#tw death and dying

[skywalking-through-life]

Hey friend!! I thought I'd give you a challenging one, hehehe: you get a free pass to kill anyone, who is it? - Hermes

Oh my friend, you love giving me asks that make me think, and then subsequently make me word vomit, lol.

(Obviously a MAJOR CW here for death, dying, and the idea of killing vs. assisted natural death.)

I've actually been thinking about this for a few days, because I feel like my basic answer might seem, upon a first read, I don't know...trite? Overly moralistic? Abstract? Naive? But it's what I believe, so I'll try to explain a bit, operating under the assumption that there is a *reason* for killing, and that it isn't just random.

I don't want to kill anyone. I never have, and I hope I will never feel that desire.

Does that mean I don't understand how righteous anger, fear, desperation, and/or desire for justice might lead a person to experience those feelings? Of course not - there are a thousand wrongs in this world that I wish I could make right, and if I thought that killing one person might do that, of course I'd be tempted! But I don't believe - practically, materially - that any one person's death makes the world safer or better to the degree that I would compromise my moral stance on murder. I belong to a faith that values non-violence above many other values, and so killing of any kind is something my people grieve, and take very seriously.

There are many reasons for that, but here are a few key ones, summarized as I understand them:

1) Who am I to decide who deserves to live, and who deserves to die? What knowledge, insight, power, or moral clarity do I possess to be able to make such a choice? Can I be sure - 100% sure - that it is worth making? Anyone who claims to have that sort of undisputable wisdom is a person I find difficult to trust - death, and the things that lead up to it, are rarely as straightforward as anyone tries to make them out to be.

2) We do not - and cannot - know what may result from a person's death. Take out one tyrant, and another rises up to take his place - perhaps committing even worse atrocities than the first. Out of revenge, kill a person who committed a crime of desperation, and you only add to the desperation - you don't fix the problem that led to the crime in the first place, and perhaps you create a whole new generation afflicted by it.

3) Relatedly, killing creates a vicious cycle of violence. If we repay a wrong with a wrong, all that happens is that there is more wrong - which oftens spirals out of control, bleeding out into places where innocents are harmed. And once we reach that place, it becomes difficult to parse the innocent from the guilty - which leads us back to the question of: how do we know? How do we decide? Can we make that decision without knowing for sure? True justice is rehabilitative at its core, not just punative. If we give into our urge to punish people for real or imagined crimes, we eventually become the perpetrators of crimes ourselves.

Now, all that being said: there are times when I think a person might very reasonably desire death for *themselves,* and need help and advocacy to have the sort of death that is meaningful to them. In my line of work, I spend hours every week with people who are dying, sometimes in terrible, painful, undignified ways. For many of them, the idea of death is scary, but for many more, it's a relief - an end to a disease process that is 100% going to kill them eventually (and probably soon), we just don't know exactly when or exactly how. Some of these folks want to be able to take charge of their looming death, and want to meet it on their terms. I support their right to do that in whatever ways are meaningful, consistent with their values, and legal - but that is a choice *they* are making, and must make themselves, not a choice I could or would ever make for them.

There is an important distinction here between 'killing' and 'allowing natural death' that is always relevant to my field, but one that I thought was relevant to this answer too - I include it as a caveat, to explain that I do not necessarily view death as evil. It will come to us all in time, and I do think it matters how we prepare to face it.

[mari-lair]

First Loop

[mournfulroses]

Sylvia Plath, from The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath; "Lady Lazarus,"

[faeriekit]

Feet on the Ground

loose phic phight fill for @oldfashionedbattlehymn

warnings for: murder attempt, discussion of child death

********

Danny wakes up in a garbage bag.

It isn’t as gross as it sounds. Danny’s the only thing in there, and it’s not like the lack of air is going to kill him; he could rip his way out, but honestly, going intangible is just as effective and twice as easy.

And, of course, once he’s phased his way out of the dumpster behind the gas station, Danny is very, very grateful that he didn’t even try. Everything else in there is….eeugh. He shivers.

Well. It’s got to be early morning now—it’s dark. There’s no other cars on the highway. Even the gas station itself is closed, and the stars have already lost their spark.

Time to head home.

*

Danny wakes up behind the gas station. Again.

…Okay?

The first time, Danny had just assumed he’d fallen asleep somewhere weird while flying around the neighborhood, but a second time is a pattern. It’s definitely not his fault this time either, because there’s no way he would have duct taped his arms and legs together or slapped a gag on his mouth.

That’s kind of. Ominous.

