#really just looking for scraps here

[griffinappreciator]

its all fun and games until you hear your favourite character say "oh god" in a very exhausted voice while listening to an audiobook

[themachine]

[vaggieslefteye]

CHARLIE MAGNE from HAZBIN HOTEL (2019): Pilot - "That's Entertainment" ↳ "So, I've been thinking: Isn't there a more humane way to hinder overpopulation here in Hell? Perhaps we can create an alternative way to change souls through... redemption?"

[celtrist]

Why does Vassago already have merch, we haven't even met him yet

[yuriyuruandyuraart]

it's the 90's favorite trashbag!!!

fresh sans belongs to loverofpiggies

[reapersmarch]

tell me lies, and i'll justify them look before you leap, orrr, what happens when it all comes tumbling out start here prev • next

a note from me to u: this is (very slightly) canon divergent in the sense that I wanted to write a very specific confrontation between ricardo and bel and even though I think placing it in the canon "legs broke" ending would have worked just as well, I think the stress would've killed him and would've just been... kinda depressing honestly, so. slight divergence of "they narrowly avoided the semitruck and now have to deal with the fact that bel told him he's entropy", so please be advised and enjoy!

There are no two ways about this, and no sense in mincing words: this fucking sucks.

And that doesn’t even really begin to cover it.

In fact, there probably aren’t enough words in the English, Welsh, or French languages for you to begin to describe what, exactly, you’re feeling here. Awkward. Tense. Edgy. Uncomfortable. But, none of those are enough, either. It’s more like… you’ve been in a dead sprint for so long, your lungs have finally given out, and you know that the only way this ends is in death.

No one to come save you, no way for you to crawl your broken body out of this one.

You condemn yourself to your fate, and stretch your neck across the block.

The executioner, this time, takes the shape of Ricardo’s side profile as he drags a hand down his mouth, turning over and over and over what you’ve just told him.

There’s a saying that you’ve always been particularly fond of—if you smell shit everywhere you walk, check the bottom of your shoe.

Or: you are the lowest common denominator. 

Your strength was never math—it was always science, a natural inclination towards it, which is ironic given how much math there is in astrophysics. You were only ever a casual observer, though; never really one to know the exact application of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, but you knew what they felt like. 

The first law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; only changed. You suppose that’s true enough. It did hurt, when you fell from the heavens. It hurt when you felt your wings melt, the wax burning skin like molten glass as the ground rose to meet you, kiss you, embrace you like an old lover. When you felt everything in you shatter and shake, stain the concrete, rearrange at the molecular level until you were no longer you, it hurt.

So, maybe you can’t destroy energy. You can fundamentally change it, however. You can destroy a person—ah. But you’re not a person. You never were. Let’s try again.

You can destroy a thing. Push it to the brink of ruination, only to bring it back from that point and say, “See? You were fine. You were just fine.” Do that enough times, and eventually the thing breaks. Machines slow and rust, clothes get holes in them, regenes snap and bend and morph until they do what they’re supposed to. They break.

And then what? The energy changes. Sidestep dies, Entropy is born.

If the first law is the making, then the second law must be the unmaking.

It states that when energy changes from one form to another, entropy in a closed system increases.

Funny how that works out.

But that’s true, too.

When did you start tearing yourself apart? When he entered your life again? When you let him enter your life? When you handed him the scalpel and lay yourself down across the operating table, guided his hand to your chest and said, ‘cut here’?

There is a bitter edge to the very idea that he occupied so many of your thoughts, had you tearing yourself asunder every other night, but you could never tell if you took root in any of his. That the bliss of silence could just as quickly be replaced with the violence of static—you never knew just how violent static could be until you met him, that it was even capable of doing that kind of damage.

Anchors, as you are learning, can be used to sink as readily as they can to secure.

So. Yeah. It’s you. You’re the through line here. And so is he. And you’ve just confirmed that for him.

