#so. here we are

[okaysign]

[everyones-least-favorite-bard]

perchance to dream

(inspired by @inkedberries 40s bruce wayne art because yeah. yeah he is a 40s heartthrob. my god)

[rustedpipe]

riverdale polycule + tra le la le la triangle by patsy cline (youtube)

aka: riverdale is about the triangulation of desire. or quadulation. plus some reggie. whatever.

[impossible-rat-babies]

i was gonna say sun out, tum out but one of these is at night

[vixvigil]

they need to invent painkillers that work

[starstruckodysseys]

neverafter is literally just. the horrors are endless but i stay silly: dnd edition

[enderwoah]

ok as much as i love everyone calling limited life a crackfic (because it is; it is the crackfic of the life series), y'all better be aware that it's still crack treated seriously because i haven't seen NOBODY talking about how absolutely heartbreaking the permadeaths in this series are going to be.

cause the thing about the other series is that usually, people's final deaths were sudden. they were in the heat of battle, or they were due to a trap, or they were because of a betrayal; whatever it was, people didn't see them coming, and when they did, they were always able to fight back against it. there was a looming threat of death, of course, it's the life series, but it was due to the fact that there could only be one man left standing. technically, they could have just lived together in peace and harmony and kumbaya for the rest of forever instead of trying to win.

in limited life, that simply isn't an option (not like anyone would have taken it anyways). people will always know that their deaths are coming; there's a timer in the corner literally telling them when it will happen.

this means that deaths in limited life will be one of two things: solemn acceptance (perhaps surrounded by a team, holding hands, comforting pats on the back and teary goodbyes, or perhaps in the middle of the woods or underground, or trapped in an abandoned base with no-one around to hear them cry out for more time, just a few more minutes; or maybe they rest against a tree and close their eyes and heave a sigh of relief because finally, finally the ticking will be gone and they will be stable once again)

or wild desperation (running back and forth across the server, searching for someone, anyone to pick off, to drag down in their place so the ticking can slow and they can breathe again; diving into the middle of a battle they know they will lose because they will not let their fate be wrangled by the hands of unseen things, that they will die to a blade or nothing else, and perhaps they will be able to catch a kill or two and snatch back those precious few minutes of time; knees scraping against stone or digging into wet dirt or dry sand or stone, fingers dug into the fabric of their teammate as they beg, plead, wail, grovel at their feet, just one kill, just thirty more minutes, they don't want to go yet they can't go, and their teammate wanting to allow them so badly but the ticking in their ears and that fear of death in their blood stopping them because they don't want to go yet either)

do you see the vision. do you guys see what we're going to have to deal with. they baited you with 'haha heehee they have many lives...!!' the angst is just delayed. it's going to be worse than ever.

[splishsplashyouropinionistrash]

In a kinder world, Mary Hatford would never have married Nathan Wesninski.

Or, maybe she would have. Maybe in a kinder world, Nathan would have learned to be kind, too.

In the real world, Mary knew that no amount of kindness could show Nathan how to be a human. Even the kindest world could not suck the hatred out of his blood.

In a kind world, learning that she was pregnant with Nathan’s son would have been a blessing, not a curse. Giving birth to Abram would have been the happiest moment of her life. Holding her son for the first time, she would have felt nothing but joy and love, hope for the future he would have.

In the real world, Mary was terrified as she looked into her baby’s blue eyes. She knew that the road ahead of them would not be an easy one, knew that her son was not likely to live to adulthood. In the real world, Mary looked down at her son, so innocent and small and absolutely clueless to the monstrous world he’d just been born into, and she cried.

In a kind world, little Abram would never have had to learn how to wield a knife. Mary would never know what it was like to wash a man’s blood off of her eight-year-old son’s face. In a kinder world, her son was allowed to be a child.

In the real world, Abram watched a man die for the first time at five years old. At seven, Nathan bought the boy a dog and then made Abram help him slaughter it. In the real world, her son had taken a man’s life by the time he turned nine.

