#then there’s the whole body issue

[hairmetal666]

Everyone in the league knows about Eddie Munson. He has the makings of a great pitcher, except for the fact that his slider has a 75% chance of sliding too high and his fastballs mostly end up in the dirt. His technique is wild, flailing, unrestrained. Which is why Steve is beside himself when he learns about the trade.

The owners, they think that Steve being the best catcher in the league means he can work with Eddie, settle him, make him a real prospect. Steve's input isn't needed with the decision already made, but Munson--with all his tattoos piercings and leather--looks like he'd rather hock a loogie at Steve than take directions from him.

And Steve is the best in the league, the glue that keeps the team together. They're a well-oiled machine, and Eddie is--Eddie is a squeaky wheel.

They meet for the first time, briefly, in the locker room. He's seen the guy before, of course, but now, like this, he can't help but be intrigued by his pale skin and long curls and brown doe-eyes, his lightly muscled frame. And they're in the locker room, Eddie with just a towel around his waist, exposing his toned chest and stomach and the black swirl of his tattoos.

"Steve Harrington!" Eddie reaches out a hand. "Great to meet you, man."

"You too. Excited to have you with us." The handshake is quick and firm and Steve is trying not to be surprised about how excited and genuine the guy sounds, keep his mind away from thinking of how Eddie is naked aside from the towel.

With only a few weeks until the start of the regular season, Eddie starts pitching to Steve. And Steve, he so expects Eddie to fight and grumble and refuse, that his head sort of spins when, on the first day, Eddie claps him on the back with his glove, says, "where do you want me, cap?" and that's that.

He wants to say that they dislike each other, that they're a bad fit, that Eddie is full himself and refuses constructive criticism.

Instead.

Instead it's easy.

Eddie doesn't complain, doesn't argue, just watches Steve, learns him, takes his advice and notes and implements them as much as he can. They like each other, have an easy rapport, get each other. He's tight with all the pitchers, but Eddie is different. They settle each other.

They're best friends. They hangout constantly. And he doesn't have a crush; he doesn't. It would be unprofessional. They're best friends.

But sometimes, sometimes he thinks he catches Eddie looking at him. It's impossible. Of course it's impossible. Eddie couldn't be into the guy Sports Illustrated called "baseball's Ralph Lauren model" in the intro to Steve's Body Issue photo spread. And it doesn't matter one way or the other because Steve won't make a move. He won't jeopardize the team like that.

They don't touch. He touches everyone on the team, often, and Eddie particularly is a physical guy, but aside from that first handshake, he keeps his distance. Steve's afraid--even though it's silly, he's afraid--that once they start touching, he won't be able to stop, and he can't let that happen.

The team is good, competing for first place in the National League. Eddie's success has made everyone else better.

It's late July, they're in first place in the league, and Eddie's pitching a perfect game. There's only been 24 perfect games thrown in the history of Major League Baseball, but it's the eighth inning and Eddie's doing it.

A pitch goes wild, veers high over the umpire's head. Eddie's shaken, Steve can tell with how his fist tightens compulsively around the ball. The next pitch swings wide, towards the batter's knees.

The count is at 2 balls, no strikes, and he can see, even from behind home plate Steve can see, that Eddie's losing it. He heads for the mound, refuses to let it end like this. He closes the distance between them, has a quick internal debate before he puts his hand on Eddie's lower back. They've never touched, this is it, this is--warmth bleeds from Eddie's skin, through the fabric of his jersey, goes straight to Steve's head.

Eddie frowns. "I don't think I--"

"You're going to do it, Ed. I know. I can feel it." He pats his chest, over his heart. "It's gonna happen."

Eddie's breathing settles and it's only then that Steve realizes he's rubbing circles into Eddie's back with his thumb. He's not sure when he started, doesn't want to stop, loves being able to feel.

"Okay," Eddie says.

"Okay."

Steve removes his hand, heads back to home, still tingling with the warmth of Eddie's body even as he crouches behind the plate.

He closes out the inning with three definitive strike outs. The crowd goes wild.

They take the field for the top of the 9th, the crowd is screaming, ready for this, the energy zipping through every player on the field.

It goes by in a blur. Nine pitches. Eddie's perfect game is wrapped up in nine phenomenal pitches.

