#so the most logical reaction to this would be something along the lines of

[oldtvandcomics]

So the funny thing in I Saw the TV Glow is of course that in-universe, The Pink Opaque's ending must be weird AF. Like, we don't talk about it because it works just too well as a metaphor, but that teens' TV show absolutely did end with both main character getting buried alive and kind of left there.

Except that, of course, our world has got wildly popular TV shows with similar ending, too.

So, may I propose the mental image:

You are out here, living your life. It kind of sucks, like there is this thing that isn't quite right, but you don't know what it is, so you are kind of existing without any greater joys or passions, but what can one do. Then your old friend, whom you haven't seen in ten years, randomly shows up, looking somewhat hectic, and announce: "So, remember that old TV show, Blake's 7? Turns out, I am actually Blake. The Federation caught us and is currently mind washing us to think that all of this is real. You need to wake up, Avon."

I genuinely don't know what I would do in this situation. But the idea is so fucking funny.

[azulhood]

It all started because of a school project, technically two projects, while it wasn't a world ending threat they set of a change reaction that lead to startling discoveries.

Mr Lancer had given the class the task of looking through their pasts and finding an life changing event that helped shape them into the person that were today and writing about that event.

It was a ten page essay (they were allowed to go over that limit) the more details the better and if you had something from that event to show (such as photos or keepsakes or really anything) you were awarded extra credit.

Danny's choice of event was the school field trip to a nearby museum he went on when he was seven, the space exhibit they had was what sparked his love for the stars and kick-started his dreams of being an astronaut.

It wasn't like he had any other choice (he doubted mister Lancer would accept 'my death' as a good life changing event)

He knew that he had photos of the field trip somewhere with all the other photos taken throughout his life, he just had to find them.

And after digging through thousands of boxes and piles of discarded inventions he handled with care (in case they blew up) he found them tucked inside an old photo album covered in green stains that sat on top of a bookshelf.

Opening the book caused all the pictures to fall into his lap, it seems like his parents didn't get around to actually adding them to the book, Danny resigned himself to spending the rest of his day shifting through old photos.

It wasn't all bad though, he found pictures of when Sam still had blonde hair and wore pink and of that time Tucker wrote an 'I love you' on his parents cars with their keys and many other embarrassing photos.

A treasure trove of blackmail material.

He finally found the picture he was looking for.

All of the kids who are now students of Casper high stood in front of an old building each proudly holding up something they bought in the gift shop (Danny had bought a book on planets that had long ago fallen apart)

It was a normal photo.

And yet, something seemed off.

Sam and Tucker were there with him in between them, Dash was there too.

Along with Kwan, Mikey, Paulina, Valerie, and all the others.

And yet, something was missing.

Then it hit him.

Wes wasn't there.

Danny could've sworn that he had been on that trip, but the more he thought about it the less he was sure.

He couldn't actually remember Wes being there and Danny remembered nearly everything about that trip.

'Maybe he was sick or something?' It was the most logical thing he could think of to explain the other absence, that and his parents not wanting him to go for some reason.

Mystery solved he pushed it to the back of his mind , he had an essay to finish.

Still, it stuck with him.

-----------------------------

The next school project Lencer gave them was one with assigned partners.

Danny got Wes who, despite not being Sam or Tucker, was leagues better then Dash and he'd take that as a win.

Wes had insisted on studying at his house so he could, and Danny quotes "Keep an eye on you Fenton"

Danny could practically feel the hidden cameras burning a hole into him while he stood in front of the Weston's door, waiting for him to go ghost for whatever reason.

Jokes on him though, Danny asked all the ghosts to leave him along for this month with the promise of giving them a head start the next time they caused trouble, so really Wes was just wasting his time.

"This way." Wes said already heading inside without caring if Danny followed.

Being the first time he had ever been in Wes's home Danny looked at everything and anything.

It was a fairly normal home, not like Danny's which had an anti-ghost defense system or Sam's super rich house.

But more like Tuckers

One of the things that drew his attention was the pictures that lined the walls.

There were so many.

Some with Wes and his mom, some with just him, some with just his mom, and some with people Danny didn't recognise.

But there were no baby photos.

The only pictures Danny could find of a young Wes seemed to be from when he was eight? Nine?

And nothing before.

'Maybe they were put away in storage' Danny guessed, but it still made his brain itch.

He remembered looking at old school photos and not finding any sign of a young Wes at all, he didn't even remember Wes coming to school any time before the year Danny turned eight.

And in a small town where everyone knew everyone that really wasn't possible.

'Maybe they moved here and lost a lot of stuff' Which would explain a lot, well no harm in asking. "Did you loss a lot when you moved here?"

Wes stopped walking and turned around to give him a look that asked if he was insane. "I've lived here my whole life, Fenton."

Danny froze, that couldn't be right, he'd remember that.

Something was wrong.

---------------------------------

Tim Drake sat in front of the bat computer as the rest of his family patrolled.

He had one monitor displaying the other bats locations while all the other monitors were used to show him files, or rather the lack there of.

Wayne Enterprises had tournaments held for schools and the prize was an all express paid trip to Gotham and tour of WE and surrounding areas, Tim could think of way better prizes that weren't visiting the crime capital of the world but that wasn't the point.

What was the point was that every time there was a winner Tim preformed a routine background check on students and staff (and by routine he means learn their whole live story) just in case anyone happened to be trained assassins set to kill one of them, stranger things have happened.

Wes Weston was one such student whose background Tim had to check.

And he found nothing.

Sure, there were hospital and school documents from age eight and upwards, but other then that nothing.

There was no birth certificate, no evidence of him attending daycare, nothing.

It was as if Wes did not exist before he was eight years old.

And perhaps the most interesting thing.

Amy Weston was listed as Wes's biological mother, DNA even said as much, and yet Amy's medical file said that she had never been pregnant and also had no siblings that could've been Wes's parent.

And yet Wes existed, appearing one day as if he had always been there.

Was it cloning? Aliens? Magic? A changeling? Someone creating false information to hide the truth?

It was a mystery, and mysteries had always been Tim's Kryptonite.

[atrophiedemotion]

ivantill cafeteria scene analysis

keep in mind that this is fully just my personal opinion and interpretation of the scene okay cool

the cafeteria scene from round 6 has always been really interesting to me, and i've seen a lot of people take it different ways, so i just wanted to walk through my view of it because it's such a telling scene about their dynamic more recently than as kids

the scene starts with a shot of till during the round that looks to be from ivan's pov, showing us what he's seeing in the moment, and flashes back to one of ivan's memories from anakt.

considering the almost identical expressions till is wearing in both shots, it seems to be ivan thinking back to a time he saw till look the way he does in round 6- miserable, hopeless, defeated. like he's given up.

we then see ivan noticing till's apparent resignation and shitty mood (because of course he notices, it's his personal watching till time after all), then getting up to go bother him. i say 'bother him', and it definitely looks like that's what he's doing, but i don't think that's ivan's goal. i think ivan's goal is to comfort, or at least distract till.

despite their juvenile fights, we've never seen ivan actually want to cause till true harm. his lyrics in both black sorrow and cure are caring and reverent, making it apparent that ivan really does just love and care for him and just wants to be able to do things for till. this is furthered ofc by the whole post-club scene where ivan looks absolutely devastated seeing the state till is in.

i always reference back to my mirroring post bc it explains the way i imagine ivan's train of thought, and it applies here again. ivan does not know how to comfort till in a conventional way (probably for a few reasons; till is different from the other students, both in the way he acts and displays his emotions, and in ivan's opinion of him. till is special to ivan, he usually drops his mask around him so meaningless platitudes wouldn't be right) but he does know how to get till's attention on him and out of his own head.

all this being said- what ivan does next:

he swipes his hand across the cut on till's cheek. yeah, i know, definitely not what most people would consider 'comforting their friend' but that's what makes sense to ivan. 'how could i possibly distract him if he seems to ignore me most of the time?' (for now looking past the fact that till actually seems comfortable in ivan's quiet company, ivan's too single-focused to realize that)

and, well, i mean. he's right. till gets visibly disgruntled. he doesn't exactly look pissed as much as he looks caught the hell off guard, but it grabs his attention.

ivan, on the other hand, looks almost fond to me. i don't know, i just don't really think he looks smug even though i'm assuming that might be the general consensus. he almost seems a bit soft. to me, it looks like he's adoringly thinking, 'it worked. there, no time to be sad anymore, huh?' he probably is proud of himself for it, but not really in a selfish way.

till, of course, sees that it's ivan who's messing with him, and turns away.

i've also talked about this but at this age it really does seem like till's mindset when it comes to ivan is something along the lines of, 'oh, it's just ivan. he's fucking weird, that's just how he is' and more or less shrugs it off. he's used to ivan's "quirks" it seems.

this, till looking at ivan only to immediately look away, won't do. he only caught his attention for a few seconds, so i assume ivan's next logical move is to do something that will get an even bigger reaction. (ivan is a logical thinker, after all, at least in my perception of him)

so he. ya know. does that. which really seems like a great way to get himself punched, right? which honestly is also probably his plan. have till explode in anger, forget whatever happened for him to be injured in the first place, and ivan gets his undivided attention for a period of time. a win-win.

and you might be saying "oh, but couldn't ivan have just been doing that selfishly? we know his main goal is to get till to look at him." to which i say, yeah fair. i don't think this was done completely selflessly (i don't think anything ivan does is fully selfless but that's perhaps for another day) at all, he could've gone at it a different unconventional way if it was. but i think he probably sees it as mutually beneficial.

yes, it does seem like a way to show ivan wanting to keep till's eyes and attention on him. an example of how he seeks out till's attention no matter what, but the preceding shot of a hopeless till reminds ivan of this particular interaction for a reason.

there had to have been a motive behind what he did and why he did it then, and what we have to go off of for that is the first three shots. till wearing the same misery on two different occasions and ivan noticing. with that information, it's really not a stretch that this could be ivan's fucked up version of comfort.

