#until you slow down

[jacksprostate]

Before Project Mayhem, before fight club, before Marla, before Tyler — there is still one sad sack of shit.

.

.

The hard part about work trips isn't making the plane or seeing another family of five burnt into their leather seats. It's missing support groups.

See, if you're lucky, the company will send you out to a major city. Cities are great. A little advanced work to find a slightly below average church or library, you're set each night you're there.

It's a bit of novelty, getting to be a new face all at once. People assume you've just been diagnosed. It's never the failed treatments, the degradation of their life and everyone in it, the continuous experience of knowingly dying — none of those things are the worst thing that happens to you.

It's finding out they will.

So people cry. They crowd around, I sob like I've been told I've got stage four colon cancer and three weeks to live. We all cry. I sleep soundly on the plane back or in the nice, four star hotel my company provides me.

Flying out to a small town, though. I'll be awake enough to be hallucinating by the time I get back for Remaining Men Together. The only mercy is that the next time I show for all the groups I missed, I can see who thought I died. I get to be resurrected.

The other part about small towns, you have to take a second, shitter plane to a local airfield, or you have to take a rental car. One of the most popular rental cars available right now, it'll light itself on fire if you use the cruise control at the wrong time. I know this because I sat next to another guy with my job, who worked for a different company, and he said I'll show you mine if you show me yours. So I told him about the faulty airbags, and he told me about the overheating switch.

I prefer to avoid driving.

All the rental place at the airport has left for me, it's one of those flaming cars. I use cruise control. If I don't, one of my narcoleptic spells will send me into the Jersey barrier.

When you drive into these small towns, you have to try to pay attention, or you'll end up a county over talking about the wrong wreck. They're otherwise interchangeable, but the miles on your rental car won't line up and those are the type of records that might get pulled out when the company is finally sued for the big one ten years down the line.

As a result, I see the same decor on the way in every time. Meth lab. Abandoned homes. Garbage fire. Classic Americana. There is no four star hotel here; I sleep the same.

The only reason I've been brought out here is because the poor shithead who drove his truck into the ditch drunk was driving my company's flagship vehicle. It loses power steering if the car jostles the right way going above 55 miles per hour. I've been told to keep track of potential incidents and make sure the company can firmly claim it's not at fault.

We've had this problem for decades, and we will for many more. Sometimes, everything is falling apart.

The job is simple, and I only get tempted by the town's blatant opioid addiction for a day and night. Painkillers would probably make me sleep. The thing about being a recall campaign organizer, though, is like recognizes like. It's not only other Compliance and Liability guys who tell you company secrets while sharing the aisle in business class.

When I'm finally back in my own town, after my own support groups, after crying my eyes out into Bob's meaty middle — I pick up my mail. There's the newest IKEA magazine. Half of it looks like shit. The type of thing you'd only see in some curated art deco, modernist, post-modern traditionalist bohemian minimalist apartment.

I have to have it.

I go to sleep, hard, like God himself tucked me in. I sleep with my wallet net four hundred heavier, because even an IKEA spree tends not to outweigh a work trip. I sleep, with my called in IKEA goods only two short weeks away, my job well done, and I know, my life is complete.

[benevolenterrancy]

~ Extremely Unwilling Magical Protagonists Attempt To Outrun The Plot And Not Fucking Die ~

(@takofukkatsumi this tag is from a while ago but it hasn't left my brain -- L-Space got very weird all of a sudden)

[xxplastic-cubexx]

me Omw to annoy you about more Francesca content 😼😼

you and my entire inbox my friend strap in everyone this is gonna be The Francesca Mega Collection. part one The Bed Collection ft You HAVE To Click/Tap To Read Anything ESPECIALLY The Asks

thank you for joining me for the Francesca Bed Collection im going to pass out

[tblsomedoodles]

The Preferable Alternative-prologue-part 2

Start - Previous (just start) - Next

And here we go! : )

[saturdaysky]

a little morning pick-me-up

-

A morning on the way to Baldur's Gate. The party booked themselves into an inn and enjoyed real beds, hot baths, and privacy for the first time since the Nautiloid.

Gale and Mayhew shared a room, of course. They were filled with the relief of surviving the shadows and the glow of finally getting together, so their private room was probably a blessing for the whole party, honestly.

-

This was some ascended anatomy practice! Referenced some great stock from @null-entity.

[fantastic-nonsense]

I will always take any chance I have to remind people that Wesper knew each other for 5 months and had only been dating for a week when they decided to move in together while Kanej were best friends for two years before they so much as admitted they liked each other

[royalarchivist]

Jaiden: Cucurucho, you have a lot of power, right?

Cucurucho: ...I don't know. Maybe.

Roier: Ah... Yes, you know, don't act like a dumbass, you have it. You have it, man. Eh?

Jaiden: Is there a way for us to protect all the Eggs? Do you know? I don't want anything to happen to the Eggs that happened to Bobby.

Cucurucho: Ha ha ha

Roier: WHAT? [Smacks Cucurucho]

Jaiden: [Bops him] Headpats.

Cucurucho: Maybe.

Jaiden: [Continues to bop him] Headpats. C'mon, I can get it out of you! Headpats! Chin scratches! Belly rubs!

