#timer countdown

[pinacoladamatata]

Can't believe we got Astarion standing outside cazador's house like the sickos meme. Just basking in the sunlight. Like what are they gonna do? Open the door?

Cazador:

Once this sun goes down it's over for you motherfuckers!!

[clonerightsenthusiast]

putting aside their disastrous history on Team B.E.S.T. putting aside how palpable tango's third-wheeling already is. the bdubs/etho/tango trio has the potential to be the most dysfunctional alliance the life series has ever seen.

tango and etho are both the type (in the life series) to attach themselves to a strong personality and follow their lead. usually skizz, although let's also not forget etho was a red banner. and with this trio, that role almost by default goes to bdubs.

except a) for all his bluster, bdubs is not an effective leader. he does not factor others into his plans. and we love him for it. and b) tango and etho, as much as they love him, have absolutely no respect for his leadership.

to put it this way: as much as they loved making fun of him, if skizz said "jump", they would make an effort. if bdubs says "jump", they'll spend so much time squabbling over how high would be best just to troll him they'll all forget what they were doing in the first place.

which leaves three options: decisions in this group are either gonna be made a) by committee (most likely meaning etho and bdubs come to an agreement and tango goes along for lack of other options), b) individually, or c) by whoever yells the loudest and/or is most stubborn about doing the thing they want to do.

it's going to be a trainwreck. and I for one cannot wait to watch the three stooges drive this train off a cliff.

[jenanigans1207]

Jared admitting finally that he actually hated the finale has to be the second to last seal, guys. It has to be. The only thing left now is Jackles and his tapes……

[withacapitalp]

Countdown Pt 3

Part One Part Two

Tw: Slight suicidal ideation and general grieving

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

They only carry a couple things with them on the run. 

Surviving the apocalypse isn’t pretty, and it’s easier to make a quick escape if they’re always traveling light. Essentials only, with a few sentimental items so they don’t completely lose their minds. 

Nancy had her journals, Max had her skateboard (even if she couldn’t use it right now), Will brought a pack of colored pencils, and Steve was pretty sure Hopper had somehow saved a half a pack of smokes. 

And Steve….Steve has a shoebox. 

It’s an old thing, held together with duct tape and decorated with sharpie doodles. Wayne had given it to him right before he left town, along with the necklace that Steve kept around his neck every moment of every day. 

He’s never let any of them look in it. They think he’s insane, but they’re not the ones with zeroed out timers.

This shoebox is all he has left of his soulmate. 

What’s inside would seem like junk to most people. A handful of rocks of varying size, shapes, and colors. A leather cuff with spikes that Steve had immediately put around his timer wrist to hide it from view. A matchbook from a gay bar in Indianapolis, a Spalding bouncy ball. Some hand-sewn patches with logos he didn’t recognize, three different mini figures, a dozen faded beautiful photographs, and a single mixtape. 

Only Robin knew about the mixtape. He had only told her in case they needed a song for him. That mixtape was the only thing in the world that had the song that could save his life. 

But the most important thing in that box was the letters. 

He read one every night. He had promised himself he wouldn’t read more than one. It was routine. When it was his turn to be on watch and the rest of their family was sound asleep, Steve would open his shoebox, pull out a letter, and read it. 

The first one is probably his favorite. It was written in dark red marker on yellow construction paper, the edges ripped and torn with age. The marker bled through the back of the paper where the child who wrote the letter had pressed down too hard, and Steve could imagine the way his fingers must have stained from the ink. Blood red. The same way his fingers were stained when he died. 

7/4/1971 

TWO SULMAYT,

HI.

I AM EDDIE MUNSON. I AM FIVE YEARS OLD. I LIKE TRUKS. YU SHUD LIKE THEM TO. WE CAN WATCH THE BIG TRUKS! 

WHAT IS YUR NAMY? 

BIE

LUV EDDIE

P. S. I HAD A NANA FOR BRIKFEST. YUM. 

There was a picture of two giant monster trucks under the words, and a tiny thing Steve assumed was a banana under the postscript. Steve keeps that one tucked in his jacket pocket, just in case he ever loses his bag or his precious shoebox. 

He keeps the first in his side pocket, and keeps the last one in the breast pocket right above his heart

6/13/1986

Hi Love,

The first one says ‘Two Sulmayt’ but every one after that starts with ‘Hi Love’. 

Steve can’t help wondering if Eddie would have eventually called him ‘Love’ if they had gotten more time. 

Well, if you’re reading this, then I guess my plan to be the one that lived really didn’t work out. Damn, that sucks. Probably a little bit more for you than for me. 