[olderthannetfic]

There is something confusing to me about older queer people (which is to say, older than I am, at a relatively young 24 years old) who get mad at original fiction whose worldbuilding involves neopronouns. I'm hoping maybe, ONTF, since you've been in queer spaces a lot longer than I have, you can explain why people have such a negative reaction to the idea.

Basically, I'm working on a novel based that takes white-throated sparrow biology and uses it for building blocks in the same way A/B/O takes (now debunked) wolf science and used it for building blocks. This means there are essentially four genders, the two viewed as more intelligent (brown-haired men and women) and the two viewed as more physical (white-haired men and women). Those two groups then get further divided along the lines of 'women are better at making smart decisions under pressure' and 'men are better at staying home and defending the children, as God intended'.

So it seemed natural to me that this worldwide quaternary system would result in at least some languages having pronoun sets for each of the four options. Some languages in real life have more complicated pronoun systems than that, particularly ones where there's a bunch of formal and informal pronouns. It'd also help the reader keep track of who was a part of what group without my having to turn around and state people's coloration constantly. Yes, these people are human, just as humans in A/B/O are, but society is fundamentally very different. I'm not throwing this in to just complicate things or sound smart or something. It's here because my minoring in Anthropology and majoring in Linguistics taught me language usage reflects the needs and values of a people.

The writing group I'm a part of IRL is mostly queer, mostly 40+, with some cishet women who are also present and active writers. The writing group I'm a part of on DW is mostly DWRPers, in their 30's and up, though no older than 50, and entirely queer. I did not expect these to be groups that were uncomfortable with the idea of "different world, different pronouns".

Instead the reception has ranged from suggestions it's pretentious or overthinking things to requests I reconsider doing it. I've been informed this could be seen as mocking the real life queer people who go by pronouns other than she, he, or they. One person asked if this was went to be me "artificially justifying" nonbinary pronouns and implying I didn't find them valid in the real world. That was an awkward conversation, to say the least.

In reality I wasn't really thinking about real life people who use nonbinary pronouns when I was writing. I was just asking, "Logically, wouldn't it make sense for things to work very differently under a quarternary than it does under a modern European binary?" and following my brain along to its' conclusions as it processed that.

I have gotten zero negative feedback from my queer friends my age regarding this. So obviously, generation and the experiences informing a generational context are key, here. I'm just... still lost on how anyone finds this objectionable.

Help?

--

Ahaha. Oh god.

Well, as a reader of sff in the 90s, the first reaction I have to such things is "IS THERE A CONLANG AND A MAP?" Because, man, the conlang people were some of the most tedious motherfuckers I ever had to deal with in sff spaces.

But broadly... I think the reasons queer people get annoyed about this stuff boil down to a couple of big factors:

Disrespectful children who don't know history

Idiot old people harrumphing about "history" they clearly failed to pay attention to while it was going on in the first place

I personally hate being asked to use new words most of the time. A few bits of fandom slang I'll pick up at once, but I'm usually like "Why would I call it 'spirk'? We already have 'K/S'!" *shakes cane*

If you're American, they're your "roommate", not your "flatmate". No, I don't care how much more precise this foreign term is, you pretentious wanker. (But then I'll use 'wanker' because fandom adopted that years ago...)

So my reaction to being asked to say aloud any pronoun not in very frequent circulation in my offline life is "Urrrgh. Do I have to?"

However, the reality is that people have been messing around with pronouns in English since forever. Do you see 'heo' in Modern English? No, you do not! (Not that it was gender neutral, but the point is that even words as ancient as pronouns have changed quite a bit.) The early internet was full of pronoun stuff in MUDs and the like. You had a choice of a lot more than just three in a bunch of these. People besides men and women have always been in queer communities.

So some people like to cry about neopronouns being actually neo, and they're just wrong.

As for the why do you care part...

There is a nasty habit in contemporary queer spaces to act like gay rights issues are solved. Bisexuality? Passe! etc. Gays and lesbians finally got a little mainstream acceptance only to suddenly be treated like the worst of the establishment by the queer youth. How dare?!?! It's even more egregious with bisexuality where the focus of a bunch of queer activism finally swung that way in the 90s... only to be sharply cut off in the 00s.

There's a real "You already got yours. Where's mine?" vibe to some queer discourse today, and it's directed at people who never got theirs. It shows up in demands for mentorship by people who've barely had a chance to escape a rocky start and figure out who they are themselves. It shows up in yowling about this or that bit of queer media we finally got not being progressive because it's the wrong letter of the acronym.

None of which has a damn thing to do with what pronouns you use in your novel, obviously, but I think some unresolved embattled feelings are why some older queer people are very weird about pronouns.

Some of them are also doing the old person version of throwing the weirdos under the bus to placate the normies. Respectability politics became a term long before the behavior was rife on tumblr.

--

If someone really does find it pretentious, though, and not just as a cover for crying about nonbinary identities being fake, I suspect they just remember how 1970s SFF was full of privileged anthropology students misunderstanding kinship systems from elsewhere in the world and then trying to tell everyone how ~deep~ their extremely contrived novels based on them were.

I'm not saying your writing is like this or that every one of these old sff novels was either, but when I hear "anthropology student", I groan internally. It's an instinctive reaction. It's less about the real fields and more about the bevvy of dilettantes I've run into over the years who'll say they study those things but really want to talk my ear off about Joseph fucking Campbell or the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or something.

--

Those birds are a really cool source of inspiration. Like with A/B/O, the first thing I wonder is how queerness works in that context and how much people like to defy their designated roles.

Omegaverse started on porn logic, so "The one I say tops always tops!" makes sense. When it gets expanded to try to make it make logical sense as a whole world, I often enjoy it, but it can break down quickly if treated as biology is law. I don't know how often the birds veer off of their set patterns, but humans certainly would.

One place where I get a strong "Oh god, this again" feeling from people's plotbunnies is when they're trying to make up a sff society that strikes me as too rigid in a way that real humans aren't. I'll see people using fake wolf biology (not just for horny reasons) but never looking at what's going on with gender in contemporary Thailand or whatever. Like... Le Guin may have made sedoretus feel plausible, but nobody I've ever seen stanning the concept as something fandom should play with has. That's probably because Le Guin was using over-complicated social norms as a thing that breaks down and causes trouble, and "This should be the next A/B/O!" posts are treating it as something that actually works and is a good way to get the pair you don't ship separated while shipping poly.

"It'd also help the reader keep track of who was a part of what group without my having to turn around and state people's coloration constantly."

This, in particular, gives me that cold shudder of recognition from when Homestuck fandom was everywhere and everyone wanted to over-explain those stupid playing card suits and why I should care.

Your concept sounds neat, and I think a set of four pronouns could easily make sense there...

But I also think that if people need the pronouns to keep track of coloration, you haven't set up a system that feels organic enough or haven't given enough cues about how characters are treating each other or why. Use the pronouns too, but just keep that in mind. It's like the "m/m is hard because the pronouns don't tell me whose hand is where" problem. It's almost never actually a pronoun problem.

--

Anyone else have thoughts here?

[vickyvicarious]

Jonathan's decision to play along today was very difficult to make. But, in the end, it was the right move. He set aside his anger and impulse to rebel... perhaps as much or more out of fear rather than just logic, but we do see his reasoning and it makes sense.

And honestly, I think he pushed his luck nearly to the limit anyways. Look at how Dracula asked. First, he waited a few days after everything that went down with the vampire ladies, perhaps to see if Jonathan would bring up the topic. If Jonathan does, maybe he had plans to lie to him again, to gaslight him about either never sleeping outside of his room, or about Dracula finding him dreaming somewhere else and helping him back to his own bed. Still, Jonathan's reaction to such a lie could very easily force an end to all this pretending. But since he never brings it up at all, Dracula knows he can continue his game. In fact, Jonathan is proving to be a very resilient player, one who has just enough struggle in him to make it more interesting, without being too unmanageable or ever close to actually get away.

Dracula gives Jonathan this 'request' "in the suavest tones" - he's really emphasizing his charm here, being extra friendly as he tries to make Jonathan feel even worse. But then, contrary to what he's seen thus far, Jonathan hesitates.

I would fain have rebelled, but felt that in the present state of things it would be madness to quarrel openly with the Count whilst I am so absolutely in his power; and to refuse would be to excite his suspicion and to arouse his anger. He knows that I know too much, and that I must not live, lest I be dangerous to him; my only chance is to prolong my opportunities. Something may occur which will give me a chance to escape. I saw in his eyes something of that gathering wrath which was manifest when he hurled that fair woman from him. He explained to me that posts were few and uncertain, and that my writing now would ensure ease of mind to my friends; and he assured me with so much impressiveness that he would countermand the later letters, which would be held over at Bistritz until due time in case chance would admit of my prolonging my stay, that to oppose him would have been to create new suspicion.

