#thanks i learned it from my brother

[erigold13261]

"Fight!"

What an unlikely start to a friendship.

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 81

Danny blinked at the small children Ellie was holding the hand of, looking quite proud of herself. The small children- between ten and twelve so somewhere similar to Ellie’s age- who both practically stank of magic and Gods. 

He took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose even as Dan cackled while opening the door more to let them inside. “Alright, what’s your name, kids?”

“B-billy…um, Billy Batson...” “‘m Percy! Percy Jackson.” 

“Nice to meet you two- any idea where in your family you have a god or two, because one of you definitely smells like Zeus and I’m pretty sure Poseidon and I am not dealing with either of my half-brothers.” 

[blue-mood-blue]

I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.

And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.

What about a version where it’s not coincidence at all?

Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t want to be.

Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked “what happens next?”

They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.

Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.

Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.

It’s one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. “Tells” is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.

(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)

Death feels very real after that.

The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.

The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how it’s still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isn’t there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t matter.

(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)

Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what he’s been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?

(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters don’t get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)

Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...

…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…

And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.

“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.

Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.

(Shang Qinghua wants to say “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)

“I know,” he says instead. “I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”

Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”

[littlecrittereli]

So I was reading this transcript of an interview the Kratt brothers did and at one point Martin talks about how he almost became a veterinarian, but ended up changing his mind and becoming a zoologist.... so I raise you.... TEAM MEDIC MARTIN?????

Bro carries around a slew of random medical supplies on him at all times. (Just like the creature power disks nobody understands how he can remember where everything is but he's always handy with exactly what he needs)

Chris skins his knees climbing up a cliff? Martin's got bandages and antibacterial spray.

Koki burns her hand while tuning up the Tortuga? He's got burn cream and a cool towel and making sure she compresses it for at least 10 minutes

and God forbid someone in the Tortuga so much as SNIFFLES in his presence. It's bed rest, soup, and fluids from there.

And beyond that, I think he'd be very knowledgeable about natural remedies too. They ran out of cooling ointment for their sunburns? its okay, they can use the aloe vera plant sitting in the window! Aviva is nauseous because she's had nothing but redbull and coffee for 2 days? peppermint oil and ginger tea!

Just like how they learned from the Orangutans about the leaves that relieve muscle sores, Martin would pull a lot of inspiration from nature's remedies.

[seaofolives]

🎭 #torokatober2024 day 24/31: mask 🎻

“Hold still,” Trowa tells him, but the paper feels slimey on Quatre’s face, and he’s not quite sure what part of this smells like aloe vera. But it’s a gift from Catherine who’d mentioned that his skin is looking dry so he holds still. As best as he can.

Until Trowa has finally smoothed it out on his cheeks. Quatre grabs his hand, then, and drags him to their bedroom mirror, even when Trowa yelps, “I said hold still!”

They look like a pair of ghosts who must have been burglars once.

Quatre throws his head back and cracks up.

find the list of prompts here!

[scalpelsister]

why is learning spirit the hardest thing ive ever done

[cosmicdenro]

u guys should know a crow is friends with me now....... smiles

[ramayantika]

God there was a time when I took pride in not looking Odia, and cringing over my own culture

[hauntingmiser]

⚠️ : eyes ?

Day 22

Gives you two succubuses

[small-artist-oc-showdown]

INTROS DONE BAYBEE

HOWEVER !! its probably gonna be another week since i have to edit things !! but expect them to come this or next weekend :3

[unma]

If you all are every curious as to how accurate my sona is to me, I'd like you all to know that I wear the same jacket everywhere. I rotate through the same set of clothes every week (and a couple are pairs, as decided by me because I thought it be nice one day for no reason), but I am always wearing this hoodie. Before it was this hoodie, I had a different hoodie I wore everywhere (that I stole from my mom). And before that hoodie was the hoodie I got at the same time my mom got hers. A hoodie I ran so ragged my mom and I had fights about whether I could wear it. And before that was a hoodie I had when I was a mere tween.

You know now that I type it out, maybe this isn't normal. Probably should've realized this earlier given how everyone kept trying to take my hoodies off me.

[providing-leverage]

For the word thing: laugh and/or frown

From the time loop fic:

“I have a feeling it’s going to be a good day.” He says. “Gaffer’s kid is in town, no match tomorrow, today’s light work.” “The hell it is.” Roy says, appearing from nowhere to promise doom, as was his speciality. It makes Isaac jump, and the physio laughs. “Move it, McAdoo, or you’ll be running so much your puke will feel nauseous.”

[m0e-ru]

the reason why anyone's dancing mods regarding model swaps don't have physics on the hair the clothes whatever the fuck is because the physics are baked into the armature's animation itself. that's why all the external accessories like glasses or headphones are separate and easy to implement because they don't have physics. that's why all the clothes sway the exact same way no matter when or which instance you're loading the dance. the games themselves don't have physics engines because the vita would explode this is so funny

[hippo-pot]

ohhhhh i didn't realize 'asl' was also a shortening of 'as hell'. i thought folks were just mistyping 'asf'

[amorremanet]

Man, I realize demanding that someone execute their own brother is pretty fucked up, but He Xuan asking that of Shi Qingxuan still gave them more respect than Shi Qingxuan ever got from Shi Wudu [gave them the ability to make their own choice after finally being given the full story and enough context to actually have the capacity for informed consent, something that Shi Wudu spent centuries denying to Shi Qingxuan] and also, He Xuan did nothing wrong and should be allowed to do all the atrocities he wants, thank you for your time

[website-com]

i am a 21 year old teenager and i do not understand visas or airplanes or airports or the japanese language or how to read a email. but i stay silly