Danny frees himself of the garbage bag first— and thank goodness he doesn’t have to breathe— he floats himself out of the bag and the dumpster, which had…thankfully been given a good scrubbing since last time? There’s some other trash, apparently, but nothing sharp enough to cut through his durable, tape-based bonds. It takes some finagling and some eye lasers for Danny to finally get his arms free.

And. Hoo Boy. There’s no more liberating a feeling than peeling tape off your mouth, even if your mouth skin kind of comes off with it and you bleed a little. But it’s fine! It’s green, which means it’ll heal.

Fabulous. Danny zooms off invisibly into the night, more than willing to put the night behind him.

*

…Okay, the third time is what makes it more than a coincidence.

Danny shucks out of the bruise-tight ropes around his wrists, torso, knees, and legs, spits out his gag, and flies home. He finally has to give into the inevitable, and attempts the last resort:

“Jazz?” he whispers, slowly rocking his sister in her bed. Jazz mumbles in her sleep.

“Jaaaaazzy…” Danny tries again, trying not to look either too spooky or too imposing. Jazz’s reflexes are such that—

The laser she keeps under her pillow goes off. Danny loses a few millimeters of hair, which means that her aim is getting better.

 He doesn’t have any trouble seeing in the dark (or, uh, not anymore, anyway), but it’s easy to see Jazz’s sleepy squint as she pulls herself somewhat upright. More like a shrimp with scoliosis, but, well. You know.

“Whuh,” Jazz asks. “...Danny?”

“Hey,” Danny whispers, a ghost at her bedside. Jazz grunts. “Uh. What does it mean when you keep waking up in a trash bag behind the gas station?”

Jazz blinks. Jazz rubs her eyes. Jazz blinks again, looking more sleepy than coherent but at least somewhat aware of her surroundings.

“Garbage bag?” Jazz asks blearily. “You were in a garbage bag?”

“Yeah,” Danny whispers back. “My legs were tied down?”

“...Danny, were you murdered?”

Danny stops.

“Huh?” says Danny.

*

“So, if you look here,” Tucker points out, finger not quite touching the glass of his CRT monitor, “That’s when Danny gets murdered.”

There is a collective eeew from the assembled viewers— Jazz, Sam, and Danny, all crowded in Tucker’s room.

“Yeah, Tucker agrees. The light from the black-and-white footage flashes in the reflection of his glasses. “Here’s where he’s tossed in…there. And this is when they tossed him in the dumpster.”

There’s no sound on the gas station surveillance footage, but Danny imagines that his body clanged on the way in. What the hell. Danny got murdered behind a gas station, and he didn’t even notice?!

They watch the archived footage of a Ford F-150 driving off the property, and then Danny’s dead body being unceremoniously tossed in a dumpster. It’s kind of surreal. No one had noticed. There was no one to report the crime committed.

“I can’t believe that guy just clocked you over the head, like that,” Sam points out. “It’s just a regular car jack. It shouldn’t have gotten you in the first place.”

The observation isn’t appreciated.

“Be nice! My brother was just murdered,” Jazz scolds. Danny doesn’t think she sounds as offended as she should be. “Either way, it’s certainly an attempted murder, if not a successful one. We have to do something.”

“…Can’t we just call the cops?” Tucker asks, turning away from the computer. “I mean. Look. That’s proof. We have proof right here.”

Sure enough, there is footage. Right there. There’s Danny’s murder, in 240p black and white.

“Where’s the body?” Sam asks dryly, and. Uh. That’s a problem they’ll have to solve.

Everyone looks at everyone else. No one has a good solution.

“…Do we have to do this?” Tucker realizes at the same second as the rest of them.

Jazz looks at Danny. Danny looks at Sam. Sam looks at Tucker.

Tucker stares back at them, entirely unenthused with the conclusion they’ve come to.

“…Okay then,” Jazz exhales. “How do you want to do this?”

*

Sam ends up on top of the gas station, a cell phone in her hand.

Tucker, PDA in hand, sits in Jazz’s passenger seat. The camera feed is ongoing and recording for posterity.

Jazz taps her fingers on the wheel of her car. There isn’t anywhere better to hide than down the road and around the corner, so she does, hoping that they’re on the other end of the road from whoever’s killing her brother every night.

Danny is, of course, wandering through the neighborhood.

Losing her baby brother—on purpose—is the worst thing Jazz can imagine. She feels sick. She wants to throw him into the car and speed away, and break every speed limit law in the county on her way out. She wants to pack him in bubble wrap and ship him expedited to France.

But she does leave her brother alone. She lets Tucker look over the footage as Danny roams around town, just as unaware and unsuspecting as his last few outings.