I think he must have been sitting there making these arguments to himself in real time. Wrestling with his fear and his outrage and possibly losing most of his control over his expression and body language as he did so. And at first, this is fun for Dracula. He wants Jonathan to struggle like this. It's fun to watch. But then, the longer it goes on, the more real becomes the possibility that this will be Jonathan's breaking point. And if it is, if he outright says "no" even this once, then Dracula's entire game is ruined. He's just committed to wanting to keep Jonathan around for another full month. Jonathan passed the test with the other vampires. Dracula has been looking forward to this. How dare he spoil this -

Dracula's rage rises as he finds himself forces to make excuses and be convincing when he likely assumed he no longer needed to put in that much effort. Jonathan finally does agree, but he didn't do so right away. And it's a very fine line, because continuing to do this does in fact make him more interesting and fun in the long run, and thus perhaps allow him to live longer. Maybe after they separate for the evening (morning, being nocturnal) Dracula would actually look back on this moment with indulgent enjoyment. He pushed perhaps right up to the limit of what Dracula would tolerate, but he didn't quite cross it, so the game can continue. But at the same time, pushing like this (or rather, resisting being pushed before giving in) is extremely dangerous in the moment - because in the moment, there's still a chance Jonathan could cross the line. Dracula has a temper and he will take it out on Jonathan if he decides he's had enough.

It's that tightrope again. More of the same. But I just... love imagining this moment. Dracula's sickly-sweet smugness at the start, his utter confidence in his victory once again. And Jonathan - pausing. Saying nothing in response. Thinking it over, taking so long to do so, trying so hard to keep a neutral face but not fully succeeding, maybe keeping his head bowed so his expression can't be seen. Dracula's anger building along with almost a sort of desperation, as he lays out all this bullshit reasoning, maybe losing control of his own tone somewhat as he gets more aggressively vehement. The absolute tension rising, up and up right until the moment Jonathan looks up and agrees, when it suddenly dissipates. But the aftermath lingers, even in Dracula's victory. Even as Jonathan writes the three letters, one after another under Dracula's watchful eye. Dracula takes them from his hand, squeezes his shoulder in ostensible thanks, but such a clear threat. Jonathan's face twitching, a little spasm of fear and despair, at the contact.

It could be SUCH a good scene in an adaptation that emphasized the abusive dynamic here.

[sant-riley]

is it ok to request some headcannons with the team? if so, could you do a reader that’s covered in tattoos? like heavily tattooed. even their fingers. right? anyways, the reader is always covered during missions (like ghost level covered) and the team have subconsciously created this image of them under it all but haven’t really seen them until one day reader is wearing normal clothes and they’re like 🧍‍♀️ what? you have tattoos and like barely any skin 🧍‍♀️ IDK I JUST THOUGHT IT WOULD BE CUTE NVM THOUGH IF U DONT WANNA WRITE ❤️ NO ISSUE IF YOU DONT!

[Task force 141 and Laswell with reader who has a lot of tattoos)

A/N: I am not heavily tattooed yet but I did love this request sm soooo here this is :) Ty for the suggestion and I hope you enjoy!

They can’t really be blamed for not knowing about the tattoos, y’all are all covered typically in heavy gear and clothing and weapons most of the time. And they don’t question it when you’re covered up even more than usual bc yk, Ghost exists walking around in a Halloween costume 365 days a year. They’re used to it so they won’t prod.

Most task force members have tattoos of their own, it’s not a strange concept but they just assume you have none, they see you covered up and that’s that.

But then one day, let’s say there’s a mission and you guys get fucking d r e n c h e d in water, and you’re in a cold climate so leaving your clothes on is not an option. They need to dry by the fire and you cannot catch hypothermia.

Whatever reason you cover up, you know it’s only logical so you shyly take off your gear, quickly going by the fire while the guys quietly stare at your figure, staring at the ink decorating your body. Yes you’re beautiful and yes it’s their first time seeing so much of your skin but is that a fucking narwhal on your arm-

You have to snap at them to quit their staring bc you think they’re only staring at your chest or at your underwear but soap just blurts out “YOU ‘AVE TATTOOS?” And everyone else nods.

~

Individual reactions:

Ghost:

Ghost fucking loves it so much, he could stare at your tattoos for hours on end. He rolls up his sleeves to show you the ones decorating his forearms, letting you trace your fingers over the skull and withholding a shudder.

He immediately brings his hand up and traces yours back, asking questions about them and how long they took with you sitting in the chair, grunting in response as he zones out.

Asks why you cover them up as often as you do but when you send him that look he quickly says never mind.

Soap:

He immediately asks you about the meaning (if you have any for them). He admires them and thinks they make you look beautiful and badass.

He also will take a marker and draw ones on your empty bits of skin and color any grayscale tattoos you have.

If you were to ever get one of his doodles or drawings tattooed he would probably tear up on the spot. Also maybe kiss you stupid bc wow you have something from him on your skin forever and he loves you sm.

Would design y’all matching pieces, in your line of work tomorrow isn’t guaranteed so if you’re down, he’ll make the appointment for you both.

Price:

I personally don’t think Price has tattoos or would ever get any bc he doesn't care for them but he has an appreciation for yours.

Everyone would think he would be the type to talk down on them but all he said to you was “do you like ‘em? You do? Then why the fuck would I care?”

In between breaks, he’ll casually ask if you got any new ones and that he’d like to see them.

Gaz:

Gaz doesn’t have any but that’s just because he can’t fully decide on what he’d get, he’s young like you and cannot handle the commitment.

Therefore he lives by you and eagerly encourages all your ink and will always go with you to your tattoo session if he’s free.

He’s the best kind of person to have come along esp for long sessions bc he’ll go get you food, drinks, etc while he sits with you.

He always says he’s gonna get one when he goes with but always said never mind lmao.

Bonus <3 Laswell:

Now she's no stranger to ink, she's not covered up but she does have a matching tattoos with her wife and a few small patches of her wedding flowers on her.

She absolutely adores your ink and will not hesitate to defend you and it if someone were to disrespect you bc of what you've done with YOUR body.

She's a mom what can I say, she knows her authority and won't be shy to use it.

Taglist:

@devilsfoodcake22 @simon-rileys-princess

@stupid-ninja @milkmily

@lune-la-chanson @tamayakii

@teacupcollector @sweet-as-an-angel

@perilous-pasta @ihatethisappsomuchitpains

@marsbar127xx @baddump

@xncasi @king-cookiex

@palomaxaxaxa @amatchasky @wolfyland07 @diejager

@hailstrum18 @pretty-little-bunny382728 @mzfandom @solarslushee @areislol

@cluelessyasmin @sesshomaruwaifu @chaos-unchecked @kalamataolivesssss @arunasmisfortune @tbrfic

[atla-confessions]

I watched ATLA for the first time four months ago and became a fan because of the fascinating element of being able to control parts of nature but even more than that, because the story spoke about Genocide and war in an interesting way. I stumbled upon a tweet a couple days ago that went along the lines of: watching Avatar keeps your heart pure and something like that. Something about that statement rubbed me off the wrong way for some reason. It only hit me a few hours go why. ATLA is a great show but it's so Overrated to an annoying degree. Only people who reach that degree and feel that irritation are the ones who realize that it's ultimately a show written by western people for their western kids. And so everything falls into place. I began to understand why Hama's story was written that way, portrayed as a bad person instead of a captive that was taken from her home and left to rot away. I understand why Katara's trauma is seen as annoying by a large margin of the fandom, instead of a child that lost her mother to war and is incapable of forgiving and forgetting because there was no time for that amidst trying to survive, she's seen as an annoying girl who brings up her mother every chance she could, as if that's not right? And I understand that there's a level of sexism and misogyny for this reaction because the story not only shoves the pain and struggle of Zuko from and center for everyone to see and feel bad for, it also encourages the audience to sympathize and root for him. Which I it's understandable to me why he's the most popular character, even more than Aang, the main character and the literal survivor of a genocide, because to western children, the main target of the story, it's logical to relate to the character that suffers from parental abuse much more than the character that lost his entire people not just parents. And this understanding makes it easy for me to see why Aang's trauma wasn't written as a main focus alongside him needing to become the hero of the story, his second trauma, because that would make him too sympathetic that it would take focus from Zuko and it would not be a stellar character development for the latter if the former is actually struggling to uphold the teachings of his culture of letting go because he's just a child with the fate of the wild on his shoulder and it's hard and unfair but he has no time to be sad but he can't not be sad.

At the end of the day, when you view something as an outsider, you understand why it's loved and adored whether exaggerated or not, positively and negatively. I love ATLA for its uniqueness because every story is, but I dislike how it's written for a specific group of people yet deemed universally perfect.

X

[dellalyra]

Hello! Goodmorning/afternoon/evening! This is my first time sending a request to someone here in this app and i hope i'm doing it right:')) AGHGHH I'M NERVOUSS. But, i've always loved your family formations au and i always anticipate new chapters of it^^

For the past few hours i've been having brainrots of Itafushi and i miss them so much:'))

I'd like to see Megumi's reaction at Ozawa's confession abt Yuji in that restaurant. Would he be jealous or akward? Like, imagine him getting a bit shy to tell her Yuji and him are dating😖

You could write this when you're in the mood to write ff again^_^

I just love you and your stories so much^^

𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗻𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗮 𝗸𝘂𝗴𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗸𝗶’𝘀 𝘀𝗰𝗵���𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 - ꜰᴀᴍɪʟʏ ꜰᴏʀᴍᴀᴛɪᴏɴꜱ ʙᴏɴᴜꜱ

pixie says: this was just what i needed - some fluff and sweetness and itafushi in family formations goodness, ily nonnie <3

Megumi couldn’t help but scowl at a smirking Nobara.

She was seated beside him - both across from the tall, pretty brunette smiling sheepishly at them both.

“So, Fushiguro, you’re closest with Itadori. Does he have a girlfriend?” She said, arched eyebrow raised.

Little shit-stirrer.

He should have known it would be something like this when Ijichi turned the car around at her behest - she lived for the drama. Nobara’s logic probably went something along the lines of: oh, why tell this girl my best friend has a boyfriend when I could get his boyfriend here instead?