He was bound to figure it out eventually; you couldn’t hold it together long enough to keep the division separate. The lines of Sidestep and Entropy blurred into one another forever ago, when you decided to stop and do good, be good. You just couldn’t stop being Bel, even if you wanted to—and you desperately wanted to.

In your ardent need for affection, your unholy want for companionship, you lowered the drawbridge, and you took everyone in. You put the crown to his head, made him king of your domain, and couldn’t fathom how you were dethroned.

“Ricardo—”

“Don’t.”

He’s not done processing, it seems.

That’s fair. You might not’ve even foreseen this conversation, but he had an entirely different vision of how this would play out in his head.

(Not that you would know.

This is all just conjecture.)

The smoking wreckage of this barely functional car that you managed to veer into a back alley in an industrial zone is not where he pictured having it, for one. For two, he thought you were related to Hollow Ground, somehow.

Also kind of fair. You did have an uncanny resemblance to one another, one which you are not in a place currently to dissect, and he did spot you exiting his… lair, you guess.

You have a sneaking suspicion that neither of you expected to live through that encounter, and now that you have, it’s like holding on to a lit firecracker and waiting for it to blow your arm off.

“I’m sorry,” he lets you say. You’re not sure why. You don’t know what you’re even apologizing for, and it rings remarkably hollow when the ripple effect of your actions outweighs whatever guilt you could possibly be feeling. He does not acknowledge this though. He can’t even look at you right now.

You’re not sure if it’s better or worse that you told him the truth. Maybe letting him believe his conspiracy theory would have been the safer thing to do, but you have always laughed in the face of safety.

“I think,” he starts after an eon, “the part I hate about this the most is that I still love you.”

There it is, the axe. The blade right at your neck.

He told you this already. In his apartment when you let yourself be convinced to stay the night; let him talk you into his bed, let him hold you and tell you everything you’ve been wanting and waiting to hear, what you foolishly refused to see across all this time—the second time you’ve ever shared a bed. Quite possibly the last.

He told you he loved you, and the weight of that crushed you instantly.

It was fine when it was just you—burying yourself in years of regret, choking back every almost half-muttered declaration, and forcing yourself to be content with whatever you had going on. It wasn’t so much a problem when you were two ships passing in the night; everything you were experiencing was all self-inflicted. Sure, it was miserable. Sure, you thought it would be kinder to drive your car into the ocean. But you had a handle on it. Mostly. It was contained, even if you couldn’t keep it from showing in your face. Even if you couldn’t hide the way you still look for him first in a room, or the way your hand always manages to find his arm when you need it—a steadying point on the horizon.

It was contained. You never let it spill out of you in more than a trickle.

This, though.

Sitting there and being told it’s reciprocal, that he loved you—still loves you, somehow.

This is killing you.

He loves you, and you still can’t unstopper the bottle.

Not because you don’t want to—you would love to. You have been shouting it with your actions for years, you have been howling it, without ever saying a single syllable of the sentence that is piercing through your skull, currently.

You can’t uncork this because the truth has to come out, and when the tell-all gossip column finally spreads the word straight from the devil’s mouth to his ears, he’ll hate you, and you’ll still love him.

“I don’t know what to say,” you tell him, because you don’t, and you can’t stop looking at him but he won’t look at you.

“Were you ever going to say anything?”

“Eventually,” you try to assure him. You can’t really assure him of anything, but you are baring as much of yourself as he’s willing to see. “It was always—I wanted to. Ricardo, I really, really wanted to, but—”

“You couldn’t.” He finishes for you.

You don’t have anything to add, so you purse your lips and fidget with your hands for a while. He doesn’t say anything else, still gazing out the window as though something fascinating will occur there.

“Ricardo, please, just… look at me. For a second. Please.”

He doesn’t.

You reactively reach for his hand, then stop yourself halfway, fingers curling in on themselves. You don’t deserve comfort. You have no right to ask for it.