Tucker sees the man first.

He bolts upright, eyes on his PDA. “Jazz.”

Her head whips around. They watch, silently, as someone approaches Danny’s lone figure on the doorstep outside the gas station.

They can’t hear anything. That’s the scariest part.

“Call,” Jazz demands. Tucker does.

Doubtlessly, on the roof of the gas station, Sam is dialing too.

*

So. Danny knows this guy.

And. Uh. It’s kind of embarrassing; he’d asked if Danny was okay walking home alone at night a few hours before his dumpster wake-up call, and Danny had said it was fine.

Apparently, no, it wasn’t fine. That being said, Danny hadn’t been expecting a guy in a button-up and khakis to be the guy murdering him on the down low. He kind of looks like the dude who sells you televisions and burner phones at a Wal-Mart.

The guy comes all the way over to where Danny is sitting on the thin concrete step of the gas station. His breath fogs up from the weather and his eyes rake over Danny, up and down; down and up.

“Hey,” he says, looking all the world like any other concerned citizen. Danny’s heart throbs. “It’s cold outside. You need a ride back to town?”

“…No,” says Danny, who doesn’t.

“Your mom okay with you comin’ home late by yourself?” the man asks nervously, hands going to his hair.

Danny thinks about how many times he’s woken up in the dumpster. He thinks about seeing his own body on the camera tape. Prone. Dead.

“You still keep a car jack in your passenger seat?” Danny asks instead.

The man freezes. An attempted murderer he might be, but he’s not exactly an Oscar-winning actor. “What?”

“The car jack,” Danny repeats. He doesn’t know if he’s mad the man keeps targeting him, or whether he’s grateful Danny’s the only one who’s died so far. “It’s got a lot of sharp corners. They hurt, you know.”

The man…carefully laughs the statement off, but he looks. Nervous.

Danny doesn’t really need to confront him; he only has to stall long enough that Tucker or Sam can call the cops, so that they can see this man’s face and get him on the record. But.

There’s a part of Danny…

The man looks so human. Flush with blood. Solid enough to break. Fragile enough to be made broken.

Danny still resents being made dead. This man didn’t kill Danny—not in any way that mattered, but he’s an easy target.

He doesn’t breathe. The man watches a boy sit in the shadows of a building where he’s been dumping bodies, and Danny can taste his fear.

“It hurt a lot,” Danny says, and he isn’t referring to waking up in the bags every couple of mornings in the last few weeks. “It hurt so much. I was screaming.”

The man is silent.

“Do you like to hear the screaming?” Danny asks, suddenly curious. Did he care, if Danny had screamed, or if he had been too unaware to notice he was dying? Would he have cared, if there were others more breakable than Danny that he had hurt?

He doesn’t answer.

“I don’t like it,” Danny confesses. In a horrible way, it’s easy to tell his would-be murderer about his death—unlike Tucker or Sam, who witnessed it, or Jazz, who loves him, this man can’t be affected by Danny’s take on his own death. In fact, if he is hurt by the thought of Danny’s death…good. It’s better if he is. If there is remorse in him. “I don’t like to hear screaming. I screamed for so long, and so loud. It felt like forever.”

The man’s hands curl. He steps back.

Danny can’t help but to frown. If he leaves, the whole point of calling the cops will be for nothing, and he’ll be warier of coming back to where Danny’s body was dropped. “Where are you going?”

The man takes another step back. Danny rockets upright. He’s on his feet in seconds. “Weren’t you here for me?” Danny asks, genuinely confused, arms outstretched. “We’re here. You dumped me here over and over again.”

“Shut up,” the man snaps, startling the both of them with his volume. “He—you’re not real. You’re… Be quiet. I have real things to get done tonight!”

Danny’s dead heart throbs. Is there another dead kid? Did Danny let another kid get killed in Danny’s place? “Do you?”

The man loses his voice.

“We’re already here,” Danny points out. He steps closer—closer to the truck that drove his dead body around town, further from the dumpster where his body had been dropped. The disposal hadn’t been a funeral, but it’s closer than anything Danny’s ever had. “You’re here. I’m here. Aren’t you here for me?”

A choked breath. Danny gets closer. The ectoplasm in his skin is too warm and too cold—but he has no idea what he looks like from the outside. Is he glowing? Is he see-through? Does he just look like any other dead kid: a little too cold, a little too pale?

They’re eye to increasingly shorter eye. Up close, the man just looks like any other guy. Shaved in the face. Wrinkles around his eyes. A nose. A mouth.

