#series: Of Maintenance

[sacredfixation]

so what if my husband is a tree now. what then. (More headcanonical things Id like to imagine mobius doing to cope)

sometimes he just leans against a tree and goes “oh yeah that’s the good stuff”

he’s taken up whittling. “just something to keep my hands busy.” he makes a little wooden loki figure. stares at it for way too long.

he wont let anyone throw out TVA paperwork anymore because “technically, this might be him.” OB gently explains that’s not how paper works. mobius does not listen.

he got a bonsai tree for his desk. calls it “little lokes.” waters it every day. talks to it. “you wouldn’t believe what they had me doing today.”

Sometimes he just… trails his fingers along the wood paneling at the TVA. deep, mournful sigh. “y’know… he used to talk back.

He’s started referring to TVA’s timeline monitoring as “tree husband maintenance.” A branched timeline pops up? “Oop, gotta go check on the old man. He’s acting up.” The timeline is not Loki. But also? Maybe it is.

He won’t let anyone sit on wooden benches anymore. “Show some respect.”

He goes to a new timeline and sees a really big, ancient tree? Hands on hips, approving nod, deep exhale. “Yep. He’d like this one.

Sometimes, just sometimes, when he’s sitting alone, a breeze comes through, rustling the leaves. And for just a moment, just a moment, he swears he hears:

“Mobius.”

And he just smiles.

[pokemon-cards-hourly]

[myreia]

✦ F F X I V L E V E L 9 0

—compendium

[thetomorrowshow]

when you had nothing to say

CHAPTER 3

uhhh if this is the first one you see it's a fic in which the world where the evolutionists all started on descended into war. after fighting in the war for several years, they fled to evo together. this fic is a 5+1 about 5 times that someone found out Jimmy was Deaf and 1 time he was accommodated :)

cw: internalized ableism

~

Jimmy wakes up in bed, gasping for stolen breath.

He’s still shaking from that death, his heart beating too fast. How had that—he’d thought it would be safe to touch, he hadn’t thought—

He checks his communicator.

Ren and Skizz down, too.

How much of an idiot—?

Jimmy messages an apology into chat, tries to shake off the feeling of exploding. It’s one of his least favorite ways to die, getting blown into bits all over the place. Even on worlds like these, where they respawn. He hates tnt.

Jimmy sits on his bed for too long, probably, just trying to catch his breath after such an intense end. He didn’t like that. Holy moly, he didn’t like that at all.

Get up, he tells himself. Come on, get up, go do something.

He doesn’t.

It’s too overwhelming, is all. He’s fine, he’s fine, he just needs a minute to sort himself out before he can bear to leave this room. He needs a minute to gather his thoughts, blown apart by the explosion just like his body—

A minute grows into two, into three, into. . . .

He isn’t sure how long he sits there, but soon enough, his door opens, and Scott, Grian, and Scar file in.

Jimmy straightens, trying to look like he hadn’t just been staring into space, limbs trembling and mind flashing through with memories. They don’t seem to notice, judging by the lack of anything but gleeful pity on their faces. Good.

Grian’s mouth moves, his voice muffled and near-silent. Jimmy frowns—he hadn’t even realized his hearing aids weren’t on. He clicks on the power on the left piece, then the right—but the right one pops painfully and he hisses, turning it back off.

He takes it out, turns it this way and that. It looks okay—he turns it on in his hand and it sparks once, but otherwise seems fine.

Jimmy carefully fits the hearing aid back in his ear, then looks up. All three of his friends are watching him, and Grian raises his eyebrows.

“All good?” he asks, but Jimmy doesn’t hear it.

He clicks off the left one again, panic sprouting in his chest. They can’t be broken. They can’t, they just can’t, he can’t afford another pair—

Turning the left one back on doesn’t do anything, though. Turning off and on the right one doesn’t do anything but make it spark again.

“My hearing aids are broken,” he manages, his throat tightening. “I—I don’t have spares. The explosion—”

This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening! He’s been exploded loads of times, why did this one break his hearing aids?

Grian’s shoulders slump; Scott won’t stop staring at his ears. Grian takes his communicator out of his pocket, types out a message. A moment later, Jimmy’s own communicator vibrates on his hip.

Sorry, I don’t remember any sign. Do you need to drop out of the game?

“I can keep playing,” he says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “I’ve been deaf for a long time, I—I know how to deal with it. I just . . . being able to hear is helpful.”

Grian fixes him with a sympathetic expression. Scar wheels himself over, squeezes Jimmy’s hand.

“You’ve got this,” he says. “All you . . . okay?”

“I missed most of that.”

Scar just squeezes his hand again.