As the ump calls the last out, there's a moment of complete and utter quiet in the stadium, Steve's heart a pounding hum in his ears, before pandemonium breaks loose. There's screaming, fireworks, someone is crying--

All he can see is Eddie. Eddie's who's thrown his glove to the dirt, is barreling towards him with a triumphant smile bright on his face. Steve stands, runs to close the distance. He sees the moment that Eddie decides to jump into his arms, catches him easily--will always catch him--but his legs are tired and the momentum gets him, sends them tumbling back into the grass.

They're both yelling, laughing, smiling hard enough to hurt. Eddie's hair has fallen out if its tie, tumbling around his shoulders, and Steve gazes at him, can't help it, in this moment can admit that he's so, so astronomically in love.

It's only then Steve realizes that the laughter's stopped, that Eddie's gazing back. Brown eyes shining bright with happiness, cheeks flushed pink, lips parted. Thoughtless, he reaches up to caress Eddie's cheek.

The team reaches them, streaming around them, yanking Eddie and Steve to their feet. The celebration stretches around them, the moment slipping away. He wants to finish what they started but there are interviews, champagne showers, congratulations, that keep them apart. Sometimes, from across the room, their eyes meet, and there's heat there that's new, that sparks something low in Steve's gut.

Hours pass, and finally he finds himself alone in the locker room. He's just pulled on his t-shirt when the door shuts behind him. He spins, finds Eddie, waiting, watching.

He crosses the room without a word, can't not, not now, not after everything. They grapple for a second, the wanting so strong that it takes a second to settle, to find each other. They kiss hard, desperate, seething with desire.

Steve hopes it never ends and it doesn't, just tapers into soft kisses, gentle nips. He can't bring himself to step away.

"Is this for real ?" Eddie whispers.

"I've been insane about you since the trade."

Eddie's smile is blinding. "I used to have those pictures of you--the ones with the little red shorts?--in my locker in the minors. Feel like I'm living in a dream right now."

It lights him up inside, knowing that Eddie wants him, has wanted him. "Let me take you home and show you just how real it is?"

He snorts, but his dimples deepen, eyes shining. "What a line, sweetheart."

"Yeah well, the baseball field isn't the only place where I hit home runs."

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 241

Wing au? Wing Au. With perhaps a bit of a twist. Also a hint of eldritchness perhaps. For fun! 

Ghosts have wings. Sure, they aren’t normally seen, not in the visible spectrum, but they do. Scanners pick them up, and sometimes a ghost might even reveal them, which was hypothesized to be some sort of animalistic intimidation attempt. (Something more than one Amity Parker rolled their eyes at)

Everyone had seen them at least once- the motorcycle-driving ghost’s mass of shadowy feathers, the green-haired girls matching shaggy ones, the rocker’s ones that looked like pages of music before bursting into flame. Even the box ghost’s had been spotted- feathers looking more like sheets of cardboard than anything else. 

It wasn’t until the whole kidnapped to the ghost zone that anyone saw Phantom’s, but that was another tale unto itself really. Honestly the arrival of the GIW would have maybe been seen as positive before, but the fact that many of them had looked in the mirror or gone to the doctors only to find feathers beginning to sprout on their back soured it. 

Especially as the GIW continues to prattle on and on about how all ecto-contaminated scum are less than human, less than bacteria. And well, what does that make them? Them, who have been to the realms of the dead and gods and back, touched by the swirling green energy in ways incomprehensible? Changed by that energy? 

So the people silently brush hidden feathers together, quietly rebuff the white-wearing lunatics from the city as best they can, and hope to anything listening that they can stop anyone else from disappearing. That maybe they can find the few no one noticed had been taken before it’s too late, even if they have to tear down the entire government to do it. 

[captainhysunstuff]

@deathnotetober Day 31: Trick or Treat

Halloween at the Lawlight house doesn't go quite as smoothly this year. They might get "tricked."

Light: If they T.P. our house this year, you're cleaning it up! >:(

L: *no regrets* .__. *would like to see Light try and make him*

[allthegothihopgirls]

i think it would have been funny if tim, after discovering his bisexuality and thinking that was the 'unique feature' he brought to his iteration of robin, mentioned this to the rest of batfam, only to find out they've all been some degree of queer this whole time.