“I think you’d know best - considering how close you guys are, and how much time you spend together - does he have any photos of a girlfriend in his room? You seem to spend a lot of time in there.” Her pale pink nails drum on the table.

He tries to come up with a sharp retort - but flusters at Kugisaki’s insinuation.

He’s not quite sure how to respond.

He’s not exactly the type to say “Oh, Itadori? The boy I’ve been in love with for months? The boy who had his arm wrapped around my waist when I woke up this morning? Sorry, BITCH, he’s taken.”

Plus - the B-word (boyfriend, not bitch) had never come up. The revelation of mutual romantic interest was only several weeks old - Megumi hadn’t though of a label until now, it hadn’t seemed necessary.

So - what he settled on had Kugisaki snorting.

“No. Itadori doesn’t have a girlfriend.” H

He sure as shit wasn’t going to give this nightmare classmate beside him the satisfaction of seeing what she wants to see.

Jealousy.

Ozawa was pretty, very pretty in fact. Dainty features with a fantastic physique - pretty much exactly Itadori’s type in a person. Sure, he was tall too - and a lean physique came with the job as a sorcerer. He had delicate features too. Itadori said he loved his eyes - so that’s a point in his corner. He’s not sure if he has the big butt Itadori said he likes, but it’s gotta at least be toned from all the running he does with the dogs.

Ozawa however, she was soft. Smoother around the edges. No sullen nature or manical frenzies, no shadows (Ten or otherwise). Maybe, Yuuji would prefer…

No. Fushiguro Megumi was absolutely not going to allow that train of thought. He puts a pin in it by imagining what his mom and dad would say.

“Megumi! You are the son of the world’s strongest sorcerer, and underneath layers of sullen ‘oh I’m a grumpy teenager and I like weezer’ is a very sweet baby boy!” Says imaginary Gojo. Annoying even in fiction.

“You stop that right now young man! Do we need to do our morning affirmations? ‘Toru! Get me the mirror!” Imaginary Y/N announces.

During the time he zoned out - he hadn’t noticed Nobara making a phone call.

That was, until a large figure stood at the table.

“Kugisaki? What do you want?” His head snaps up - when the hell did Yuuji get here?

Ozawa was staring up at him with stars in her eyes.

Truth was, he couldn’t blame her. When Yuuji walked into the room - it always felt like the sun had come out on a rainy day, banishing all the cold and damp. The eternal warmth of his presence permeated through to even the most frigid parts of a persons soul until they could no longer imagine a world without Itadori. His smile was wide as he greeted Kugisaki, and his honey brown eyes looked like home.

Plus - Yuuji had always been toned - since he first saw him on the athletics field of his school he could easily see that, but the past (almost) year of sorcery training had filled him out even further. Biceps straining against the seams of his uniform - holding on for dear life (Yuuji refused to get a new uniform, he said the fact that Gojo-sensei designed it for him made him happy), plus - he’d grown too. Now standing at only an inch or two smaller than Megumi. Nobara had dragged him to her hairdresser too, insisting on a proper haircut because in her words ‘you might not look as bad if you don’t cut your hair with a kitchen scissors.” Megumi knew she just liked spending time with him, but he’d let her pretend.

Fuck, he loved that boy.

Silly, selfless, beautiful and brave boy.

Yuuji’s head turned to the other side of the table, eyes looking straight at Ozawa. Even Megumi - in all his possessiveness - hoped he’d recognise the girl.

“Oh, hey Ozawa!”

Thank every potential god.

“Hello, Itadori-kun.”

“It’s so good to see you! How have you been? Why are you in Tokyo? I see you’ve met my boyfriend, Megumi!” He rattles off as he squishes in beside Megumi, slipping an arm around his waist and ignoring a protesting Nobara.

Wait -

Boyfriend?

He introduced him as his boyfriend.

He smiled to himself. How very Yuuji - he didn’t even ask, didn’t need to. He was his, completely.

Who needs jealousy when you’ve got a boy like this?

“O-oh, boyfriend? Oh no - I’m very sorry, Fushiguro. I meant no offence.” Ozawa floundered.

Yuuji looked very confused.

Megumi just shrugged and nodded at the girl, muttering that it’s fine and she didn’t know - adding in the Kugisaki was a shit-stirrer.

Yuuji still looked confused. Megumi squeezed his hand under the table three times, a signal he’d copied from Y/N and Gojo. 3 squeezes means I love you, 4 means I love you too. He smiled at the table when he got 4 squeezes back.

Ozawa and Itadori caught up for a while, reminiscing about old times until eventually it was time to go, signalled by Yuuji forgetting his own strength and pulling Megumi by the hand out of the booth and rambling about Popcorn and Human Earthworms.

Megumi nodded, agreeing to go.

The things he did for this boy.

“You coming, Kugisaki?” Yuuji asks as they stand from the table.

“I’ll catch up with you guys.” She says, shooing them away.

“Okay! Bye Ozawa! It was really nice to see you!” Yuuji says, waving as he walked away.

Once they were sat in the movie theatre, Megumi looked at Yuuji.

He felt really grateful.

So, his long fingers found purchase on his boyfriends chin, turning his face toward him and pressing a soft kiss to his lips.

“Eh? What was that for?” Yuuji says, smiling and holding the hand.

“Can’t I kiss my boyfriend without the third degree?” Megumi smirked, and rejoiced in the flustered Yuuji.

“Of course you can! Here, do it again! So I can show you how okay it is!” Yuuji said, hair threading in Megumi’s thick black locks, and kissing him deeper.

They remained that way, soft kisses passing back and forth whilst the trailers played until a gagging sound came from beside them.

“Get a room, fucking hell. I’d expected more of you, Fushiguro.” Groaned the freshly arrived Kugisaki.

“Go to hell.”

“Shut up, ‘Bara!” Yuuji retorted.

“Where were you, anyway? Movies about to start.” Megumi asks, settling in with Yuuji’s arm around his shoulder.

“Exercising the power of my unending rizz. Wasn’t letting Ozawa leave the diner without a date for next weekend now, was I?” She smirked, wiggling her phone displaying the other girls Instagram.

“What about Zen’in? Are you suddenly not crazy about her?” Fushiguro questions.

“Well - a little jealousy never hurt anyone did it? Plus, Ozawa knows it’s for the pursuit of a certain girlboss martial artist - I reintroduce her to Yuuji, she helps me get Maki.” She shrugs, stealing a handful of popcorn.

“Why are you the way that you are?” Was all the two boys had to say in response to their cackling best friend.

Megumi had never been more glad that the King of Curses was the only complication in his relationship.

[ultimate-marysue]

Seeing Alice try to explain to Sam and Celia what happened and being unable to come up with a rational explanation despite trying with all her might reminds me more of John confessing that he believes the statements than it does the Martin-Prentiss incident.

You can't truly say there's something supernatural in TMA until the Jane Prentiss attack/Michael. That's when the audience and most of the cast say "got it, it truly is supernatural". Obviously as the audience of a horror podcast you were already pretty sure of it, but still. There's enough "it was actually aliens/the government" twist to be aware off.

In Tmagp things are different from the start, we don't have just one pov, we're more like a semi omniscient voyeur. We know the horrors are real because we listened to TMA (we may not know if it's the same horrors though). But not only that, several of our main cast already believed in the supernatural to begin with.

Sam kept asking Alice if she thought the incidents were real

Celia has never tried to hide that she believes they absolutely are

Colin is convinced something really weird/paranormal is happening

Gwen probably wasn't sold in the beginning but very soon she found out they are, in fact, very real

Lena Knew they were real

Alice was the only skeptical by episode 10. John was still going strong in the whole "there is no such thing as supernatural entities" by episode 39. And not only him. We only have his pov, but pretty much no one was talking(out loud) about paranormal things being real until they had a personal experience down the line. By the time John confesses he's not a real skeptic, both the audience and the rest of the characters know the supernatural is real. Meanwhile in protocol Alice is the only one holding the "nope, don't think about it" front.

Cue episode 15-16. Despite her best attempts at rationalizing what happened she can't find a logical explanation. She is reacting the way any normal, sane, human being would to a paranormal encounter. And the thing is, if this was the institute, her coworkers reaction would have ranged from "I'm going to go along with your story so you can calm down and later we can find out what really happened" to "well that couldn't have happened because ghosts aren't real".

But instead she gets Samama "hmmm this puter telling me a storytime sounds really compelling" Khalid and Celia "I'm from a different dimension that got overrun by the horrors" Ripley. And now that the last bastion for skepticism in the OIAR has fallen there's no reason to pretend. There's no image of professionalism to uphold. To Sam and Celia, Alice admitting to something like that is all the proof they need. It's confirmation bias from the last person that would want to confirm your bias so it must be true.

Honestly, I can't wait to see how this turns out. I wouldn't be surprised if Alice tries to convince herself she hallucinated the whole thing and then an incident comes in with eerily similar details...I just can't wait. I'm a sucker for skeptical characters having to confront something real.

[mads-is-tired]

Generation Loss Episode Three was Scripted, a short analytical commentary

I don't think Ranboo was entirely in control in episode 3 like we're lead to believe.

I’m obsessed with the set up of “episode three was also scripted by showfall”. Episode one follows a clear plot, there's a few glitches but for the most part you get the vibe that this is what a showfall show usually is. The second episode has more glitches, giving the audience more chances to see “the real gl!Ranboo” and his reactions to the Horrors, before being shoved deeper into the mind control and turning into an NPC in those last bits from the museum onwards. It ends with Hetch breaking through the show and releasing gl!Ranboo. Not completely though, but the audience wouldn’t know that. We are taught to assume from the glitches that when the mask lights are off or flashing, gl!Ranboo is (mostly) in control. So why would we question that now? The lights aren’t even flashing, they’re off. They have a genuine reaction that anyone would have after suddenly becoming aware of themselves in a giant mall. But gl!Ranboo was still under control. Showfall seems to typically control people with accessories, and while that's not always true, the mask is still on him, lights or no lights. 

