#this got real pretentious

[warlenys]

everybody dies is maybe the best tv ending ever the idea that there are people who watched it that say “oh yeah the house finale is like? fine? i guess?? it doesn’t really tie everything up though” hello?????? house is presented with every element of his life that the show has ever deemed important to him and asks “which of these, as an ending, could actually make him happy?” first is drugs. he tries heroin, doesn’t work. it’s facile. shallow. not the answer. his addiction wasn’t a choice and has only ever been destructive. it doesn’t define him. it isn’t at all what he’s living for. it can’t be his ending. second is medicine. a puzzle always gives him a buzz. but not forever. it’s superficial. inconsequential. pointless. he needs it to stave off misery, but it doesn’t fulfil him. third is love. “i know you believe in love.” but he’s fucked up every romantic relationship he’s ever had. it’s idiotic to think he could ever sustain one. it’s a fantasy. can’t be that either. fourth is suicide. an escape from all his pain and suffering. a simple resignation. but it’s empty and he’s scared of it. he doesn’t want to die, but he hasn’t found anything to live for, either. he thinks, there’s nothing, then. so he lies there, in the flames. he can’t find a solution and so resigns himself to none. he’ll let the fire choose to take him. until he realises that that’s cowardly. he has to choose his own ending. there has to be meaning to it. so maybe he’ll choose to just continue with his life, as it was, in misery. or maybe he can change. maybe if he chooses to live he can find some meaning, somewhere. maybe. so he decides to get up and leave the burning building, distantly hoping happiness is out there for him somewhere. then he sees wilson. number five. the answer is wilson. and it always has been. he’s the only thing house has been able to consistently love. the only thing that truly fulfils him. the only thing that completely defines who, at his heart, house is. and so he chooses to destroy everything else - every other reason he spent his life thinking he was living for - for wilson. it was all just transport, taking him here. to this happiness. to his happiness. to his ending. to wilson.

[metalhoops]

O how he loves you, darling boy. Oh how, like always, he invents the monsters underneath the bed to get you to sleep next to him, chest to chest or chest to back, the covers drawn around you in an act of faith against the night. - Richard Siken

“There’s something outside my window.” 

Eddie stood in the doorway, shoulders slump and slack from lack of sleep. Steve knew this routine. They’d fallen into it unexpectedly. After Eddie got out of the hospital, he’d come to stay with Steve until they could clear his name. 

They’d hunkered down in his childhood home, the wooden walls of which Steve knew inspired wild imaginings. The shadows cast from the trees on the pool mixed with the silver moonlight and danced like the hair of a dead girl on the surface of the water. They were Steve’s demons. Eddie had brought his own to the Harrington’s house of horrors. 

Steve knew paranoia. They were old partners. Paranoia crept into your bed in the dead of night, apologised for waking you, and kept you guessing with its cold feet and fitful tossing. 

“Let me take a look,” Steve uttered, swinging his feet over the edge of the bed. They dangled inches from the floor but in the blackness, they might as well be hanging over the edge of a precipice. 

He strode barefoot into the hallway, feeling the chill of death in the early April air. In the daylight, the hallway was metres. In the dead of night, it was miles. Eddie trailed after him, acting as a wave in the wake of a boat. In the night, anything could look like the black water of Lover’s Lake. Eddie’s breath on the nape of his neck was all Steve needed to remind himself he wasn’t drowning. 

He surveyed Eddie’s room, switching on the lights, opening the windows, and pacing in strange circles as though mapping sigils in the floor. He checked the closet and behind the door, before he crawled under the bed and felt Eddie slide in beside him. The two were crushed together in the small space, staring at mattress slates. 

There was an intimacy in the confined darkness and a strange, childlike comfort in hiding away from some unknown yet likely imaginary force. Steve felt the rise and fall of Eddie’s shoulders, signalling the slowing of his breath. There was nothing in the darkness, not yet, not anymore. 

“Can you stay here tonight?” Eddie asked. 

It wasn’t the first time he or Steve had posed the question but usually, there was more beating around the bush. They’d both grown tired of formalities. Steve had known the second Eddie showed up at his door that they’d end the night in the same bed. He liked it, more than he cared to admit, more than he should. Like many things in his life, Steve tried not to overthink it. 