I don't know how you dealt with knowing we only had five days, but I thought it was kinda fucked. Like damn, really? Five? The universe sure has a funny sense of humor, doesn’t it, Love? Or maybe it just hates me. That is also a very real possibility. 

Maybe. But if the universe hated Eddie, then it must hate Steve more for making him continue to live. For giving him other people to love, people to care about, people to force him to not give up. 

Anyways this is how I dealt with it. If you only get five days to have me, I’m going to make sure you know me. Or know who I was at least. One letter a month for the last 12 years, and a bunch of random one off ones from when I was little. Before I lived with Wayne it was kind of catch as catch can with paper and stuff, and I was also like seven, so how many letters do you really want from a seven year old who still can’t spell ‘Difficulty’?

I know how to now, by the way. Mrs. D, Mrs. I, yada yada. Do you ever wonder why all those women are married? I think that’s stupid. Forced conformity, even in our nursery rhymes. 

That joke always made Steve laugh. He’s read this letter so many times it’s starting to come apart at the creases, but it still made him pause and chuckle. 

Anyways. This is yours. Eleven letters a year for twelve years is one hundred and thirty two. Adding in the ones from before, it’s probably around a hundred and fifty. It’s not the same as having me around, but if you spread them out, you might get thirteen years or so before you have to start rereading them. 

Or read them all in one sitting. Do whatever you want. 

Steve had counted. It was one hundred and forty one. He read one new one a night, because every single day they survived seemed like a miracle right now. 

He only had seventy three more left. 

Not like I can stop you, haha. 

That’s probably not as funny to you as I want it to be. Sorry, Love. 

It wasn’t funny. Not in the slightest. Steve wanted Eddie here, wanted him to tell him to wait. He wanted Eddie to write him more letters. 

Oh, I also included a bunch of stuff I thought was too cool to lose, and a mixtape with songs that I wrote for my band. I thought you might want to get to hear my voice. It’s probably stupid, but you don’t have to listen to them if you don’t want to. 

Steve listened to it. They had been forced to scrounge up new batteries for his walkman three times because it kept dying. 

Everything in this box is yours, Wayne has strict instructions to give it to you. And, anything of mine Wayne doesn’t want is for you too.

Wow. A whole trust fund of trailer park trash. Some people leave their soulmates huge inheritances. I left you rocks and pictures and a shit ton of letters. Aren’t you lucky, Love? 

He was lucky. He had seventy three more letters. Seventy three more reasons to survive another day. 

After that…Steve wasn’t sure if he would be lucky anymore. 

Now if you’re good at math- which I hope you are, because I’m terrible at it- then you might be saying to yourself ‘Is my soulmate an idiot? Does he not know there’s twelve months in a year?’ 

No. I’m actually incredibly smart, even though my grades don’t really show it. I rewrite this top of the box letter every year on my birthday, and then I burn the last one. It’s a fun, extremely morbid, tradition. 

I’m 20 today, Love. I wonder how old you are a lot. I hope you’re close to my age at least. Maybe you’re like fifty years older than me, and I meet you when you’re on your deathbed, and that’s why we only have five days. 

They had only gotten five days because Steve hadn’t just taken Eddie and run. He should have just told Eddie to go as far from Hawkins as possible the second he realized. Fuck the rest of the world, fuck stopping the apocalypse. The best part of Steve was already dead. 

Two whole decades, but somehow I’m still in high school. I failed. Again. I wrote a lot about it in my letter last month, so I’m not going to talk about it again. Suffice to say I’m pretty bummed. I mean, c’mon, even Steve Harrington managed to graduate last year, and that guy barely even went to class during senior year. 

That part of the letter always made his stomach turn. He hated the reminder of all the wasted time, the little nudge that always told him it was his fault they barely had any time. 

If he had only looked up. 

Oh, well. This one is it. ‘86 baby! I’d say I want this to be the year I meet you, but I really want to graduate, so maybe hold off for just one more year? Stay wherever you are for just twelve more months, Love, just to be safe. Then I can put a picture of me flipping off my principal in this box for you. I’ll add my diploma in too, just to prove to you I did it. 

Eddie wasn’t going to get a diploma. 

If you wait a year, I’ll give you twelve more letters. So just wait one more year. By then, I think I’ll know what to say to make this better. I’ll know what to do to fill the gap I know you’re going to have. I’ll have something to say that will fix all this. I say that every year, and I never do, but hey, ‘86. 

Nothing anyone said would fix this. Nothing Eddie could write would fill the hole left in Steve’s soul. Nothing. 

I’m sorry. 

I say that every year too. 