(i'm putting the rest under the cut because this is over 1000 words and I don't want to be a menace to my mutuals who don't follow genloss)

Ranboo stated that every choice gl!Ranboo makes in the finale was the wrong choice. Saving gl!Charlie, steering gl!Charlie away from the axe, trusting Hetch, choosing the wrong code, walking to the wrong exit, the list goes on.

Charlie has been in every episode. There are theories of him being “Showfalls Favourite”, maybe this is true, or maybe he’s a fan favourite? Maybe the show was set up for Ranboo to find him, and feel compelled to release him from the mind control. Having someone with the main character also prompts dialogue, which we wouldn’t have gotten if Ranboo was by themselves. 

The fateful words “can you run with that?” causes multiple problems for these characters when Ranboo steers Charlie away from the axe. If he had it, they would have gotten out. To me, the most logical explanation is that Showfall could not allow them to escape before Hetch’s grand plan was executed. On one hand, why couldn’t they just have Charlie not pick it up in the first place? Maybe they did actually release Charlie from being mind controlled (but not Ranboo) so his reactions felt real. Why have the axe in the room at all? I don’t have a good explanation for that. But Ranboo saw the TV monster/security, he saw what it did to the employee and Sneeg, why would you risk not having an axe, even if you thought it might slow you down a bit?

After Hetch “died”, he gave instructions to the button. The ratio turns to cinematic. The cameras are no longer being controlled by drones, it’s like a movie. The camera men are no longer acknowledged. Ranboo goes into an almost trance, stabbing the first employee he sees. While I recall Ranboo mentioning that gl!Ranboo was angry at everything and wanted to avenge his friend (or something along those lines), the cinematography from the view’s POV, and just the ‘trace’ full stop feels like a driving point to the plot. This also brings me to the wires that bleed from the employee. I believe that gl!Ranboo’s actions have been influenced by Showfall up until Hetch’s scene, but it was still Ranboo. Now, as the ratio changes, Showfall are back in control. Their filter is back up. The employee we see mauled by security earlier was bleeding, the one Ranboo stabs is wires. I do enjoy the theory that employees who try to escape or try to help cast members escape are killed and filled with wires, as well as the theory that the longer they work for Showfall, the less human they become. It could be any one of these theories, but its definitely important due to the emphasis put on it. 

Charlie’s last moments were spent trying to get Ranboo out, the man was getting gutted and torn to shreds, possibly having wires shoved inside him, and he manages to find the strength to stop screaming in pain and point towards the button. I may be reading into this too much, it's a very plausible scene and it does fall inline with the famous last words trope. I may be reading into all of it too much, as many of these elements could just be creative choices with no real plot behind them, particularly the ratio change. 

Another thing I’ve thought of while writing this, security seems to hang around after its killed. 

We see it over Sneeg’s body, however it must have been there for a while. Ranboo and Charlie were out in the open in the mall, not too far away, surely Sneeg’s screams would have echoed throughout the space, suggesting that he died before they were close enough for them to hear it. Security was also hovering over Charlie, while the other employees were chasing after Ranboo, which you would assume was security’s job. Both of these scenes goes back to that theory of security (re)wiring and reprogramming the employees and cast members. This brings me hope that Charlie and Sneeg aren’t dead, just reprogrammed. But then this goes back to my other post about Ranboo saving Charlie was the reason he died, and the parallel between Ranboo’s choice and the audience's final choice. What's the better outcome? Becoming/remaining a cast member with Showfall Media for as long as they want you to entertain for them, living under mind control for entire lifetimes, or death, right here, right now. The audience, and Ranboo, decided the latter was a better fate. 

As of the last scene with the box, I'm not sure if thats gl!Ranboo in total control or not. According to Ranboo, it is, and Showfall are even putting his memories back. It would make sense he was in control, maybe Showfall were just lucky their 'hero' had so much emotion behind him.

To summarise, there are many details that indicate gl!Ranboo was not in total control in episode three like we are led to believe. We are trusting Hetch just as Ranboo did, and look where that got them.

feel free to add to this in replies, reblogs, tags, whatever! I'd love to hear your thoughts, whether you agree with me or not

[unsweetingtea]

I remember a little bit ago there was this image of Shadow crossing his arms and people were making fun of how he did it.

Like this:

(He seems to do this in almost every universe lmao.)

People thought it was funny how it was almost like he was hugging himself, and drew fanart of it blah blah blah all that meme stuff.

I’m not making fun of anyone who did that, I enjoyed it myself, I just had a thought recently of why he may do this; maybe even a logical answer.

It’s gonna be quite the explanation because it has something to do with what I personally learned, so you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to!

Explanation under the cut! ⬇️

Back in my first year of college, my seminar teacher hired a martial arts coach to teach us a few basic moves and how to keep your guard.

This was a coach that he practically grew up with. I mean, my seminar teacher is SMART. A black belt, can speak 4 languages, good in chem and maths, this guy is a legend. Students respected him deeply, even if his homework was bullsh💩t. So, we trusted that the coach knew what he was doing because our teacher trusted him with us.

Another thing is that sometimes when us humans don’t know what to do with ourselves; like what to do with our arms; we cross them. Like how Sonic does it:

It just gives us something to do so we don’t look awkward. It’s not that we’re distracted or bored, it’s just some people (like me) feel like we need to do something to not look like a lost puppy, even if no one really cares.

As you can imagine, as we were listening to this coach talk, most of us actually had our arms crossed.

He was in the middle of talking before he let out a scream. The kind of scream that was meant to scare you, like “something, something, something—BAH!”

Of course, we were startled at this, and our immediate reaction was to quickly unfold our arms to protect ourselves. (Most of us at least, some just flinched back with the look of “😟”.)

Our teacher chuckled at us because he was not surprised at all, like he knew this was gonna happen.

The coach smirked at us and said something along the lines of, “That brings me to my next point!”

He told us that one of the rules of defense is to not tangle your arms like how Sonic does. He said that if we really needed or wanted to fold our arms; to put them on top of each other. Like you’re giving yourself a hug. Like how Shadow does it. That way, if there is an unexpected attack, your arms aren’t tangled within each other and you can quickly block or dodge your way out of the situation.

Frankly, even if you tangle your arms together, it’s not that hard to get them loose. But imagine the panic you’d feel when something or someone comes out of nowhere to attack you and you don’t expect it. It’s an extra second you waste of defending yourself before it’s too late.

Moral of the story, I think Shadow fold his arms like that is because it’s a self defense tactic. If someone or something were to attack out of no where, he would be ready. He’s always ready.

I’d also like to point out how I love the comparison between how Sonic crosses his arms verses how Shadow does.

Sonic is more laid back and relaxed while Shadow is on guard. We all know this, and their body language proves it. I love that 😄

I didn’t know if most people knew this, but I wanted to put out my take on things 🫶🏻

[queenofbaws]

Hi~! May I ask number 1,17,20,25 and 26? Thank you!=D

hehehe well hello yourself!!! ;)c and thank YOU for the ask!

1. What character do you think you would be most like if you were thrusted into a situation like this?

chris. chrischrischrischrischris. and i'm not even just talking about the constantly joking/living in denial about everything happening (though that would 100% be the case), but like. the immediately getting horribly injured the second i step outside part too. i would just fully, fully, FULLY be an even MORE physically inept version of chris 😔

17. What are your favorite quotes from the game?

my #1 is, was, and will always be "that scared the blue outta my jeans!" i don't know why. there are so many great lines in the game, but something about that one just *chefs kiss* speaks to my very soul.

(very close follow ups are "no one makes fun of me" "not to your face" "wh?!" and "you couldn't buy a loaf of moldy bread with your skanky ass.")

20. Were there any moments that really shocked you?

BASEMENT GUN SCENE BASEMENT GUN SCENE BASEMENT GUN SCENE

not that it happens, let me clarify - i think the fact that seeing emily's bite triggers that reaction in everyone makes perfect sense, that's basic horror movie logic babyyyyy - but that mike can actually DO IT. just. yowza.

also???? genuinely???? the first time we see the monster(s), i like. had to get up and walk away from the game for a hot second. asldkfjalskdjf i dont know how i hadn't been spoiled for it since i came into the fandom so late, but i HADN'T, and so when it happened, i just. absolutely lost my mind. ABSOLUTELY. LOST. MY MIND.

25. Were you surprised by who the psycho was or did you know all along?

i was. so surprised. again, DON'T KNOW HOW I WASN'T SPOILED FOR THIS, as someone who came into the fandom years late, but like????? i had no idea. i did not see it coming. @malum--in--se will tell you. she'll tell you. SHE caught on IMMEDIATELY, but me? lil' ol' me????? oh i screamed.

26. Did you like the Stranger?

no.

...................................i love him 🥺 i've said it before and i'll say it again: if i had been a part of the fandom in its heyday, i would've been a jack fiddler rp blog and y'all just would've had to DEAL with me. i love that strange cigar-smoking hermit man. i love him with every fiber of my being. give me an ending where i can save HIM, supermassive 😤

[alpaca-clouds]

On Writing Healing (Physically and Mentally)

Last day of my "I complain about certain things I notice in a lot of writing" week. And last thing that kinda annoys me (well, not the last, but the last I will speak about this week) is how healing is portrayed in a lot of media. Or rather... well, how it isn't portrayed.