Roier: [Joins Jaiden in bopping Cucurucho, chuckling and laughs]

Jaiden: Yeah? He's comin' around!

[Jaiden and Roier both laugh]

[robot-singularity]

Alright, in honor of @oldbutchdaniel 's Fan Fiction Fridays, I had an idea for how the 70s chase era of devil's minion might go, but I'm not great at full fledged writing so! Plot beat bullet points:

Daniel wakes up in a drug den, dried blood down to his ankles, massive neck wound, and the knowledge that vampires are real. He then realizes that, shit, he doesn't have the interview tapes/any solid evidence that would prove it.

Goes back home, patches himself up, and within a week decides to backtrack to Divisadero street and try to remember which apartment they were in. Maybe Louis left something, anything that could be concrete evidence that vampires exist and he was attacked by one. Or better yet, he might find a single cassette of the hours of recorded tapes.

So, Daniel heads towards Divisadero, and, with the slightest bit of self preservation, decides to go during the day. Vampires can't go out in the sun, so. Should be safer, right? 👍

Cut over to Armand, in the main room of the apartment, cleaning up, patching the wall, trying to fix the northward slant of the floor, when he looks up and Daniel's standing in the doorway. (Maybe the door wasn't locked, maybe Daniel picked it, maybe he went to pick it and found it was unlocked.)

They stare at each other for a beat. Armand thinking that there's no way this boy is That stupid. Daniel thinking oh shit, I just broke into this guy's house. This kind of? familiar? looking guy? Which could either be deja vu or I'm still mildly concussed.

They talk back and forth for a minute, until it eventually devolves into Daniel getting told to leave, refusing, and then Armand asking hey, how fast can you run? I'm going to hunt you down, so. Go, now. Start running.

Daniel books it, out the door, down the stairs, door opens, door closes. Starts down the street, only to slow, stop, think it over, and starts going in a different direction, patting down his pockets to see if he has any money for either a payphone or a taxi or maybe a plane ticket if he can manage to get to the nearest airport.

And! The chase begins.

[fiepige]

Did somebody say more Hobie GIFs?

No? Well have some anyways <3 (Theme: Hobie and all his hand gestures) Part 1

[m4gp13]

Thinking about Luke's thread being cut before Percy even got to camp, thinking about Al's siblings being dead already by his first on-page appearance, thinking about Ethan having made the trade that sealed his fate before we even met him, thinking about The Oresteia "This was always going to happen. She's been dead since the beginning." thinking about John Darnielle "Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear on-screen." thinking about Matthew Stover "This story happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It is already over. Nothing can be done to change it."

Thinking about Richard Siken "You're going to die in your best friend's arms. And you play along because it's funny, because it's written down, you've memorised it, it's all you know. I say the phrases that keep it all going, and everybody plays along."

Thinking about how fate is a tangible and unavoidable thing in the pjo world and every single time, it stakes its claim no matter what the characters do to avoid it. The three Fates know when your string will be cut and have full control over it. The oracle always knows who will die, where and when, while the people in question can only cross their fingers and hope the prophecy isn't referring to them. Because if it is, then it is.

[saturnsorbits]

Hot and heavy sex with FuckBoy!Sero that slowly turns into the slow, deep, hand-holding, forehead to forehead, can’t look away as you feed off of each others moans sex… Please and thank you.

[bigeloo]

Today's work doodles

[ssruis]

(Wrt last post) If only to emphasize how my brain likes to give me insane pronunciations of things I 100% did the Persephone as “purse a phone”, I did Aphrodite as “a pro three dight” (not even the right order of letters???), suddenly had my brain decide yacht was yackt way after I’d learned how to say it, said the word crimson as “crime son”, and pronounced Bordeaux as “bore docks” after taking enough French to know that’s not how it’s said. I cannot highlight enough that I’m not dyslexic, I’ve always scored in the 90-99th percentile for english and reading standardized testing, I read unfamiliar words phonetically automatically, and was always reading both constantly and above my age group as a kid. It just so happens that I’m also dumb as all hell and if you show me a new word I will still find a bizarre and completely wrong way to say it at least 30% of the time. I’m simply stupid and bereft of brain cells or intelligent thought in most arenas of life.

[gt-daboss]

GT Writing/Reading Question

Ive been writing GT stories for some time now, and reading them for much much longer, so I'm curious what the consensus of this topic is (my opinion and reasons in the tags if you're curious)

[plutosoda]

🫡

[sizzleissues]

When people pause an animated tv show during movement and say ‘eew why does it look like shit’

I’M COMING INTO YOUR HOUSE WITH A POWER POINT PRESENTATION ABOUT SMEAR FRAMES TO SHOW YOU AFTER I WHACK YOU WITH A STICK

When people zoom in on a character in the background ‘eww why do they look like that. L this animated TV show is so low quality and bad’

I’M IN YOUR FLOOR BOARDS AND CLIMBING IN ABOUT TO TELL YOU ABOUT A THING CALLED ‘WHY FUCKING BOTHER TO DRAW A CHARACTER WHOSE 3 PIXELS WIDE CORRECTLY ON SCREEN YOU AREN’T SUPPOSED TO ZOOM IN AND IF YOU ZOOM OUT YOU’LL SEE EVERYTHING ELSE IS FINE’