Steve didn’t want apologies. He didn’t want letters. He didn’t want a hard to hear voice on a single mixtape. 

He wanted Eddie. 

Well. Happy birthday to me. One more year without meeting you. Eleven more letters. You better be doing something just as nice for me in case it's you that bites it, or I’m bringing your ass back just to kill you again. 

Steve didn’t care if Eddie killed him. Eddie could reappear right now and immediately shoot Steve and he would die happy. He just wanted one more minute. Just a little more time. 

…Wait just a little bit longer. I’ll have better words next year. 

Can you do that for me, Love?

P.S. You should read the first letter I wrote to you, just to appreciate how eloquent and charming I am in this one. 

Eddie called him ‘Love’. Eddie asked him to wait. Eddie wanted to have the right words. He wanted to live long enough to save Steve from his own broken heart.

Steve wishes he had waited.  

[skunkes]

if life is categorized by Before Loss and After Loss then I exist in the before but with a countdown to the after. and the countdown is always always present and debilitating. the loss will be debilitating too but i cant help myself. i will always suffer twice.

[ghostzzy]

my therapist is going to kill me with hammers.

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

You guys know I'm not a proponent at all for the "Medic tf2 has/had a wife" thing but like as an outsider looking in can I just say I kind of hate the way a lot of people will characterize her... Like tf2 both as a property and a community already have so many problems w misogyny and seeing people take this woman who might as well not even exist (I don't think she does lol), who they could choose to write in ANY way they want, and defaulting to like. "horrible controlling bitch" (ESPECIALLY in the context of "horrible controlling bitch who is keeping my gay bois uwu from being together!!!" like you CAN write a lot about the nuances of gay men who marry women but I am begging for Fandoms(tm) in general to abandon the "woman as an obstacle to my yaoi" thing in 2023 please)

[wishingeel]

BRB CRYING ABOUT THE ITHACA SAGA AND HOW BEAUTIFUL AND INTENSE AND GENIUS AND AMAZING AND WORTH-THE-WAIT IT WAS

[mypeggableromance]

it's my birthday!! on one hand it's a day that I can fully decompress and find joy in spending quality time with friends and family, on the other hand Its kinda surreal lol I'll explain in the notes because its kinda dire

[riptide-hiatus-countdown]

[matau-the-228th]

Just a normal day in the space ninja game

[melody-sy]

tce's structure is so unusual it's making me question if saving is necessary....

(i mean it'll probably have some kind of save point... but im thinking, the game's so short anyway, maybe the challenge is to work at it until you can beat it in one sitting. kinda like old arcade games, and cartridges without save batteries...... maybe the alternate route and ending can be strictly no saving, while the normal route is nicer?)

[pinacoladamatata]

BG3 release 1PM ET/10 AM PT !!!!!

[catwhiskerrs]

day 271 without underverse — " well. i dont know what to do with you, so make yourself at home."

[withacapitalp]

Countdown Pt 4

Part One Part Two Part Three

Seventy Three Years. 

Seventy Three Years. Eleven Months. Twenty Nine Days. Five Hours exactly. 

All prime numbers. They added up to one hundred and eighteen, which only had four factors, which was another prime number. Prime numbers were important, since they were the building blocks of all number theory. Every natural number could be broken down into a product of primes, and Dustin’s timer was the ultimate prime lineup. 

Well it used to be. 

His timer wasn’t all primes now. It wouldn’t be for at least another year. He wouldn’t know exactly unless he looked down at his wrist, but if he did, then he would see a number that started with Seventy Two Years. 

He had already missed his one year anniversary with Suzie. 

“Dustin, are you listening?” Nancy whispered impatiently, giving him a no nonsense look. She was holding up a box of bandaids, clearly fed up with his daydreaming. 

“Sorry,” He whispered back, hustling to take them out of her hands and stuffing the box into his nearly full backpack. 

Footsteps crept up slowly behind him, and Dustin turned around just in time to see Robin approaching. She gave him a silent little smile and ruffled his curls, dropping a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in. 

“I think that’s all we can fit in his backpack,” Robin said above Dustin’s head, keeping her voice pitched low, “We don’t want to tip the small child over,” 

If things were different, Dustin would have shouted at her for the ‘small child’ comment. Now he just made a face, pushing up against her hand that was still on top of his head. 

Dustin had never been very good at regulating his volume. He was built to be loud and bright and in people’s faces. If only his teachers could see him now. Calm as a silent sea and patient as Orpheus waiting to hear Hades’s decision. 

Orpheus. Dustin’s first love was Suzie, and his second was science, but there would always be a special place in his heart for mythology, and the story of Orpheus and Eurydice had always confused him. 