“Yeah, long as we’re sleeping on the bed, not under it.” 

“I don’t know, man. You seen the view? That dust bunny? A must-see. That dead spider—.”

“The what?” Steve cursed, shifting closer to Eddie. He felt something crawl over his exposed ankles and kicked out against the blackness. 

“Cool it, karate kid, that was a joke,” Eddie cackled as Steve continued to mutter profanities under his breath as he crawled from under the bed. 

Eddie followed Steve’s awkward little army crawl, tugging at the boy’s ankle and dragging him backwards so he could take the lead. 

“Breaker, breaker this is Eddie the Banished calling for Top Gun King, do you read me,” Eddie breathed into the palm of his hand. Reenacting some unseen scenario Steve couldn’t quite follow. 

For a moment the boy wondered what his life would’ve been like, in another world where he and Eddie had grown up together, instead of himself and Tommy. He wondered if there would’ve been more years of strange yet striking whimsey, that Tommy and by default Steve, had grown out of at a startlingly young age. 

Eddie feigned a strange and static crackle as he clambered into bed and crawled beneath the covers. Steve followed, sliding in beside Eddie. The boy nudged his side as though waiting for something. 

“Rodger?” Steve attempted lamely. 

He wished he knew how Eddie mustered up the sudden lightness. He wanted to be a part of the world the boy escaped to in the dead of night when all Steve was left with were monsters and memories. 

“I’m sorry. I’m not good at this,” He apologised seeing Eddie’s wild eyes trained on him. 

Whenever they were together, Steve couldn’t help but feel like Eddie was asking something of him without saying it. Steve wanted nothing more than to give it to him. If only he could work out what it was. 

“It’s not hard once you’ve done it a few times. You’ve just gotta learn the magic of ‘yes, and.’ Let your hair down a little bit, boy wonder.” 

“I hate to break it to you, but my hair is as down as it gets... Since, you know...” Steve gestured vaguely at himself. 

Eddie’s eyes lingered on the hollow of his collarbones and the hint of chest hair, snaking like vines beneath his low-cut shirt. Steve noticed. He was good at noticing things. In the same way he knew Vicki liked women, he knew Eddie liked men. He was startlingly good at noticing that kind of thing. 

“Don’t wear Farrah Fawcett hairspray to bed? Colour me surprised,” Eddie spoke reaching out as though to touch Steve’s hair, before letting his hand fall in the space between them, thinking better of it.

That was the thing between them. They could sleep together but they couldn’t touch each other in the way they wanted. That would be admitting to something Steve wasn’t ready to commit to. It was his own personal secret, not from Eddie but from himself. Eddie was just a bystander bearing witness to the civil war of Steve’s heart and his better judgment. 

“Say your goodbyes to Henderson because next time I see him he’s dead,” Steve whispered. 

Eddie shifted, settling down for sleep as they’d done other nights. They never talked for long. If they talked it would be an admission that the two of them sleeping together was as much for pleasure as it was for necessity. Steve lay beside Eddie feeling as though his body were a room he was outside of. 

He tried to push the surge of emotions down, as he had all other nights. He felt as though he were holding his head underwater.

The past and the present tangled like fingers through unkempt hair. Unrelated guilts intertwined inextricably. Steve felt like he was drowning, laying beside the body of a boy he wanted to cling to like a life vest, while his eyes lay locked on the black shadow beyond the half-shut curtains. The swimming pool, where a girl had been dragged deep into the blackness. Steve was back at Lover’s Lake. He was in love and he was drowning. 

“Steve, are you okay?” Eddie was on his side, looking at Steve’s profile. 

His heart had circumnavigated his chest and worked its way up into his mouth, making it hard to breathe, hijacking his ears with the erratic beat. 

He tried to use Eddie’s voice to centre himself, to detangle the threads of history from histrionics, so all that would remain was himself and a boy in a bed with hair like history repeating. Steve had hands that wanted to undo time.

He remembered years before when Nancy had been the one that’d made his heartbeat throb like an infected wound. He knew logically, the emotions were the same. He’d sunk into Nancy’s body as one wades into deep water. He wondered what it’d be like to do the same to Eddie. Moreover, what it’d be like to be the water. To be a geyser by the ocean both filling and full. 