When Grian and Scar leave, Grian with promises to help pay for a new pair, Scott comes over to Jimmy’s bed and sits beside him, typing out a message on his communicator.

I didn’t know that you’re deaf.

“I don’t really hide it,” says Jimmy. “I don’t go around shouting about it, but it isn’t a secret.”

Why didn’t you tell me?

Absentmindedly, to help gather his thoughts in a quiet world, Jimmy starts to sign as he speaks. “Never came up, I guess. I just assume people already know—but now that I think about it—”

He considers it for a moment.

“Um, now you know,” he counts off his fingers. “Grian, Scar, Martyn, BigB. I think that’s it, though.”

Had he really told so few people?

It isn’t quite the truth, really, that it never came up. There were plenty of opportunities over the past weeks to talk about his hearing loss, to explain why sometimes he asked Scott to repeat himself multiple times, or why he usually didn’t hear calls of his name.

He avoided it, though, even if he didn’t have a real reason to. Did he need a reason to not give others a weakness to exploit? Did he need a reason to let others know this truly vulnerable part of himself?

It explains your lisp.

“I have a lisp?” Jimmy exclaims. Grian had always told him he was perfectly understandable, and Martyn didn’t say anything, and nobody else has ever seemed to realize that he was deaf.

It’s not bad, you just kind of over-do the s sound.

He never even knew. That’s so—that’s so weird! He’s had a lisp, apparently, and no one told him.

“That’s so weird,” he says, fidgeting a bit with the torn hem of his shirt. “But—erm, I’ll probably be a pretty useless ally, now. Sorry, you’re on your own.”

He doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to be alone in this, when he can’t hear a thing in a world full of hearing people. It’s lonely, so dreadfully lonely, and it always has been. He doesn’t want to go back to that. He never wanted to.

He refuses to drag Scott down any more than he already has, though.

“You can use my house as storage, or something,” Jimmy says, though he still can’t quite find it within himself to get up. “I’ll be out of here by the end of the day.”

Maybe Scar and Grian will take him in? To use as bait, if nothing else. Grian knows how to be a good friend, anyhow—he’s been in circles where people just have no clue how to treat a Deaf person and just end up ignoring them. Grian’s heard Jimmy rant about far too many times to let it happen. Otherwise, he’d prefer being on his own.

Scott taps him on the arm, and Jimmy pulls himself out of his thoughts of the desert and isolation to look at his communicator, held in front of his face.

What are you talking about?

Jimmy doesn’t have an answer for that. He thought it was pretty clear.

He shrugs. Scott types something else out.

You’re staying. You’re my flower husband, I’m not just going to leave you.

Oh.

Jimmy doesn’t expect help. He doesn’t expect that everyone should be forced to work to make things easier for him, when it’s already fine for everybody else. They shouldn’t have to make exceptions just for him.

But Scott . . . Scott doesn’t care?

Scott’s already sitting beside Jimmy, but now he wraps his arm around him, presses gently on his shoulder until Jimmy lets his head fall onto Scott’s chest. It’s—it’s—

It’s warm, is what it is. Warm, and a little bit gritty with dirt but soft, and Scott smells like sweat and gunpowder and flowers, and his chest is vibrating under Jimmy’s temple as he speaks, and Jimmy. . . .

It’s really nice after the shellshock of the explosion, is all. Jimmy doesn’t think he can be blamed when a tear slips from the corner of his eye.

Scott lets him sit there as long as he likes, and it’s just really nice. He finds stability, he thinks, so that his weakest parts can stitch themselves together again after the disaster of today.

Geez, he can’t believe he died twice. . . .

“Guess we’d better get to work,” Jimmy finally says, after what is definitely way too much time of hugging Scott. “Erm, I can lip read all right? But I need you right in front of me and talking loudly. Otherwise, you can just message me.”

Scott lets Jimmy sit up, then helps him to stand, taking his hands in his own. Looking Jimmy square in the face, he speaks, loud enough that Jimmy can match some of the quiet sounds to the movements of his mouth.

“We’ve got this.”

Jimmy tries (and fails) to suppress his smile. “Yeah, we do,” he agrees. “We’ve got this.”

[mlobsters]

severance production design choice i'm still perplexed by. spent a not-insignificant amount of time staring at this parking lot shot looking for non-30+ year old cars. and that vw rabbit looks nearly as old as i am. mark in his downright modern 30 year old volvo. the cars really had me confused over the time period at the beginning of the series.

anyway, as ever, i don't look this stuff up and i'm sure there's a reason behind it but it's one of those things that takes me out of the story on the semi-regular.