Danny’s not afraid of him. His head tilts. “You’ve already killed me three times. What are you going to do now? I’ll just come back again. I won’t even notice. I died. I know what you look like—I know how to find you. It’ll be easy.”

The man’s pupils dilate—

And then there’re hands on Danny’s neck. And. It’s kind of painful, but Danny doesn’t have to breathe. So. He just kind of…pretends to be hurt?

He’s meant to be stalling for time. The cops are coming. All he needs is time.  

So Danny makes some somewhat dramatic sounds and kicks out with his feet, because a fight lasts longer than a passive victim. He lands a hit to the man’s stomach, and another to his chest—he doesn’t drop Danny the way Danny might have expected, but Danny isn’t going to run out of air, so this can last forever until the man lets go. Or does something.

“Stop— coming— back,” the man snarls, and suddenly sounds nothing like the dudes who man the tech counter at the Walmart. “I got you— you should be gone!” 

Danny is gone. But he’s also here. And he’s also been gone for a very long time, and he’s also getting choked out by a guy in a gas station parking lot. It’s been a rough few hours of waiting for this dude. He might as well make it worth it. 

So maybe his body turns a little translucent. Just a little. Just enough to see the streetlight through his skin, probably, and the hazy road behind them. 

Getting thrown to the concrete hurts, but, you know, not as badly as getting tossed into a wall by Skulker on a rampage. Danny’s barely going to be bruised after this. 

The guy runs to his car, and Danny frowns, scrambling back up, and, wait. Wouldn’t having bruises be better? As evidence? They better not heal too quickly, or else that’ll be it of his physical proof. 

“Where are you going?” Danny asks, more perplexed and angry than anything. Isn’t he supposed to try to kill the witness??

But the guy hauls butt into the cab of his truck— and then the lights go on and the tires start spinning, the engine roaring to life. 

If Danny wasn’t actively on camera at the moment, it would be easy to fly after the car. As it is, he’s pretty fast, but he’s not quite quick enough on his feet to chase after a pickup truck careening down the highway in the dark. 

The man’s gone in a few seconds. Honestly, Danny’s kind of annoyed about the whole thing. It would have been nice for it to work. 

Sam climbs down from the roof of the gas station, phone in her hand. “No, I just— he choked out my friend and drove off! Send someone over here already!! You— do you need the license plate again?!” 

Danny just looks at her. Sam covers her phone’s mic with a hand: “They’re saying five minutes,” she mouths. 

Great. 

Danny hunkers down, throat bruising, and Sam sits down beside him. They wait.  

By the time the cops pull into the gas station, the guy’s more than out of sight. Sam’s the one who takes the lead on dictating their story. Danny sort of doesn’t realize how out of it he is until someone tries to throw a shock blanket on him. He almost hits the guy square in the face— and Sam’s the one who has to catch his arm. 

Uh. Oops. 

Jazz and Tucker roll in, hardly pretending to have not been nearby; Jazz wraps her arms around him, and Danny lets her. 

Sue him. It’s late. He’s tired. 

“...And I can’t believe you weren’t able to get down the road in time to catch a man who choked out my best friend,” Sam snaps, which, aw! Danny’s a best friend. The cop she’s attempting to strip down for parts looks less sympathetic than Danny feels. “You’re barely a ten minute drive up the highway! What were you doing, meandering?” 

“No,” the cop grits out, eying Sam like a bug on his shoe. “We were telling the officer down the road what to look out for.” 

Apparently, jamming the gas down hard enough to bust your speedometer gets you pulled over at the speed check. 

The night is over before Danny knows it. Someone gets him to the station, someone takes photos of his bruises and takes his statement. Someone calls Mom and Dad and then Danny’s in the GAV, half asleep and exhausted beyond belief. 

He falls asleep on the couch, Mom’s fingers in his hair. 

*

It’s not like the Amity Park police tell them anything, but Jazz is the one who finds the report on the news. 

She records it on the TiVo for him. 

“Eustace Miller, from Tennessee,” Sam reads aloud, knee to knee on his couch. Tucker adjusts his glasses. “Looks like he was already on the run.” 

“Or as good as,” Tucker agrees quietly. “Looks like they’re pinning a couple of cold cases to him.” 

They watch; there’s pictures of him from his hometown, and from the towns he would visit on his joyride across the country. There were pictures of his family. There were pictures of kids Danny would never meet: kids who were already dead, and who had been for months. Years, even. 

They’d looked so happy in the photos from when they were alive. 

…Danny could relate. 

Jazz turns the report off that night, thumb on the power button. And that’s all it takes for Danny to stop waking up in a trash bag. 

