes his eyes.

“Are you going to make me go to A&E?” he murmurs, after a few moments of quiet.

“Depends how you feel in twenty minutes or so.” He sighs, and there’s a shake to it. “But I think you’ll be okay, love. Just give it a moment.”

Dream will be okay, until Hob decides he’s recovered enough to chastise him for his behavior. For now, he just lies there quietly and enjoys the settling feeling of Hob’s hands in his hair.

Hob doesn’t ask him what he did to himself, or why. Perhaps he’s judged Dream too tired or incapacitated to talk about it right now. He just keeps steadying Dream, quietly, his hands ever-moving.

When several minutes have passed, Hob asks, “How are you feeling, darling? Do you want to go home?”

Darling. Hob calls him such sweet things when Dream is nothing but difficult to him. “I would like to go home. Please.”

Hob helps him sit up, bracing an arm around his shoulders. But the room, thankfully, has stopped spinning. He gets Dream to his feet, and Dream doesn’t sway. Hob picks up both his bag and Dream’s from the floor and slips them over his shoulder. He wraps an arm around Dream’s waist. And silently, relieved to be standing again, Dream follows Hob home.

~~

Dream’s flat is closer to campus, so Hob takes him there, gets him settled on the couch and makes tea and pushes a box of biscuits into Dream’s hands, and all this before even telling Dream off for his behavior. Dream is not a child, he knows perfectly well how much sustenance a body needs to sustain it, he knows that it is unwise to go without eating, so why doesn’t Hob tell him so? Chastise him for his foolishness?

Dream sits curled up on the couch. Turning the box of biscuits over and over in his hands, unopened. Finally, Hob sits beside him with his own tea.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

Dream can’t manage to get himself to open the biscuits. He sets the box in his lap, but picks up his tea as a compromise that will hopefully ease Hob’s worries. It does not work, based on Hob’s expression as he watches him do it. Dream sips his tea anyway. Hob’s put a lot of honey into it. Correctly deducing that Dream hasn’t had enough sugar or anything else today.

Instead of responding, he tears up.

Hob puts both of their mugs back on the coffee table and pulls him into his arms.

Dream presses his face into Hob’s shoulder. Tucks his hands in against the warmth of Hob’s body, pressed between his back and the couch. Crawls halfway into his lap. Hob wraps his arms around him and holds him close. Dream feels like his soul is pattering around and only staying contained by the boundaries created by Hob’s body. He doesn’t know what that feeling is.

Hob strokes his hair, murmurs against the shell of his ear, shh darling, it’s okay. Dream is a pathetic cowering creature soothed by Hob’s touch. That feeling. It’s fear. He’s scared. Scared of himself. That he can lose such control while grasping so tightly for it.

“Thank you,” he finally manages, something he should have said earlier, but means more than he can say, “for coming.”

“You could have called me, you know.” It’s not accusatory, but a little hurt. “It’s okay if you’d rather have Death, just—”

“It is not that. I—” He pulls back to see Hob’s face. Hob wipes the tears from his cheeks. “Death has told me her feelings on the matter before. I was… apprehensive to hear yours.” Death, also, has seen Dream at lower points than this. She can hardly think less of him. The same is not true of Hob.

Hob looks sad to hear this. “My feelings are that I’m concerned. Did you eat anything today?”

“…No.”

“What about yesterday?”

Dream thinks. He must have, surely? “I think so.”

“I can make you stuff, you know,” Hob says. “Whatever you want. I don’t mind.”

This is the last thing Dream wants. For Hob to think this is somehow his fault.

“If you’re forgetting I can just come get you whenever I’m eating,” Hob continues. He’s only growing more distressed at Dream’s silence.

How can Dream tell Hob, who cares so much and wants to help, that he does this on purpose? That he doesn’t forget that he’s hungry, but rather ignores it? Or worse, relishes in it? That he has done so for a long time. That it makes him feel sharper. In control of himself.

That once broken, habits are, it turns out, very hard to pick up again. Even when that habit is eating.

“It is not so simple, I’m afraid,” he says, ducking his head.