Because, let's face it: Physical healing is very rarely addressed in media. With this I mean... Well, usually media kinda tends to either just handwave the kinds of injuries our heroes should have. I mean, in a lot of media that is very action heavy, you can go there with someone working in trauma medicine, and they will tell you the many ways in which this action hero or heroine by now would already be dead, or at the very least bound to bed rest for weeks. But at most they have a few bruises and scratches, that look dramatic, but generally will not hinder them.

When a hero in media gets actually injured, this often happens at the very end of a fight, and either the story ends with "well, he was very injured, but he would make a recovery soon enough" with us never really having to see the character recovering, or there might be an epilogue being set after the character has already recovered. And of course this kind of recovery tends to usually be perfect. People do not have chronic pain issues or anything from any physical trauma they have gone through during their plot. There is no tinitus from having stood to close to explosions or having been present in shoot outs.

And of course, there is rarely ever a case where a character has an injury that ends up with them permanently disabled, even if it would be realistic for the kind of stuff they have experienced. Hell, even if something like that happened (like with "Rhodey" in the MCU), this will often still be handwaved or magically/technically corrected.

In reality, physical healing is often a slow and hard thing. Even if you heal completely (something that is just never guaranteed - even if it is a simple break of a finger bone) you might have a longer journey in front of you than you expect. Not always does healing work out perfectly.

It is this, that also gives me some pause in terms of magical healing abilities. Because... Look, if something heals slowly and does not heal perfectly, you can intervene. When you heal it within minutes/hours something that heals badly might leave you with much larger issues along the line. But that is something we never see. And I am kinda annoyed by that. It would be such an interesting plot point.

Or on the other hand: If magical healing is perfect always, what does this do for people who get hurt and healed a lot. Be it this one fighter who ends every day with broken bones and stab wounds, or - let's face it - someone who in that world might cater then to sadists and stuff as a form of sex worker? How would those people even relate to pain if their minds learn that injuries are nothing to worry about? Do their bodies maybe stop to show self-defense reflexes? (For those who read my Tav stories know that it is something I explore with him a lot. He was tortured and healed a lot as a kid, and because of it he does no longer show normal reactions to pain, coming across as inhuman because of it. He just no longer recognizes realistically lethal wounds as such, because he is so used to magic healing.)

And the same goes double with mental healing and healing from trauma. I kinda spoke about this two days ago, so I will not go into it too much.

Often in media trauma exists to have "a point". It basically builds towards the carthasis of a story, when the character will have this great teary recognition and then they get over their trauma and if it is fantasy they will probably get a new power to go along with it. Hurray!

And of course, the kind of trauma that the characters would have logically acquired during the plot of whatever story never really gets addressed, because usually the story will frame it as a positive experience.

I always found this so funny in regards to my original fandom - Digimon. You have those 10yo kids in a world of monsters, where they are in life threatening situations every other day with no refuge. Where they see other die, and things destroyed and what not. And the show goes: "Isn't this a good driver of character development?!" Which, like... Don't get me wrong. I love it. I love this show. I love the big emotional punches it does. But if I look at it realistically, of course... Those kids need a fucking good therapist, don't they?

And of course you can basically put in every scifi, fantasy or action story in here, as well. Usually there is nothing that involves action and epicness where the characters are not in at least one situation that would give them some PTSD. If not a prolonged situation that might lead to CPTSD.

And this does not get acknowledged in any way most of the time. And if it gets acknowledged, the healing for it gets skipped over as well.

Again, I will point back at the Wednesday blog. The messiness of mental healing is just not portrayed. The way how there are good days and bad days. Or how at times people healing from trauma will be massive assholes to the people around them, which is not fully their fault - because it is the trauma talking in the end - but it never really gets shown. Again: It is why I love Bojack Horseman so much. Because it shows this so well in a way that I rarely ever saw in media.

Generally... I just would love to see a lot more stories about healing. About the different kinds of healing, too. Because people are different - in both body and "soul". And because they are different, not two people will heal fully the same way. And I just would love to see more of that.

I mean, heck. That is half the reason why I write fics. Because I love to explore this topic so much. :P

[xuer]

kind eyes extended notes

for kind eyes on ao3

be prepared for the yap fest. please read this after the fic because there are spoilers.

1)

first of all, I wrote this fic very out of order because of several reasons. one, because my caffeine-addled brain couldn't string together a cohesive story or outline before it was begging me to put something down, and two, because I took a little bit of creative liberty with my characterization of oscar, which leads me into…

2)

oscar is usually a really analytical and cool/collected guy, very logical and realistic, but sometimes he just can't think around lando. he's in romantic/platonic love (reader's choice!), your honor. he never lets his emotions get the best of him, so when they do he has no idea how to handle it and can't even recognize it until hourssss later. his thoughts are a mess and he needs a bit of time to even begin to process what happened. when lando's in the vicinity, he's even more scattered. he's struggling to catch up, really, and he's trying desperately to read the social cues that lando is usually so open with but is kind of on and off with this time around.

he's also obsessed with lando's eyes. I mean OBSESSED. which, me too, I kind of projected hard on this part, but it shows through the fic because oscar is like, "lando look at me!" "lando please show me your eyes" "lando pay attention to me, don't avoid me" yada yada yada. it stems from lando being the kind of person where you can usually tell exactly how he's feeling. he doesn't shy away from showing his emotions on camera or in front of other people, even if they're very very ugly to look at. we kind of saw the peak of this in austria, where lando didn't mince his words AT ALL after the race despite knowing the backlash he would get (this kid will give me a stress induced heart attack one day I swear). we've seen his ups and downs, his high after scoring pole in barcelona and his crushing low after losing it, his fury after the on-track incident at the red bull ring, to his… honestly I want to say slow and steady loss of hope after silverstone. he still gives his everything in every race, he's still determined to go out there and do the best he can, but like you can tell the difference in his reaction after he got pole in spain vs in hungary - there was a very big difference and a lack of unfiltered excitement this time around. he knows what it's like to win and to be so so close to a win he can feel himself lose it. lando feels everything so strongly, and after so many disappointments and close calls he's kind of learned to protect himself in this way. going into budapest, he still expected and wanted to win, but his confidence has definitely taken a hit. oh my god this turned into a lando character analysis I'm so sorry let me cut it short and just say his eyes are so expressive and after hungary he was very subdued and oscar's internal lando alarm sounded and was like "show me your eyes!" "why won't you show me your eyes!" "even when you look at me I can't tell what you're thinking anymore something is wrong!!!" until lando does something very obvious with his face like smile at him. oscar you silly boy.

all this just to say in this fic oscar's just a bit of a dunce, and I mean that in the most affectionate, loving way possible. he doesn't know the full story getting out of the car (neither of them do) and all he cares about is if lando is mad at him, but he can't even admit that to himself so he just feels like a crazy person whenever it looks like lando might be upset and he doesn't even understand why. every bit about the dread he feels, the lightheadedness, nausea, feeling cold, etc. that's all his physical and visceral reactions to lando not looking happy, to him being scared his relationship with lando won't survive this. along the same lines, the pressure in his stomach easing up, the warmth he feels, being able to breathe and think (relatively) normally again, those are all reactions to him seeing lando react or interact with him positively. I'm sorry, but he's whipped and he has absolutely no clue. but yes, that's what the unreliable narrator tag is for.

3)

some other details I mentioned in the fic but didn't really expand on:

there's a lot of other parallels and barely touched upon details in this fic to be honest. besides the obvious and reoccurring mention of lando's eyes and oscar's desperation for eye contact throughout the whole thing, there's oscar seeing his reflection in lando's visor at the very beginning and in his own phone screen at the very end (he just wants to see lando's eyes but instead he's seeing his own, he wants to figure lando out and find out how upset he actually is with him but what he actually needs to do is look at himself and figure everything out from his own side first).

oscar doing everything on autopilot and muscle memory at the beginning because he's still sorting things out in his brain, cringing at himself a lot which isn't normal behavior but he genuinely does not know what to do or how to act in this situation, only rebooting just in time to give some non-answer to nico in his interview and barely coming fully back online when lando first actually talks to him, how it really doesn't hit him that he won (HE ACTUALLY WON. THIS TROPHY IS HIS.) until he's basically (almost) alone in a familiar setting after he has time to process everything.

lando procrastinating taking off his helmet because he, too, needs time to school his expression into something. decent.

lando being uncharacteristically quiet in the beginning, silently congratulating oscar in the car, silently acknowledging him. silently motioning for him to get to his interview, his first actual words being trivial and ultimately meaningless small talk ("no big fumbles. good interview.") he's still teasing oscar, he wants oscar to know they're okay, but he still needs time to process what he lost, lick his wounds a little, needs to cool off for a bit before he can start to actually be genuinely happy for oscar's achievement. it's why it takes him until after the interviews, the cooldown room, the podium, when they're both alone (3 hours later) for him to finally muster up the strength to text oscar an actual heartfelt congratulations.

and his simple "you will" at the end of the first section is his unwavering belief that oscar won't stop here, he'll keep rising, this is nowhere near his peak as a driver, despite what lando wants or wishes for in regards to his own career, wrapped up as a nice little generic reassurance. oscar catches the weight of the words, but he doesn't know what it means exactly. yet.

oscar in the cooldown room expecting to eventually get a verbal knockdown from lando (max his best friend on the grid someone he's known for a decade wasn't even safe a few weeks ago, oscar's nobody special in comparison, lando's definitely mad he got prickly at LEWIS OF ALL PEOPLE oscar is not safe) so he's trying to find the right thing to say but then lando notices him floundering and trying to fix things for him so he just deflates and apologizes to lewis and smiles at oscar.