In a kinder world, They never would have needed to run. Abram would never be in enough danger for that. In a kind world, he would have been allowed to grow up like every other little boy. He would get to run around at the park and scrape his knees and yell as loudly as he could. He would be able to call as much attention to himself as he wanted, and he would never have to worry that death was coming for him.

In the real world, Mary woke him in the middle of the night three weeks after his tenth birthday. In the real world, she either had to take him away or watch him die. It wasn’t a hard choice to make.

In the real world, they ran and they ran and they ran. They could never stop running, not unless they wanted to stop breathing. In the real world, her son lives but he never gets to be alive.

In a kind world, Seattle is just a city. In a kind world, maybe they take a family trip there. Maybe Abram argues with another tourist over something stupid. Maybe they go out to dinner or take pictures at all of the popular sights. Maybe in a kinder world, Seattle is beautiful.

In the real world, Mary can barely remember Seattle. All she can remember is pain and fear and the need to get as much distance between Abram and Nathan as she can. In the real world, she never saw the metal pipe coming.

In a kind world, Mary lives a long life. She watches Abram graduate high school and then college, watches him play exy for years until an injury forces him to retire. She watches him fall in love with the strangest boy she’s ever met, a blond even shorter than she is who rarely smiles and loves to talk about the zombie apocalypse.

In a kind world, Mary is there when Abram gets married. She lives long enough to meet her two grandchildren and a handful of the many cats Abram and Andrew adopt. She lives a long life, and when death takes her, she isn’t afraid.

In the real world, fate isn’t so kind. In the real world, Abram still grows up. He graduates high school, then college. He plays exy for years. He even falls in love, gets married, adopts two kids and an unreasonable number of cats.

But in the real world, Mary isn’t there for any of it. In the real world, Mary doesn’t even get to see Abram turn 18.

In the real world, Mary Hatford dies at age 42, desperate and afraid on a cold stretch of California beach. In the real world, she doesn’t get a happy ending.

[lilypads17]

@crimsonsnippet's delightful swap au has me by the throat. lawlight deserve to be off the shits deranged

[traumxrei-archive]

do you ever think about trey and riddle in book 1 ?

do you ever think about how painful it must've been for trey ? imagine, as a kid, befriending someone who you thought was lonely, and having so much fun playing with him whenever he wasn't studying... but then you hear that his mother figured out that he's been sneaking out during his breaks, and that he now has even less freedom than before. and that somehow, it was your actions that led to that ?

can you imagine how guilty he must've felt? to give riddle that taste of freedom and normalcy only for it to end up taking away what little freedom he had left. he must've felt terrible. the fact that he introduced riddle to what it felt like to have friends, to play games outside, to have the tastiest, freshly baked tarts in the whole queendom of hearts.

but simultaneously introducing riddle to what it felt like to be lonely, to have had friends and lost them, to yearn for days outside instead of being as he always was. alone.

i think that's a big reason why trey never said anything about riddle's tyranny in book 1. as we saw in the flashback, riddle had never been given the agency to act and think for himself. his every move was monitored by his mother, and his days were planned down to the minute. and for the first time, nrc had given him the environment to finally do what he wants, without the influence of his mother.

to trey, if strictly obeying the rules of the queen of hearts is what riddle wants, then trey would've protected that dream of his. which explains why he supported riddle for so long, acting as a right hand even if he didn't agree with riddle's assessments at times. we see it happening a lot in the story where he would act stern in front of riddle before apologizing once he's out of an earshot.

ace was able to find the fault in their relationship because he was an outsider, but trey was burdened with so much guilt towards riddle to the point that upsetting him wasn't even something he ever thought of doing. ace pointed out that as his friend, trey shouldn't be afraid to tell riddle that what he was doing was wrong. but riddle and trey's friendship has never been normal from the start. they never had typical boundaries that friends should have in the first place.