“No, I guess it wouldn’t be.” Hob bites his lip, looking away. “Why, then? I want to help you, but I don’t…”

“It makes me feel better,” Dream says. “Until it doesn’t.”

Like today. He pushed too far. But it’s only when he does go too far that the reality of what he’s doing comes back to him. It’s easy to forget, when he is used to it.

Ironically, he knows from experience that it will be easier to eat better in the next few days, now that he’s shocked himself back to reality. It will be easier, until he slips again. He doesn’t know how not to slip.

When he finally looks back up, Hob is already looking at him again. He looks sad. Dream doesn’t want him to be sad.

Hob takes Dream’s jaw in his hand, strokes his thumb over Dream’s lower lip. “You scared me, seeing you like that.”

Dream should probably apologize for his behavior. Instead, all he can do is lean in again to press his forehead against Hob’s. He knows Hob wants to fix it, to offer solutions, but all Dream really wants is his touch. Hob’s touch fixes more for him than anything else.

“I’m gonna stay over,” Hob says, cradling the back of his head. “And we’re going to have dinner.”

It is, in fact, almost dinnertime, Dream realizes. No wonder he felt overcome, after having nothing until now. Hob will insist on him having something, he knows. It still feels… strange. To be having something.

He tucks his face into Hob’s neck. “Very well.”

“Will you eat some of it?” Hob asks, petting his hair again, tugging the short strands between his fingers. Dream thinks it must be soothing to him to do so.

“Yes,” he says. “However. I don’t want you to think that this is your responsibility to fix.” Or that you can. Hob is very very good at taking things apart and fixing problems, but if he digs his hands into this one he is going to get his fingers jammed in the unsteady gears of Dream’s brain. He is only going to get hurt in trying.

“Maybe not,” says Hob, and, like he heard what Dream didn’t say, continues, “but I can feed you one meal so let’s start with that?”

Does Hob understand how much comfort he brings? Can he possibly?

“I love you,” Dream murmurs, almost unintelligible for how close he’s pressed himself to Hob’s body.

Hob kisses his head. “I love you, too, my darling.”

He bundles Dream closer so their limbs are all tangled together. Dream loves that, how he can feel each pressure point where they touch. “Will you tell me more about it? When you feel up to it. The more I get how you feel, the more I can help you.”

As a child, Dream’s favorite number was zero. Some mathematicians would insist zero was not actually a number, but rather the absence of one. That was exactly what Dream liked about it. The nothing defined by the everything around it. Zero was foundational, and yet it was not even properly there at all.

Sometimes Dream felt like zero. The less he ate the more he felt it. It was easier to be nothing than to let the everything in.

“You are insistent upon trying to help me,” Dream says.

“Yup.”

“Because,” Dream realizes, with a hard swallow, “you love me.”

“Exactly. You get it.”

Dream twists their fingers together and squeezes. If Dream is zero, Hob is like infinity, so boundless that he can’t help but let it engulf him.

Perhaps one day Dream will be able to explain it all to him in better words than that.

[spaciebabie]

what if you were really small like a drawing mannequin and Springtrap held you

i really want someone to draw this

oh my god;. being held by giant springrtrap. life could be dream .

[theatrevelyan]

Excitement and memes aside, I still can’t fucking believe there is an actual city named Treviso in Dragon Age… like, I’ve been to Treviso, my dad was born in Treviso, that’s a fucking real ass city in Italy and I can’t decide if this is the funniest thing ever or if I’ve ascended to a whole new plane of existence.

Sure things that my next protagonist will be from there no question asked.

[a-is-for-arson]

I had a dream last night that they did a recount and Kamala won

[mobius-m-mobius]

anon requested Owen Wilson + kisses 😘

[coockie8]

i once had an anti tell me to stop sexualizing their trauma on a story i wrote that was a word for word retelling of my own actual trauma but with names changed and its been 2 years and i still cant stop thinking about that

Ah, yeah... Unfortunately a non-insignificant number of antishippers seem to genuinely believe they own the concept of trauma, so any story they read that they believe to be portrayed in a romanticized or sexualized light therefore must be romanticizing/sexualizing their trauma specifically.