mclaren social media admin (who is faceless and genderless and honestly only in this fic because of reasons discussed in section 5) mentioning that oscar seems happier alone just staring at his trophy, which, again, yeah it only just registered for him, but also, he's in the comfort of his driver room with no actually hostile cameras around so he isn't on high alert for every move he makes and lando isn't here so he can actually think! hurray!

another kind of obvious one is the texts. oscar's knee-jerk reaction to seeing a message from mark, someone who's supposed to be on his side all the time, is negative? he's very surprised at himself and he doesn't know it's because he knows mark dislikes lando and can already envision how his opinion will only worsen after today. he's like noooo don't hate him I don't even know why I'm defending him I'm upset at what he did too but I hate that you hate him. absolutely zero below-surface level thoughts. soooo real.

also oscar's contact names for them (bless his heart), how mark uses correct spelling and punctuation while lando's dyslexic ass just wings it (and how some of the only messages without misspells are his congratulation messages because he painstakingly typed those out ok?), lando calling oscar by name and not any of the stupid nicknames he came up with that oscar secretly hoards close to his heart, and the timestamps, ugh. and yes, mark's last message is a reference to red bull and multi 21. sorry, even the commentators mentioned it and you want me to not bring it up in the fic? [loud buzzer noise] never. lando is also very much running away from everything that's why he's hiding out on max's private jet they can both wallow and drink their sorrows and beef with their engineers away together 30,000 feet in the air.

throughout the fic as well, you can kind of note the changes in tone. the beginning focuses a lot on minuscule details, how oscar feels millisecond by millisecond, because that's all he's able to process at the time. as the fic progresses, oscar's internal monologue gets less self-judgy and gets its snark back. it goes from "god, he doesn't know how lando does it" and "what is wrong with him today?" and speeds up as he goes back to normal and starts being... well, funny again. "after lewis has enough of waterboarding them both" "his phone starts up its never-ending seizure of notifications again" like ok king we're so back.

and then it proceeds to all come crashing down again.

oscar's (loud QUOTE UNQUOTE) "sickness" (read: unintelligible mixed feelings) makes a reappearance when he's listening back on lando's radio messages because he had no idea to the extent of what will was saying to him and it is extremely shocking I'll give him that. even I was like. jaw on the floor when I found out. because your engineer, the little guy in your ear, is the one person you're supposed to be able to trust unconditionally. they are the ones keeping you out of harm's way, the ones keeping you from crashing, your direct and only link to the rest of the team connecting you to the mechanics and the pit wall, the person telling you the strategy, like. it's not the norm, but it is also not entirely uncommon for when a driver switches teams to literally take their engineer with them. that's how instrumental they are to a driver's race, and it takes a lot of time to build up that trust and rapport. mclaren has a separate underlying issue where lando for some odd reason has three different race engineers that just switch out between weekends and it's SO ODD but that's a whole different story. point is this - a driver's race engineer messing up and giving out of date/incorrect information to them by accident is one thing, but a driver's race engineer guilt tripping and straight up lying to their face is another, and it is a hugeeeee no no. will joseph did that to lando, and now that trust might be completely broken. as one driver to another, oscar knows exactly how big of a deal this was. it's something he never expected from them.

at the very end after oscar realizes what exactly happened during the race and watches the compilation video and realizes despite everything lando is still so so genuinely proud of him for winning, he feels so many mixed and indistinguishable emotions that he's just kind of in shock for lack of a better word, which is why it kind of just... ends like that. sorry guys, it's going to take him another few hours to work through that one as well.

and again, the eyes. the entire point of this fic is centered around lando's eyes and how he expresses his emotions through them, and how oscar is so used to looking at them to tell how lando is feeling, so that's why he's always so desperate to actually be able to see his eyes. lando is genuinely happy for oscar winning, but it's incredibly bittersweet (and I explain more why in section 4). the pit in oscar's stomach starts out as dread, that lando's pissed and won't continue to be on good terms with him, it fluctuates up and down whenever he thinks lando is happy for him or mad at him, and gnaws away at him for the rest of the fic before eventually settling on a combination of fear that their relationship will never be the same again and guilt that although what happened was something he couldn't control and wasn't even aware about until much later, it still happened, and despite it all lando still looks at him with the kindest eyes. it's sickening to think about.

4)

some things I didn't get to add into the fic because one, I couldn't figure out where to fit them, and/or two, my wrists are close to giving up and I need to clock out for the day. I have just used up all my writing inspiration for the next year.

anyways, part of the original reason why I wrote this in the first place was because I was reading some other new landoscar fics about what happened and (absolutely no shade to them!!!!! I want to stress) I didn't agree with some of the ways they portrayed lando or oscar. ultimately, they're both f1 drivers. they're both selfish, they wouldn't be on the grid if they weren't. lando didn't want to give up the position because he's selfish and is desperate for that second win. oscar wanted him to because this is the strategy they agreed on earlier that day and he also wants that first win, even though TECHNICALLY prioritizing the driver ahead in wdc rankings wouldn't necessarily be a wrong call. they're each other's closest competitors, all they have as an equal comparison is each other, and they know it. lando has his pride as someone older, more experienced, who has been with the team a much longer time than oscar has. he had to wait more than five years for his first win. oscar gets one almost dropped in his lap just a year and a half into his career when he didn't have to stick with a singular team through all their trials and tribulations, when he wasn't lugging a glorified shoebox into the points for all of 4 years amidst criticism of renewing with the same team again? it's not fair. oscar plays the team game because he's biding his time, he is intimately aware of his position in the team as the second driver, but he lucked out to be at a mclaren because it's currently the only front running team that acts like it's still in the midfield and prioritizes "being fair" over a championship. he knows if he follows the rules normally he can capitalize on them being "fair" again and he'll have a chance to prioritize himself. both of them know this and if there's an opportunity to win, no matter the situation, they'll capitalize it. it's not actually really fair to either of them, but that's the nature of f1, and no one should be blaming either of them for their line of thinking.

got a little away from me there again, but you get the point. neither of them really blame each other for acting the way they did in hungary, but at the same time both of them blame each other for not acting better, if that makes sense. oscar is not going to apologize for asking for team orders to be honored. lando is not going to apologize for waiting until the last possible minute to let him through. oscar was going to do anything for the race win. lando needed to prove his point. in f1, this is how it works. both of them are warring with emotions of happiness, guilt, pride, etc. and it just turns into a mess.

oscar is thrilled by his first win, but it's tainted by shame of the way he had to win it, how he wasn't really good or fast enough for it, and guilt of making lando give up the lead. lando is pissed that he lost out on yet another race win, genuine happiness at seeing oscar succeed, and crushed pride of being treated like a second driver and berated on live tv because of this so called fairness. still, deep inside, lando wishes he could have ignored that strategy call until the very end and just took the win. still, oscar does not regret winning this race, no matter how it ended up happening or what anyone else had to do.

there's also the whole thing about lando starting his interviews off with "the team messed up" and somehow progressing into "I didn't deserve to win", missing scenes from media pen interviews, the press conference, etc, how he blamed himself for his bad start while nico rosberg the man himself was like lol no that was not your fault??? and chewed andrea Stella out on live tv, backstory on mark's one sided beef with lando, events after oscar's immediate reaction when he realizes the truth and how he would war with himself but still end up being selfish and glad he won and feeling even more guilty about it, the tense team debrief, lando being miserable, the subdued meal with the rest of the team after lando hightailed it out of there at the earliest possible opportunity, oscar's lonely plane ride home, the possible dinner with mark, eventual confrontation or closure ("you never did answer nico properly back there, did you doubt I'd give the position back?"), and so many others... but I never planned on including a lando pov in the first place which a lot of these scenes wouldn't work without, and also oh my god my wrists.

I wish I could have included all of this in the fic somewhere, but disjointing rambling on tumblr will have to do instead.

5)

lastly, and I promise this is the very last section, I tried my best to stay as close to actual events possible for a lot of televised scenes, but f1 broadcasts are notoriously stingy with letting people rewatch things that didn't happen in the race itself, especially since I. do not pay to watch this stuff lol. so I had to scour social media and youtube for clips of lando's radio messages, the post-race interviews with nico, what happened in the cooldown room and on the podium (rip lando he's being torn to shreds right now but it's ok I support his rights and wrongs), etc etc etc

there are still some things I'm not too sure about (i.e. the order of events, some quotes, non-televised events) so I took a bit of creative liberty regarding those. I'm pretty??? sure??? it went both park in parc ferme > lando congratulates oscar while he's still in the car > lando doesn't go to the team while oscar goes to them > both get weighed > both do the outdoor interview for podium finishers with nico (in finish order so oscar, lando (paraphrased), and lewis (not pictured but just imagine him flirting with nico and that's basically what happened)) > cooldown room > podium > media pen interviews (not pictured because at this point I just wanted it all to be over and I didn't watch them anyways) > press conference (also not pictured for the same reason) > go back to drivers rooms and clean up > team debrief (also not pictured partially for the same reason and partially because what I had was already a decent stopping point)

so again for all of this I tried to base it on real footage as much as possible. it basically matches every single move for move from the beginning until the interviews with nico (the question nico asked and oscar's response are both real quotes, lando and oscar's little interaction at the tables afterwards is partially real but the dialogue was written by me because I couldn't hear what they were saying). the cooldown room scene was my own little fix-it for lando because god he stresses me out sometimes (lovingly) but the overall events written did happen.

the podium is more accurate to what actually happened. randy was actually up there, god forbid, but the broadcast angle gets really awkward and crops lando out of a lot of the celebrations because he goes into the corner, so I'd say it's almostttt move for move again.

for the driver room scene, the social media admin is literally only there because I needed to fit in the part where oscar just lovingly gazes at his trophy and soaks it in a little (this also did happen check mclaren social media) and for that I needed for one, the trophy to get to him somehow, and two, someone filming him while he's making his trademark heart eyes at a lump of ceramic. everything after that is obviously events I came up with. there's no one video I referenced for lando's radio messages but they're all real quotes and you can find them... multiple places online. the second video that oscar watches is completely made up, but it also probably exists somewhere. those two can't exactly take their eyes off each other.

aaaand I think that's it! honestly, this is just all rambling that couldn't fit within the character limit in the fic end notes, and like I stated above, won't make sense unless you read it. if you got this far thank you so much and also I'm so sorry for subjecting you to this. let me know what you think about the fic itself by commenting there or about these notes by replying here or sending an ask... at your earliest convenience! (hah.)