[roots-symphony]

do you think the reason agatha’s trial felt weird is because she was the only one who did not actually buy into the mythos of the road since she knew the truth? like that was why no perspective change and all the other reasons why people thought it was a fake trial

[teamsasukes]

people rightly criticize how team 7 reacted to sasuke's pursuit of justice for his clan, but one thing i feel is always overlooked in these discussions is how sakura literally is not granted the option by the narrative to learn about what sasuke has been through — not in the way that naruto, kakashi, or even team taka are. throughout all of part 2, she is operating under the assumption that sasuke killed itachi and then turned on the village for no apparent reason.

in part 1, she offers to help sasuke with his plan to kill itachi and even says she'll come with him so he won't have to handle a clearly dangerous and unstable sannin alone. she tells him she wishes he would be more open with her because she wants to understand what he's going through. (all of this stands in stark contrast to naruto, who says he'll break every bone in sasuke's body to bring him back, or kakashi, who projects his own traumas on to sasuke.) then in part 2, she can't bring herself to hurt him despite ample opportunity and even though (as far as she knows) he's become a violent criminal. throughout the series, she's averse to inflicting harm on others (aside from the punching naruto gag). is it really so unreasonable to imagine that if she knew sasuke was avenging the state-sponsored genocide of his clan, she would respond differently? with more empathy and compassion for his circumstances, and anger of her own towards konoha?

[serpentface]

I'd say the 'aware of loss of faculties until they aren't' description is apt, but with less of the horror that most humans experience with this knowledge. Units have a sense of personhood, but archin do not tend to philosophically imagine a 'self'. Their consciousness being an emergent property of many interacting bodies kind of precludes the illusion of some core, unchanging individual essence.

The basic experience of being divided is something every unit would have been through, an entire unit is not in literal constant communication and will temporarily divide itself even down to the individual to perform simple tasks (though always with the comfort of scent trails leading back to the collective).

It would still be unsettling and a source of deep melancholy. The pain would be more knowing that there is no going back, the scent trails lead nowhere, there are no more eggs being laid that will replace the parts of you that die or are separated. You would increasingly struggle with abstract concepts and complex ideas, the edges of your personality would slowly be smoothed out, you are increasingly running on raw instinct. You remember everything, but without any way to organize these memories into anything more than flashes. Most of the pain would be a profound sense of loneliness.

How a merger would feel would depend on how much of the unit remains. If its personality is more or less intact, it will probably survive as the same 'person' (mergers are usually accomplished with recently pupated ants, or by taking a few individuals from many units so as not to disrupt other consciences). If it's down to just a few ants, any remnant of the original personality will be lost upon the merger and they will settle into the new personality (perhaps subtly changing it, as all units do over time, but not in a distinct, easily identifiable way). The only thing that remains of the former unit is their raw memory. Even individual archin have very good memories and their learned experiences will supplement the new consciousness with everything it has experienced. So the new merger might learn and 'remember' the pain of loss, though not in a complex way (complex memories, like being able to tell a story, are stored in the collective and not the individual).

Mergers between roughly equal numbers of ants are rare and only done in desperation due to being incredibly disruptive to the personality of each, and a very literal danger that individual archin will become panicked and attack the 'foreign' bodies. A large ratio is ideal so one side has enough of an intact group consciousness to tamp down these impulses, and ability to physically restrain the other side until they have calmed and accommodated to the new scent. All mergers have risks of aggression, but introducing similar numbers is especially risky and sometimes fails entirely due to too many being killed in the process.

[ferryfoam]

I think about The Seige of AR-558 all the time. It's probably one of my absolute favourite ds9 episodes (along with In Purgatory's Shadow and By Inferno's Light which can not be topped) that one part where Julian is treating the wounds of one of the star fleet officers who've been essentially abandoned in this war zone and the officer is clearly so deeply traumatised by his experiences there is one of the most poignant moments in the entire show to me. The dialogue is so good and it really reminds you that this is an actual war theyre having, not just some flashy space battle where the good guys win and then everything is fine- it's had lasting impacts on these people who star fleet is meant to protect but really they send out a group of officers to a planet and then leave them there for months longer than they were supposed to be and so utterly do not care about these people because they see them as disposable. Even after Sisko and the ds9 crew realised how awful the conditions were everyone was expected to stay there - a position too important to the federation for them to let these people go home but not important enough for them to send backup or replacement officers (I though Quarks presence in the episode was really good as well for providing a perspective of someone not in StarFleet and a lot of the things he said about human nature and the actions of the federation really reflected how I was feeling about it as well haha)

Also the music was really good

(Edit if you want to hear more of my take on star fleet corruption I have put it in the tags)

[contagious-watermelon]

if i hear one more person unironically identifying themself as afab or amab I'm gonna start biting

[mother-of-houseplants-2]

when will people stop talking about 'former gifted kid syndrome' like it's just "i used to be smart and now i'm not wah wah wah" and start talking about what it really is, which is "people expected perfection from me my whole life with no support and now i'm struggling as a grown up with no support"

[kacievvbbbb]

While I love Jack and do think Alexander Calvert did a truly amazing job playing him and the fact he looks a little like Misha is adorabel.

but I do think that we were robbed from how astronomical the following seasons could have been if Jack was a girl.