You betrayed his trust.

You may as well let your head roll.

Your hands find the hem of your sweater and lift until the flesh of your abdomen is exposed, intricate lines of bright orange crisscrossing in every direction.

He finally looks, but you can’t anymore.

“This is why,” you state, as though it’ll answer everything—and in some ways, it does.

This is why: I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t be honest. I never let you in. I never asked for help. I tried to lock you out. I was afraid of you. I'm sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

Take your pick.

“After Heartbreak,” you drone, like you’ve numbed yourself to it, “I didn’t exactly have the best time.” Understatement of the century. “I’m sorry you mourned. I’m sorry you had a funeral, and that, in your eyes, I’m dying a second death currently, but I fucking had a good go of it, Ricardo. When they hauled me back to the Farm, they poked and prodded and so much worse. They fucking—please don’t look at me like that—they put me back together so they could split me apart again, and do whatever else they wanted, because it didn’t matter; I don’t exist. ‘Less than’—isn’t that what you said once?” He flinches.

“I didn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t matter what you meant.”

You let your sweater fall back into place.

“When I was there, they did everything within their power to keep me out.” Two fingers against the temple. “Went so far as to take something they knew had the potential to fuck them up worse than I ever could, they were that afraid of what I would do. You…” With thumb and forefinger, you rub at your eyelids, exhausted. You sort of wish you could gouge them out. “Sometimes, not being able to feel you is nice. It’s nice not hearing everything so loudly, knowing that I don’t have to try to shut you out because you can’t let me in. Knowing that I could relax because it’s just you—it’s Ricardo, it’s Charge, it’s just my shadow. But on my worst days, you fucking… you feel like them, Ric.”

You feel like you’re going to vomit.

“You feel just like them, and then my shadow isn’t comforting anymore, and suddenly, I’m afraid of the dark.”

You pivot before you’ll let him acknowledge any of that. You don’t want it acknowledged. You don’t want to know what he has to say about any of it. Maybe that’s selfish. You don’t care.

“So that’s why… Entropy. The only way I could see how to fix it was by becoming Entropy and giving the public something to rally around. Voice of the fucking people and all of that bullshit,” you chuckle in spite of yourself, dropping your head back against the seat. “Which meant that by default, I couldn’t tell you a thing. Even if you wanted to, there wasn’t a way you could help me that wouldn’t also make you a target,” you say, “and I couldn’t trust myself around you.”

That’s a fairly important distinction.

You didn’t trust him enough to reveal anything, this is true. The Rangers were staunchly in the adversary bucket given the nature of what they are. But you didn’t trust yourself around him.

You couldn’t trust that you wouldn’t unhinge that jaw and speak. You couldn’t trust that you would be able to control yourself.

You were right.

You threw yourself at him, hoping the landing would be softer this time, and it was worse.

“You’re right,” you hear yourself say, head lolling to the side to smile bitterly at him. “The worst part about all this is that I still love you; I can’t make myself stop. In seven years, I couldn’t make myself stop. It’s pretty stupid, actually, because I knew, deep down, that you were just like that. Ricardo Ortega, the flirt. The unfairly handsome, outrageously friendly Marshal Charge. You knew how to make someone feel like the most important person in the room. That was just you, but I couldn’t stop myself from falling for it. No one had ever looked at me the way that you did, and I—”

He kisses you.

He kisses you and kisses you and kisses you, like you’re the oasis in the desert and he hasn’t seen water in weeks. He kisses like a man starved, and you’re the last thing he’ll ever taste. He kisses like he loves you—still, despite—and it knocks the breath from you.

He pulls back enough your lips are just barely grazing, stroking his thumb along your neckline and pressing your foreheads together.

“—I just wanted to feel alive,” you finish. 