It was the devotion to the nonsensical that perplexed him. Their timers had been set, and Orpheus had known his time with her was up, but he had gone to the Underworld anyway. He had done everything he could just to get more time, only to fail, because that was fate.

Dustin couldn’t really understand it. There was no changing a timer, and once the countdown began, you could only surrender. 

Didn’t people understand that? Couldn’t they accept it? 

He knew better now. He had watched Steve pound against Eddie’s chest till his ribs cracked, despite the zeroes on his wrist already telling him that his soulmate was gone. He had seen Robin have to drag Steve away, and listened as she held him while he openly wept and begged her to make it stop. 

Dustin had never seen Steve cry before that, and he hadn’t seen him cry since. If he had it his way, nothing would ever happen to make Steve ever cry ever again.  

“Dustin,” 

This time when he looked up, Nancy wasn’t irritated. Her eyebrows were drawn together, and her eyes were darting around his face, trying to find the problem. 

“Just lost in thought,” He said, zipping up his bag and putting it on his back, “Let’s get back? Rule number one and all,” 

Nancy looked like she wanted to call him out, but Hopper’s rules weighed on them all, keeping her from digging the way she wanted. 

Rules. Rules that ran all their lives now. Anytime they left whatever safehouse they were in, they had to recite them just to be allowed to go. 

Get back as quickly as possible. Don’t radio unless you have to. Stay in your group. Only talk when absolutely necessary. If you see something, let everyone know. Only draw blood as a last resort. 

Ultimately it all boiled down to one thing- Don’t be Stupid. That, and Dustin’s secret rule- Don’t do anything that would make Steve cry. 

The rest of the kids were annoyed by the rules, frustrated by the rigidity of their lives. Dustin was fine with it. The rules kept them alive, and being alive was all that mattered. 

He couldn’t really blame them for not having the same discipline he did though. None of them had seen Eddie’s dead body. None of them had watched Steve fall apart. They had only seen the aftermath- a quieter, more withdrawn Steve, who kept his wrist covered every moment of every day and was religious about making sure they were safe. 

Dustin didn’t like to admit it, but there were times he missed the slightly reckless Steve that used to speed down the back roads of Hawkins and let them hang their heads out his windows. He missed the Steve that would happily argue with him till the cows came home. 

He missed Eddie, there was no doubt about that, but losing Steve too…Dustin had never expected that. 

“Kiddo,” Robin’s voice called, putting Dustin back in his body. They were standing by the door of the pharmacy, and her hand was across his chest, holding him back from walking straight out into the open. 

“I’m fine,” Dustin immediately replied, a spike of anxiety shooting through his chest. The weird spacing out was only getting worse. They had started as just blink and you’d miss it moments where his mind and his body disconnected, and now he was losing whole minutes of time. It was scary, sometimes even scarier than the literal apocalypse they were living through. 

“Breathe,” Nancy murmured, putting her hand on Dustin’s shoulder, “Look down at your timer,” 

Dustin did as instructed, exhaling a long slow breath before looking down at his wrist

Seventy Two years. Ten Months. Fourteen Days. Nine hours. Eight minutes. 

He was still alive. Suzie was still alive. They were all still alive. 

Everyone but Eddie. 

“Better?” Nancy asked after a moment and Dustin silently nodded. It wasn’t really better, nothing would make this better, but he was okay enough to get back home without freaking out again. 

They crept out of the pharmacy as a single unit, all three covering each other’s backs as they looked around for any signs of danger. The sky was still grey with streaks of red, but the town was deserted. No people, no demogorgons, no bats. Nothing but the three of them. 

But then in the corner of his eye Dustin spotted something. He turned, just in time to see someone standing in the alley off of the movie theater. Someone he knew couldn’t be there….

No. 

No way. 

This was just another one of his problems. He had upgraded from dissociation to plain old hallucinations, and here was the undeniable fact that Dustin was absolutely losing his mind. 

Unless it wasn’t. Unless this was some kind of miracle. 

They had never gone back for his body after all. 

And El had brought Max back from the dead. 

“Dustin!” Robin harshly whispered as he broke away from the two of them, wandering towards the alley like a man possessed. Her voice tore him out of his trance and Dustin stopped short, remembering the two things he always repeated to himself. 

Don’t be Stupid. 

Don’t do anything that would make Steve cry. 

But…

But Dustin had seen him. And not just in the hopeful dreaming kind of way that he always wanted to. Dustin saw something that he knew couldn’t be real, and he needed to make sense of it, or he might actually go insane. 

So, for the first time since all of this started, Dustin broke the rules. 

[monoshii-wasu]