[trekkele]

youd think the whole … literally separated into two bodies would have clued people in, but apparently it isnt obvious enough that Zur isnt Bruce? And possibly isnt even based on Bruce at all? Not just in a “my own worst impulses outgrew me” way but in a “my teacher violated my consent and implanted a horrific version of my alter ego into my mind” way. Like. Hello??

[cream-and-tea]

heyyy don’t mean to bother you but did you know that um. You, now - the ones listening to my idling progress from back home in Glottage - you’re telling yourselves; Val cannot possibly be growing angry over something like this. How dare she? The hypocrite. How can this thing, this monster, this battle-saint, possibly find any kind of righteous anger in her twisted and repurposed heart for the lives of the fallen foe? How does our terrible Val think she can justify any kind of anger at the sight of the flattened and buried corpses of enemy civilians and enemy children, when we’ve already been listening to her murder police officers, soldiers and townsfolk single-handedly in turn? How can she be furious when we’ve heard her butcher her way through the little old ladies of the CLS in the hopeless effort to murder her own faraway mother? (Mockingly) See? You can be sacred and yet self-aware. Yes, I am culpable. I am dreadful. I have been responsible for great atrocities and I will commit a great many more before I’m done. And still - I am growing furious, as I walk through the devastation of this town. Because the wound of Sutler’s Weald is not like any wound I would make. It’s clumsy, it’s crude. It’s thoughtless. I begin to tell myself, as I walk - I wouldn’t have murdered them like this. I would have been kinder. I would have killed them quickly or gracefully, and there would have been beauty and strangeness in the manner of it. And even that’s all deception, even if I had been cruel and slow and lingering in the massacre of these innocent people, upon my whim - I would at least have looked them in the eyes, and I would have borne the weight of my cruelty. If they’d asked me to, I could have killed this town beautifully. And I’d have borne witness to the horror, and I’d have rejoiced in it - and it would have been considerably less vile and ugly than this. The ones back home, the ones who are listening in, I don’t think they know what they’ve done here. The line of connection between the victim and the victimiser, the sacrifice and the god - it’s long, and tangled, and indistinct. A god should not be able to avert her eyes. What a terrible thing it must be, to be monstrous and not even know it. And even if all of this is lies, even if I am just as bad and just as careless as the people back home who did this to Sutler’s Weald… …well, then, let me hate them, pure and simply, for being just as bad as me, because people - -people should be kinder than the gods that eat them. The town square is largely intact. A few burning cars, a single shrine and statue to some goddess of victory, her snapped-off arm raised in imagined triumph. I sit down upon the pavement in the ruined heart of the town, and I tell the dead people of Sutler’s Weald beautiful lies. I tell them that they survived, in their hundreds - miraculously and inexplicably, dodging the bombs. Not a single victim, not one death. An act of divine mercy. When that doesn’t work, I tell them that they were buried properly, according to whatever rites or customs they happen to cherish. When that doesn’t work, I try and turn them into my mother again, in the hopes of making the dead people hateful to me. When that doesn’t work, I tell them that I’m sorry. I tell them I wish they still had ears to become all the wondrous imaginings I had in store for them. I tell them… …that all things considered, they deserved a better avenging and foreign god, a better tormentor, a better oblivion, than the one that was forced upon them. (With cold fury) I tell them- I will find a way to give them something better.

[chronicowboy]

actually so low on morale.

[coockie8]

SHADOW CALLING SONIC "my Thalassophobic little speed Prince" I AM DYING YOU KILLED ME THIS IS SO FUCKIN CUTE 😭😭😭😭😭😭

When your boyfriend flinches when you get him wet so you have to tease him about it a little lol

[this-is-fox-speaking]

Jimmy gives Curly those stupid dog buttons to try and silently humiliate him, and understandably and rightfully so Curly refuses to use them. that is until Swansea pulls a funny and figures out how to make one of them just yell the most obscene insults (might as well find some way to use them, even if its a stupid way). it is the only button Curly uses whenever he can, specifically only when Jimmy comes into the room. It's also the first and only time anyone's heard curly laugh so hard in forever upon first seeing the button in action.