I couldn't tell you the amount of times I've gotten the "stop sexualizing my trauma!!!!!!" or adjacent comments from antishippers that universally garner a response that basically boils down to

Like, bitch! I'm talking about my trauma! I literally did not even know you existed until you fucking commented!

[pebbleguppy]

the most extra ice bucket i've ever seen in my life. i wanted it but couldn't justify buying it so i forced my friend to buy it instead.

[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)

.

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

[bleue-flora]

i didn't remenber cdream had a parrot. Now o need to rewatch. Cdream has a curse or something bc why alll his pets die or are killed

Yea… for real. And most of them have really tragic and strange deaths. :’( It’s no wonder he has such attachment issues, only furthered by the death of his horse then later endangerment of his friends and blackmail…

Here’s the link to the parrot stream

Time stamp for finding the parrot: 2:23:21

Time stamp for the death of the parrot: 3:18:02

Here’s the link to the memorial (which I actually mentioned in my recent Dreamcatcher blooper)

Though to truly understand how tragic it is you should watch the whole section of the stream where he has his parrot, because he really goes through so much trouble to bring the parrot (and Spirit) back home with him.

“I loved him like a son he was a like father to me.” — Dream —

[thetardisisnotourdivision]

Hey did I ever tell y'all about the time I dreamed that I had a baby daughter called Ellie that began with my finding out I was pregnant and ended on like her third birthday?

I legitimately woke up thinking "I should go check on Ellie" and then realised she was never real and when I tell you I SOBBED. I've been haunted by an implacable sense of loss ever since. Did I travel to another dimension? Wtf happened because that was insane.

[that-wizard-oki]

I've had it in my head for awhile (like that I want to do some sort of fan comic (like, multi chapter/'book', done over several years sorta comic) for W101.

I have various Idea's that i'd like to do (like it would rock to maybe do a comic interpretation of the game itself), but if I were to hunker down and really do at least one of them, it'd be about Morganthe's life/story of course. It's just the one I'm most passionate about, the one I think would make me most satisfied if it was the only comic I ever did since it would be a pretty big undertaking and likely done in my free time, which is often limited lol.

Also, it goes without saying that i'm uhhhhh a bit of a perfectionist (me, an artist? a perfectionist? what a surprise!) so the idea of my art not being up to par with my expectations is also off putting- and I KNOW... i know.... i know that regardless of what art I'm able to produce, It shouldn't matter really. Who cares if my anatomy is janky or the perspective off- as long as the story is impactful and something I like (as of course even just a handful of others enjoy), that's what bottom line i think matters to me most.

All this to say that... I have entertained the idea of /writing/ some of this stuff. I thought maybe scripts would be nice, because... the issue tho is that I get caught up in the details, which would serve well for like, fanfic writing. But again, I'm also SO image based that I fear my words alone will not be enough- at least, enough to satisfy my own creative desire. Though writing does feel more approachable- like a good starting place.

*kicks rocks* anyway, i just got the thinking cause... well as of late my desire to engage in art/creating something has felt very... not there at all. It could be partly that I have an Art Job, but, as much as I do love my job... I think the reality is that I miss being able to create entirely for me. I think that's what I really liked about Wizard- the world & characters inspired me to think creatively in a boundless way.

And again, LOVE my job, and I have been given opportunity to express many ideas, and some of which have come to be, but I think I've also come to realize that... idk, I don't think I like the uphill battle of putting my all into something I don't even know is going to be greenlit/accepted/etc (this is nothing to do with KI specifically, more so how draining it feels to me personally to pitch certain things im /very/ passionate about, and trying to be realistic about how much of my time effort and energy i feel is worth to do that).

Anywho. Lots of random thoughts, no real conclusion, just had it on my mind. But overall it's been difficult for me to feel the Magic that wiz usually proves me, creatively speaking. Honestly even thinking about playing the game makes my head hurt, which also saddens me a good bit. I'm still in Novus lol.

Not to say I don't feel excited or that "magic" feeling at all, far from it. It's just. Further and fewer between at times.

[gender-fluidz]

I want details about the dream to edge to what goes on in your beautiful mind

Yeah it was really not that exciting, just a long and vivid dream about having very vanilla sex with my partner 👍