[makwandis]

i’m actually so curious what your roderich hcs are 👀 what do you think about when writing him and how do you see his dynamic with gilbert? with antonio?

Oh my gosh it's a big thing to answer UMMM I got dis

so I feel like roderich is femme fatale as a boy. Venus as a boy. He's antinous. He's beautiful. He's sensitive. He's very very demure. He reminds me of Scarlett ohara and he reminds me of Blanche Dubois. He reminds me of s delicate flower but watch out the flower is poisonous as fuck. I think overall yeah He's a sensitive, pensive, observant quiet gentleman with refined tastes and also like is a total bitch. He's gay as fuck. I love him. He's preminger from the barbie movies too lowkey. I always just picture like what would like a very beautiful man from antiquity or whatever be like what would happen to him ya know. I personally love roderich a lot cuz I honestly can relate to him a lot too. He's a nurturer, he's a kind soul, hes reserved , he's been hurt a lot, he doesn't trust easily, but he's a good friend to have.

As for him and Gilbert UM talk about toxic lol. Pruaus is my endgame and my fave Pru ship by far, I think Gilbert has been madly in love w roderich since he first saw him and roderich is the most beautiful boy Gilbert has ever seen. I really hype up rod being pretty NO UGLY AUSTRIAS THANKS lol. But Gilbert is insane and frankly so is roderich when he's around him. Roderich is usually quite reserved snd it's very hard to get a reaction out of him- he doesn't really yell when he's mad. Normally. Around Gilbert though? He just can't help it he becomes THIS FIRECRACKER he's feisty and sassy and will fucking slap Gilbert lmao. Gilbert has made him madder than anyone else on the planet and I feel he's an adrenaline rush for roderich that roderich is lowkey high key lowkey addicted to. Gilbert had also made roderich laugh harder than anyone else on the planet too. Gilbert just brings out all these extremes in roderich that can either exhaust him or he enjoys it a lot. They've had their ups and their many many many many downs. They have been terrible to each other but I think Gilbert has been worse. Roderich deserves better but Gilbert is the bad decision he can't help but make time and time again against all logic and reason and advice from his friends lol. But i think as Gilbert matures he's becoming a better and better decision for roderich. Retirement has done wonders for gilbert and roderich both lol. I love them so much.

Antonioooo and him I see as like- roderich was very young and stupid and toni was this smooth talking kind of older man who was able to schmooz roderich. Roderich and he were probably married and I think roderich wasn't very happy at first but ya know lay back and think of the emperor lmfao. Toni and roderich were also pretty toxic, I think rod has a thing for toxic masc dudes who are really jealous and intense and it is NOT GOOD FOR RODERICH. But toni is a Spaniard the dude is cheating. It was very up and down, very very toxic, and roderich was happy to get rid of him- but I think toni thinks rod is his "one that got away" which is just so dumb but I don't think the guy is very bright or introspective. Overall, roderichs ex, who sometimes still gets drunk and calls him, and Roderich really doesn't care about him anymore. I have met many dudes like toni, in spanish we'd call him un pinche mujeriego cabron or something along those lines... but he and roderich dooooo make a very handsome couple lol.

Those are my thoughts but feel free to ask for my discord I can talk about this all fucking day and night !!!!

[rainbowchewynuggets]

TMA Encore #12

Jon stares down into the gaping corpse of the prison. A stale air current breathes coldly on his neck.

Jon: If this tape has reached any of the members of my team, I would hope that they’d understand that I’m choosing to remove myself from the board to prevent something terrible. And that I’m sorry for doing it. And for everything, really. I… I should have told you all what was happening from the beginning. At the time, I told myself that it was for the better. But I’m realizing that I have a poor metric for those sorts of choices. I knew something was wrong early on and kept it to myself anyway. It was just easier to pretend that I could handle it myself. Clearly not.

He tries to summon some levity, but his throat is too tight.

Jon: You deserved better. You deserved to know.

He squeezes the little silver lighter in his other hand.

Jon: If you haven’t found this tape, it might be because we’re all still down here together. I shouldn’t do it, after all we’ve done to try to make it through this. I don’t want to. I’d just be making the same mistake all over again. But here I am.

He looks at the lace of fuse cord sticking out of each stick of dynamite, maybe six inches from the lighter’s flame.

Jon: It shouldn’t feel this easy. I should be in a much worse place mentally to even consider either option. It just… feels logical. As much as I’d like to blame an external force, I think that would be too easy. The point might be entirely moot, since I can’t seem to light this fuse any more than I can throw myself off. I can’t get myself to back away, either. Maybe I’m just waiting for a cue. A scare or something to let me know when it’s time to get going. Always seems to do the trick.

He can’t think of any more quips to distract himself. He can’t think of anything to say at all. He stops the recording and sets the player down on the ground beside him. The lighter thumps nervously against his leg as he scans the black void at the base of the Panopticon.

~

Not-Jon: Hello, Jonah.

Jonah meets him with his most unsurprised look.

Jonah: Nice to finally meet the creature that’s been stalking me.

Not-Jon allows himself no reaction beyond a difficult swallow.

NJ: Old habit.

Jonah looks him up and down. Not-Jon’s eyes are locked on him.

Jonah: Are you quite alright? You look uncomfortable.

Not-Jon strains to stand up straighter against the wall. Jonah waits for him to move, but he remains struggling to stay propped up where he is.

NJ: I suppose I should have thought to lock up the archives.

Jonah: Just figured I’d give you a hand. An ambitious design requires careful execution.

He steps back and rests against the opposite wall, facing the strange creature.

Jonah: Though, I must admit that I’m impressed. I never imagined you could become such a willing propagator for your patrons. Especially after what I heard on those tapes.

NJ: “Willing” with no other choice.

His voice is hard and sharp.

NJ: This way, they’re all likely to make it out alive. I at least haven’t stooped to sacrificing bystanders and victims.

Jonah: A credible threat reaps the same benefits, whether it’s followed through or not. You know that. There isn’t really room for ethics in our line of work.

Not-Jon is miserably silent.

Jonah: And I’m afraid you may have pushed some of your pieces a little too far.

Jonah takes out the three fragments of the ring. Not-Jon gives them a long look before tearing his eyes away back to Jonah.

NJ: Oh. Well. That would explain why this is so much harder than I thought it would be.

His sardonic tone can’t disguise the shaking in his voice. He gasps, winded from talking.

Jonah closes his fingers and moves to the back of the tower.

Not-Jon attempts to follow. He can barely move his feet and has to slide along the wall by one shoulder. Jonah reaches behind the cavernous remains of the stairs and pulls out a shotgun. He takes a shell from his pocket and loads it, then points the nose of the barrel at Not-Jon at point blank range. Fear is plain on his target’s face. He lets the moment sit, drinking it in.

The gun fires. The slug shatters bone and burrows into Not-Jon’s chest. Gunpowder burns the exposed flesh. He doubles over like a crumpled piece of paper. One hand holds the wound, the other is pressed against the floor with his legs bunched under him. He grits his teeth as he clings to his last ounce of strength, which threatens to leave him with each passing moment.

Jonah takes a step closer and kneels to meet the creature’s burning hateful eyes.

Jonah: It must be terrible. After all that careful planning and work, some underestimated detail arrives at the last minute and puts you back in your place.

Not-Jon wheezes painfully.

Jonah notices a running feeling in his hands. The broken ring has turned to dust, its illusory purpose served. Jonah processes this a second too late.

Not-Jon’s defeated act vanishes. He lunges and clasps his hands around Jonah’s throat. They struggle and hit the floor. Jonah is pinned as Not-Jon chokes him, vaporized blood rising from his hands.

NJ: It really is terrible, isn’t it?

~

Not-Martin’s concentration is broken. His sight turns probingly in the direction of the central watchtower.

NM: Oh, god.

~

Using Jonah’s sphere of influence as a gateway, the Entities push outward, overextending themselves. Not-Jon’s awareness expands beyond the Institute. Far, far beyond. He can see and feel the presence of the competing Entities’ places and objects of power. Their prowling avatars. Their euphoria. Their malice. The fear, misery, and ruin they create. Despite all that he’s done to dilute it, it saturates the earth. It seeps through endless fissures made between worlds, waiting only for enough points of cohesion to bring the Entities through.

The interference is agony. His head is filled with splintering wood.

He can’t stop here. He has to get rid of all of it. No trace can be left behind.

It can’t wait any longer. It’s the only way.

The only way.

~

Tim and Sasha are lost in the dark. They were at opposite ends of a complicated room when the flashlight ate through its last battery. They can’t find each other. A rushing sound approaches them with a flash of blinding light.

Not-Martin grabs hold of his younger double just before the flash floods their tiny cell.

————

Next comes the scary part.

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