[echoingalaxies]

Whumpee is dying, nothing can stop it anymore. Instead of a goodbye - when Whumpee closes their eyes for the last time, when they take their final breaths, when their hand in Caretaker's goes limp - Caretaker whispers "good night."

[sporeclan]

< Previous | First | Next >

Yet another just generally bad time for all of SporeClan :')

[drawsmaddy]

[ID: A digitally coloured ball point pen drawing of Dorian Storm from Critical Role. Only Dorian's left arm, some of his cape, and some of his hair is visible. He is lying on the ground with blood pooling around him, staining his hair and cape. In his hand he holds his sending stone. End description.]

I would like to immediately clarify that I am so sure Dorian is fine, however I absolutely had some angst-ridden fun with the idea that Dorian could've died with the sending stone in his hand just like Orym did a couple years ago

[reallilystuff]

the baba bingies....the woingle woodles.....the skoingle yonkers......

@spadillelicious ULTRA FANART BLAST BEAM 3000!!!!!! 💥💥💥💥💥💥 LOVE UR FIC so much it rattles. around my brain. maraca style. bowmling ball🎳

gonna include the brighter versions bc I can't decide whether i like them or the other one more 😔

bonus doodle for funsies ft. da ynsona? thing? idk

(i like to think the top right doodle is the direct result of the other yn drawing above LMAO)

[shanalikeanna]

"....What have you done?" Fic (Bad Ending) Author: @pluck-heartstrings Read the full fic here I'm BEGGING YOU it's really good I promise TW:Blood under the cut

[yesornopolls]

Are you afraid of dying? Not of suffering before you die, but specifically of dying itself?

[creative-clawmarks]

I have decided that Brian is a ghost in this AU.

Because I know it will make people sad.

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

COMMISSIONS

[bones-of-a-rabbit]

Readerbot’s Alternate Ending: crushed beneath rubble as the PizzaPlex is burned, they have a sort of dying dream before going offline for the last time

(Dialogue is from BMO’s ‘death’ scene, it’s rlly sad for absolutely no reason and I think abt it a lot)

[tart-miano]

Edit: whelp there it goes. Worth a try at least. Here's the playlist by itself. It's set up so that you can follow along on here and see the art that goes with each song (both music and art are arranged in the same order for convenience)

-

HOOOOOOO BOY this was a lot of work lmao, so i got into LGTS this past christmas and after making a playlist inspired by it for myself, i figured i'd make a video of it paired with original fanart!

I'm aware there's a high risk of the video getting taken down for copyright (what i'm doing mostly is just seeing what i can get away with under yt's Ceaselessly Watching Eye and maybe if it goes well i can make more playlist/art videos?? no biggie if it doesn't work out, just testing the waters ig) SO! i'm putting the art on its own on tumblr jic i can't keep the video up. the art is the most important part to share anyways right?

[ghost-proofbaby]

telling myself to continue on like normal and write like normal but how am i supposed to do that when i know my world is ending in 24 hours?

tw for tags: i accidentally rambled on and aired out all my grief for my dog

[electrozeistyking]

I'm putting N and Doll in a time loop AU.

And by which I mean N finds out he's in a time loop and Doll is kinda forced to deal with that because she is the only other person even remotely aware there's a time loop situation going on.

Here's the kicker, though.

It only resets whenever N dies.

It does not restart when Doll dies.

Sure, Doll is somehow connected to it and will taken back to the start with her memories of the last loop, but she is not able to restart the loop herself. She will come back to life alongside of N when it restarts, though it may impact her mental health in some way.

When the loop resets, N always wakes up where he found himself on after getting bootlooped. I did not mean to connect these events; I just didn't want to send N back too far. However, I will admit it's kind of an interesting way to get stuck in a time loop.

Sadly, N and Doll eventually realize that certain events are crucial to progressing forward, so they must play out similarly every single time. If they change too much, it will result in catastrophe and inevitably restart the loop.

N only finds this out when he attempts to save V at the elevator, leading to the very first instances of the time loop restarting. Unfortunately, this does mean N cannot rescue V without putting an end to the loop, and Doll refuses to try in case that ruins it more.

Neither of them are sure why Uzi isn't connected to the loops. She's bit of a unpredictable variable, since her responses or reactions can be drastically different no matter how safe N or Doll play it, but she is NOT aware of the loops. Nori and The Solver are very similar cases.

(I'm naming this the "Double Time Loop AU," after the fact there are two drones stuck in a time loop they're aware of... and also because double time is a thing and it felt clever in a way.)

[j0celynh0rr0r]

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