And you do. You feel more alive than you ever have in your thirty years, and now he’s looking at you the way he always did, seeing you, intent on you, and you realize—he has always looked at you this way. When his eyes fixed on you, they were waiting for you to notice. Even here, in this barely functional car in the back alley of some industrial zone, where you thought you were going to puke your innards out from the stress of this conversation.

The only thing you did vomit up was words, so that’s incredibly impressive for you. 

You were surprisingly calm about the whole thing. You don’t think you are physically aligned with your body at present, so this is probably the biggest contributing factor, but maybe that therapy session did you some good after all.

“You’re an idiot,” Ricardo tells you gently. “The biggest idiot I’ve ever met. The biggest, prettiest pain in the ass idiot to deal with.” And you laugh, even if you do feel yourself wanting to cry. “You still look like you, Bel, at the end of the day. This is just you on a really bad one.”

“The worst fucking day imaginable, really,” you manage, muffled against his shoulder.

“Yeah. But you’re still you, and that’s all I care about.”

[sysig]

Getting closer, getting really close now I swear (Patreon)

[system-of-a-feather]

Dude I'm honestly so over California and it's polished Polly Pocket Barbie Mansion ass "environment" and the sheer lack of any authentic nature and environment. It's awful. Let me go back to Colorado where there are actual natural NATURE not this plastic ass place.

What do you mean I don't have to drive 15+ minutes out to see any remnants of the natural land a city was built on what?

What do you mean I don't have to settle for well polished lawns of artificially green grass and non-native trees planted to make it look like "nature"?

Get me out of this capitalist half-assed-liberal state.

[wormholewandering]

Caves are a lot cozier than one might expect, especially with all this soft red grass! Me and Sunrise have basically just been collecting berries, I was gonna stick them in my bag but it's ripped up :(

[icewindandboringhorror]

various little Pictures of thinges

[timeisacephalopod]

When American politicians discuss doing universal healthcare in their country and start whining about the possibility of "medical tourism" where people would theoretically go to America to get healthcare I want to scream and shake them. That already exists- Canada is where Americans went to get their fucking insulin because their own government failed them so hard another country nearly had an insulin shortage a few times over the course of the pandemic alone.

If you want to talk about medical tourism and that """"straining""""" the American healthcare system then maybe take a look at the way Americans are consistently causing strains to Canada's healthcare!! And I assume Americans don't just travel here for healthcare either, so when American politicians act like they're Just The Best and everyone will go to America for healthcare I want to be like THE ISSUE YOURE BITCHING ABOUT EXISTS AND ITS NOT HAPPENING TO YOU ITS HAPPENING TO CANADA AND ITS BECAUSE YOU REFUSE TO ADEQUATELY SERVICE YOUR POPULATION AND MORE THAN ONCE CANADIAN DIABETICS WERE THE ONES WHO'D SUFFER FOR IT. Like you want to talk medical tourism without ever acknowledging your population using other countries healthcare, which I guess is fine because it's not America footing the bill, really?

[axellis-archv-2]

hey *takes what was supposed to be just a visualization in case i ever wanted to draw overhallidays place in the future and then spends 4 hours on it

[firestorm09890]

there’s this one character analysis on Zexion that said he was terrified the whole time he was in the organization and how it’s easy to see in how he acts during his conversation with Xigbar and in his relationships with others in the group that cited a passage from one of the kh short stories talking about how Zexion’s hated Vexen ever since he was human

…except later on in that exact same scene of that short story he has that aforementioned talk with Xigbar and his thoughts are mostly along the lines of “Xigbar is condescending but he’s more obnoxious than anything and I wish he would shut up because his nonsense is wasting my time” which is… not what I’d describe as “acting afraid”

and I just

homie you can’t cite something for an argument when the very source you cited also refutes it

[earanie]

.

[sysig]

I hope you blink before I do (Patreon)

[clownboy-yeehonk]

Something about the wretched florescent lights in a tj Maxx dressing room simply removes both my self esteem and my will to live with a surgical precision that boggles the mind