but trey missed out on something big. he overlooked the fact that his mother's strict upbringing created riddle's perfectionistic tendencies and the fact that following the rules isn't really what he wanted to do, rather it's what he thought was right. being as sheltered as he was, riddle never learned that rules were only as strict as the person keeping them, and that rules can be bent, amended, or overruled if people so chose.

it struck a chord with trey when ace asked him if he wanted to watch as riddle became the same as his parents; as he became hated and isolated from people, even though that was never his intention. you've gotta keep in mind that throughout all this, riddle was only doing what he thought was best for the dorm and what he thought would help people grow. so the fact that trey never said anything against his tyrannic ruling reinforces the idea, and it keeps him from learning that people didn't grow up the way he did, and what he's doing is wrong.

when the overblot happens, the reason why he stands up against riddle is because riddle was doing exactly as ace said, pushing everyone away and isolating himself with his ideals. even so, he tried the pacifist route with riddle first, trying to talk to him despite the fact that he had tried to cast his unique magic against everyone.

in the end, trey wasn't able to completely stand up to riddle. he didn't really have to, since ace was already saying all the words everyone wanted to say to riddle. and he apologizes to riddle for not speaking up sooner. he acted like everything was okay when riddle arrived at nrc, and didn't try to check in on how he was. he assumed that this was what riddle wanted without ever talking to him about it, and finally tells riddle what he was doing was wrong.

and their relationship was able to improve after the overblot happened. in future books, though he still reflexively tries to get people to follow the rules, we see riddle being more lenient with his dorm members. actually, i'd say that riddle grows to be a dormleader that truly cares for each and every member of his dorm, with how he helps them out with academics and other tasks if they needed it. not to mention, riddle and trey were able to have a more normal relationship. we saw how protective riddle was over trey after he got injured in book 2. and trey also isn't afraid to ask riddle for kitchen upgrades, which helps him as heartslabyul's head baker, and all in all these little things just point to how close they had gotten after the overblot.

thanks for reading ^^ i hope that this made sense, idk what prompted me to write all that, but i was just thinking about trey clover and. yeah. if you want to read some of non-analytical writing, check out my masterlist here >:D

[theswampghost]

does anybody have a beetlejuice the musical bootleg? i don’t care about which cast or which production, i just want to see it ;-;

[juniperhillpatient]

writing research is fun because every so often it takes you to a place where you never imagined you’d be learning about something that you never exactly wanted to learn about & it’s like. wow. this is A hobby I’ve chosen isn’t it. Hm. but I love it

[scholarhect]

merry christmas it’s time to read the tlt secret santa au fic. unless you’ve already read it recently, like me, who read it a month ago and now tragically can’t read it again because that would be boring, so instead i’m posting it because that’s kind of like reading it, in a way

[evandered]

jesters.. fools.. and 1 mysterious beast

[mortuarywriting]

It's thursday and wip thursday doesn't have the same ring to it but its the leap day so I'll do whatever the hell i want

The team sits in silence for all of five seconds, a resigned look on Simon's face as he somewhat pointedly stares at the remaining menus. The silence is heavy for a moment, "Kyle has th' bes-" "We no' gonna talk abou' what jus' happened?" "Prefer not to but s'pose there's no avoiding it now." "C'mon now," Gaz chimes in as he trades menus with Price, "you know none of us would've guessed anything about all this," he gestured to the cottage in question, the downright cozy space. Ghost huffed a sigh, turning to see if the only other potential voice of reason would chime in. The flicker of his silent hope is swiftly snuffed, the captain busy skimming the menu before him. He nodded, making a politely pleased noise at what he saw, handing it back to Kyle to hand to Soap, "thought you had a flat in Manchester." The sigh he tried to hold in turned into a long suffering one, the utterly unsurprising betrayal still managing to disappoint him. Purposely drawing out the sigh as he weighed his options- thinking how much he could get away with before you came back and they could grill you. You might be slippery when it comes to keeping answers from civilians, but frankly nothing a civilian could throw at you would hold a candle against three highly trained busybodies.