He couldn’t breathe. 

“I think I’m dying,” Steve whispered, finding his voice fractured by the thrum of his heart. Eddie’s face shifted to a look of understanding. 

Eddie’s hand was on his cheek, turning Steve to face him. 

“Look at me. You’re not dying,’ Eddie’s voice was stern and self-assured. 

Steve wanted to believe him. He couldn’t. Eddie’s fingers drew circles in his flesh. 

“Can I show you something?” Eddie asked. 

Steve’s throat was clogged shut, still holding his haemorrhaging heart. He nodded. 

“You’ve got something behind your ear,” Eddie muttered, pulling his hand back from Steve’s face to reveal his guitar pick, held on a necklace string. A magic trick.

It shook something loose, deep inside him. He doubled over, buried his face in Eddie’s shoulder and laughed. He took gasping inhales of Eddie’s skin, breathing in cigarette ash and musky cologne.

“That was so lame,” Steve gasped when he found his voice. 

“You loved it,” Eddie argued. 

“I loved it and it was lame,” he confirmed shaking his head. 

A hush fell over the boys. Not the quiet of sleep, but the stillness of contemplation. 

“You want to tell me what that was all about?” Eddie spoke, leaving it for Steve to pick up or push away. 

What was he supposed to say? ‘I want to kiss you and it scares me shitless.’ 

“I thought I saw something,” he replied lamely. 

Eddie’s brows furrowed. They both knew nothing was out there but when you’d been through what they had, some days logic wasn’t enough. It was a lie almost big enough to cover the scope of the truth. 

Eddie shifted, tucking his knee between Steve’s legs, pulling them together so the two were chest to chest, breath mingling.

“We’re fine,” Eddie said with conviction as though speaking the words could somehow make them true. 

They were back to the same old routine.  

The two boys lay crushed close together, leaving space in the sheets for all the things unspoken between them, all the vampiric night horrors that’d burn up come daylight. 

What would remain of the feelings come morning, Steve didn’t know but with his eyelids heavy and Eddie’s hand feather-light on his hip he stopped struggling against the tide of weary want and worry. He closed his eyes, leaned into Eddie’s body and let the feelings crash over his head, a wilful sort of drowning. 

[office-worker-91]

A Better Life

Imagine Gothi taking baby Sips and raising him in order to ensure that her closest friend has a good life this time.

Imagine the stumbling lost princess trying to balance foreclaimer stuff and trying to be a "normal" parent for Sips, which is both something that Sips doesn't necessarily need and something she's incapable of supplying.

Imagine Sneeze going from being the little brother to the big brother overnight, and trying to "toughen up" to keep his friend safe and happy.

Imagine the other party members coming over to visit baby Sips. Erina is a loving aunt-like figure. Gorthan is a goofy uncle. Julian just makes sure Sips doesn't get himself into trouble and die. Jack avoids him because Sips keeps biting him.

Imagine Gothi meets Vicky and has to "introduce" her to Sips, and she doesn't quite get it because she's so young and the monkey she knew before had a crocodile hand and had much more of an edge and he didn't shrink THAT much, did he? But she still loves him regardless.

Imagine Gothi missing her old friend while he sits RIGHT THERE in front of her, a helpless toddler, different and yet the same.

Imagine Sips starts to catch on that he's different, and not just because he's a monkey. His family talk about him like they know more than they reasonably should, and they also say things about him that he KNOWS aren't true. He catches them telling stories about him that he definitely doesn't remember, sighing wistfully. He has nightmares filled with scales and hands and hearts and crystals that he doesn't fully understand but that feel so REAL.

Imagine how lost Sips would feel when Gothi and the others finally tell him that this isn't the first time he's lived this life, nor is it the first time they've lived a life together. How confusing it would be to see the others talk about him like an old friend and a young child at the same time. How hurt he may feel that almost nobody important to him actually came to love him in this life, the life he can remember, the life he identifies himself by.