[1000dactyls]

So I wanna know, you'd true and honest thoughts on THW I think I remember you saying you didn't want to talk about it? I'm so sorry for this ask, but I'm curious because so much of the fandom doesn't like it, and while I agree everyone sees to have different reasons

there is quite a bit i dont like about thw, but the two most primary reasons are a) the artistic direction and b) the narrative's betrayal of the core themes set up by the first movie

a lot has already been said about the artificial smoothness of httyd3's rendering -- the textural smoothness of the dragons and skin, for one -- but it's the botox injection valka and the other ladies seemed to receive that irritates me the most. coming off the heels of two other movies less hesitant to show signs of aging as a natural process, the flattening of their wrinkles and fat feels shallow to me.

IMHO, the unnatural smoothness of movie mimics the hollow feel the third movie's narrative has, lacking the history and depth of the events the characters have lived through and the impact that history has on the characters' physical appearance. the movie instead has a dreamy, hazy quality to it. which would be fine in most movies, but not for a franchise dedicated to the physicality of the characters (which was the whole point of the first movie, that hiccup (and toothless) was visually distinct from the rest of the cast)

so not only is thw ugly to look at compared to the other two movies, it's also a narrative shitshow pitted against the other two movies. like, setting aside the objective masterpiece that the first movie is, how does httyd2 end with "come hell or high water i will always jump after you when you fall" to httyd3's "nah man let's let you go". how did we get here???? by completely assassinating everyone's character

and it's just extremely frustrating because httyd1 was about overcoming differences; that message was the flesh and blood of the series, the franchise's beating heart. httyd1 navigates complicated generational trauma to cease endless bloodshed. httyd3... puts off that conflict into some however many centuries into the future. and then the last 5 minutes of the movie even don't get the departure RIGHT hello???

the only good thing about thw is that john powell got to flex his muscles and compose "once there were dragons" and bring me to tears in 5 minutes and 46 seconds

[thegoodthegrandandtheugly]

[personinthepalace]

Olympia & Anita - Odd Squad S2 // Junior Taskmaster S1

[heretherebedork]

Sir. SIR.

This is an office break room.

Oh, so they're making this show for @absolutebl. Got it, glad for it, thank you Korea.

[aleafinacup]

I’ve heard around on the ao3 subreddit about ai/bot comments trying to scam writers by promising art for their fics but jesus I didn’t realise how bad they were at their jobs 💀

The comment vs the actual text (chapter one) it’s referring to 💀 like if you’re going to quote a chunk of text at least try to get that part right lmao. This isn’t gonna make me switch off guest comments because I figure there’s still genuine ones out there, so I guess just take this post as a warning of something to look out for if you’re a writer yourself

[hyperpsychomaniac]

I was thinking of Gerda belting up machinery again.

[pokemon-cards-hourly]

[exasperatedoctopus]

Can’t believe that the first Star Trek episode ever created was just about a guy experiencing Chronic Captain Burnout while taunted by visions of horses and a beautiful woman

[delusionalblfan]

At this point my main goal is to see Boeing kissing every single person in OFTS. Thank you

[harveybwabbit92]

[R/n and Manny the maintenance YouPi are cleaning the SKIP office and check in on Shu who was staying in late looking at his 'Arc conspiracy wall'.]

Shu, to R/n and Manny: I've finally connected it! The reason why Yuma always disappears and Arc appears when a Kaiju shows up and that reason is because...

{R/n and Manny both lean in.]

R/n and Manny: Because?~

Shu, triumphantly: ...They're working together!

[R/n and Manny mentally go "oof" before nodding along with Shu's theory, like, he wasn't wrong but he wasn't right either.]

Shu, turns back to his wall: Now I just have to figure out how Yuma communicates with Arc...maybe telepathy? Can Yuma read thoughts? I'll have to test it...

*The next morning, Yuma gives Shu a cup of coffee.*

Shu, eyes Yuma suspiciously: How did you know I wanted coffee?

Yuma, gives him a look: Uh...'cause you always drink coffee?

Shu, still eyeing Yuma: Right...

[Shu, thoughts: I know your secret Yuma, I know you can hear me and I'm on to you...]

*Yuma meanwhile is creeped out by Shu silently staring at him and not blinking.*

Yuma, nervously backing out of the room: Okay, I'm gonna go now.

[unopenablebox]

listening to the new if books could kill is really weird as someone who was indeed a teen/tween in the Emergence of Social Media Era, in that like. actually me and my 50 pseudonymous close friends of a decade are doing quite well thank you. im glad you interviewed some teenagers to learn that they use online socializing tools for social interaction, which accordingly has the features of social interaction, but this is a fucking bizarre thing to listen to people explain to each other