Imagine Sips slowly gains his memories of his old life back. They're fuzzy and lack detail, but he remembers. He remembers the love and time he shared with his fam- his friends. And he remembers the hardships. The beheadings. The loss of control. He remembers bantering with someone he views as his mother like they were- well, not parent and child. He remembers the pain he felt, and the pain he caused. He remembers, and the trauma starts to affect his life again because oh god HE REMEMBERS. But he's not on the run anymore. He's not cursed. And his frien- his family can look out for him.

Imagine Sips grows up. Some of his friends grow older with him, some don't. Gothi doesn't, and eventually they reach a similar "age." Gothi is thrilled because this is what she WANTED. She wanted her friend back, the one who she danced and fought and bickered and bantered with. She wanted her friend to have a better life, and he HAS one. But everything's not the same, because Sips is just as much a baby monkey she raised as he is her old friend. And they both get confused by this, and for a while they stumble through their dynamic. But eventually they reach stability. Something unfamiliar, but not different.

Imagine that everything isn't perfect and nothing's the same, but Sips gets a chance to live his life, without curses or gods screwing it up for him, with the people he loves so much.

[13eyond13]

actually stunned by how gay The Beatles has been all this time and I just never knew

[crayonurchin]

Whoops I just realised Cammie would be the punkest kid ever

He doesn't yell, he doesn't hit, he doesn't like to hurt, but he's also going to deface every expensive and visually important thing he can in the name of justice and activism.

He's still my little vagabond painter baby but also yeah he's 10000% punk as hell and turns all his indignation of suffering into something those in charge can't ignore

[thewitchqueen281]

I know a lot of people liked the show but also a lot of people liked fallout 4 so idk if any of you mfs can be trusted

[fideidefenswhore]

have you watched succession hbo?

of course. the tudors (showtime) ran so that succession (hbo) could walk

[robotsafari]

was trying to see if i could outclass a triple-a unreal engine game in the whimsy department (i think i did.)

[defeateddetectives]

the worst thing that watching good television[TM] ever did to me is that now even as i passively (borderline hate)watch a generally mediocre show, i cannot turn my brain off and stop wincing at the ON THE NOSENESS OF IT ALL. like how has some of this stuff been nominated for and won multiple awards? (yes we know awards mean nothing and don't speak to any modicum of quality at the end of the day but still) what is wrong with people? i'm going to show up to all their homes in the middle of the night and glare at them with abject disappointment the entire time

[distort-opia]

Your answer about thevrelationship of Batman and Superman's characters made me think of how the Joker is a mirror of Bruce, and how he actively tries to be so much worse than him so that Batman can look good and heroic compared to him.

Hah. Yes, I'd agree that Joker does this intentionally... most of the time. He sees his role as the Villain, the Horrible One in the service of the Bat King; he's meant to challenge Batman and make him better, and part of that is allowing Bruce to cast him as this unspeakable evil that's barely human anymore, and is more a force of nature. But more recently, he's set out to expose Batman's hypocrisy, with stories like Death of the Family and Joker War. These challenge different aspects of Bruce's self image-- the good "father", the good "protector of Gotham". Which honestly is really interesting, despite my misgivings regarding Tynion's writing.

[imflyingfish]

Its weird because i dont actually have much of a desire to move to france or use french reguarly in my life but at this point ive deadicated over a year to learning it so i might as well keep going and finish

[hella1975]

this isn't meant to like. make you give your opinion on Discourse™️ or anything I just wanted to ask, but I keep seeing people upset about taylor dating mr. 1975 and I can't figure out if it's bc he's a terrible person or just a greasy alcoholic 😭😭😭 do you know what's up with that guy??? like on one hand I like not knowing things about celebs and I should keep it that way. but also

i, unfortunately, do know what's up with that guy and it's that he's said something problematic about every faction of society at least once. for me i have some weird, reluctant fondness for him because he is just a train wreck and he's such a twat all the time that at least it's nondiscriminating, and i also like that when he sings about mental illness it's bc he's actually BEEN THERE and been publicly a mess bc of it and been addicted to drugs and acted like a dick, and he ACKNOWLEDGES THAT, but also at no point am i gonna jump on the 'he's an amazing person' parade bc generally he is just a sleazy idiot. it is weird watching people suddenly dragging up every single thing he's ever said to be like 'look! this is why he's bad for our tay tay!' when the running joke with matty healy is that he's just a prick. like u dont need to expose his moral fibre. u can just say he's a prick. and also as funny as the jokes are she's still a grown woman who's been around the block a few times when it comes to dating. i think she will be okay maybe

[stergeon]

for the writer ask

💭🚦💛 💌

💭 What inspires you and your writing?

this is a real marketing major-ass answer (from your local marketing major), but i love sharing knowledge and telling stories. writing’s one of those things that’s a bit of a compulsion for me—i’m always writing something. i took a five-year break from fiction writing before i stumbled ass-first into fanfic last year, but even in those years when i was focusing on my career, i was writing guides and trainings and a ton of other stuff—just not anything fun, lol.

writing is also so cathartic. sometimes i set out to tell a specific story, but at other times, a particular emotion gets me in a vice grip and i have to put it to words before it’ll go away. my stories tend to wind up as emotional dumping grounds as a result.

i don’t write things pulled directly from my own life, but there are bits and pieces of myself and things that have happened to me scattered throughout stuff i’ve written, and usually when i’m about 75% of the way through a piece, i’ll realize it’s absolutely related to something i’m currently going through. funny how art works that way, even when you don’t intend for it to.

and occasionally i just have a fire lit under my ass about an issue and i get so hot about it that i gotta compile my thoughts. looking at you, silver snow

🚦 What sort of endings do you prefer to write: ambiguous, bad, happily ever after, etc.?

look, i would love nothing more for them girls (pick whichever girls you please) to have a happy ending where they kiss and are stupid in love for the rest of forever. i love reading those kinds of stories. but in my heart of hearts, i love an ambiguous ending. i like when there are still questions after the story ends. i like thinking about where things could go or how the characters will go on after the events of the story. like, shared space could be read as having a happy ending, but i don’t really think it is. and with the victors; the vestiges, well. you’ll see :0)

come to think of it, i’m not sure i’ve ever written a happily-ever-after, but i don’t think i’ve ever written a 100% bad ending, either. i read too many bury-your-gays stories and watched too many sad european queer coming-of-age films in my youth to ever be happy putting that kinda thing out into the world. i want to write about love with all its ugliness, but not despair or hopelessness. i think what most appeals to me about an ambiguous ending is that lingering feeling of hope. it’s not the same as the kind you get from a happily-ever-after, and something about it speaks to me.

💛 What is the most impactful lesson you’ve learned about writing?

honestly? how to take criticism. i took a creative writing class in high school where we had to read our work out loud and then receive feedback on it from the other writers in the class, and that did a lot for me. going into that class, i’d already been writing for forever and had won some little local writing contests and such, so i was a wee bit of a pretentious douche. but i’d never gotten real critique before beyond, essentially, spelling and grammar checks. it humbled me lol. it made me grow so much as a writer, and i could see where i needed to improve or where my head was wedged way too far up my own ass for others to follow. it also helped me recognize strengths i didn’t know i had, and that was huge. it’s easy to get into a self-doubt spiral when making creative work, and good, constructive criticism can do so much to help avoid that.

to this day i love critique. i like knowing what worked or didn’t work so that i can continue to improve as a writer and do better next time. did my themes land? did something really work, but another part fall flat? i’d love to know!! i try to treat everything i write as practice for the next thing, and frankly that’s helped take some of the pressure off so i don’t go into total Perfectionist Mode.

i know critique is kind of a sensitive topic in fan spaces, but i think that’s because a lot of people have gotten unsolicited criticism that is purely critical and isn’t constructive. but getting good, constructive criticism will do so much to help a person grow as a writer. it’s scary, and sometimes it hurts! writing is very personal for most people, and it stings when things aren’t received the way you think they will be. but i know i’ve grown more from having my failures pointed out (and, very importantly, having the good things about those efforts acknowledged) than anything else.

💌 Is there a favorite trope you like to write?

actually Just answered this in another ask!

[spoondrifts]

this'll be the summer i remember that i'm a person in the world i just know it

[spokelseskladden]

I've read more books this month than I've done in three years i think

[capaldiera]

someone needs to hire me to write and direct a james bond tv show so i can make a hannibal-level artistic sex scene dream sequence between madeleine and vesper. no i don't have any experience in the film/tv industry