#wheeee im done.... its in the universe.....

[swordbreakerz]

It read about legs and looked up videos explaining how humans moved. The electric chase through nerves to muscles, the pull and stretch, the delicate hinges of powerful bone.

-

@penumbrabang the second! I had the privilege of working on Nothing Evergreen but Change by @cartograffiti, and had an absolute blast getting as weird as possible. Their fic is an excellent Ruby 7 character study and I implore everyone to check it out because it made me feel like goo

[endless-whump]

S/O: Fragments of a Shattered Being

CW: conditioning, guilt, grief, referenced noncon, fluff, 

Masterlist

(Takes place right after Allowed to Love)

I’m on a roll y'all wheeee and *glares at self* im allowed to write small things im allowed to write small things

---

It was dark, when Simon came home

Oliver was perched on the bed, hugging his knees as he rocked slightly, nails digging into the material of his sweatpants.  He couldn’t sleep, he hadn’t expected to anyways.  All that consumed him was an overwhelming feeling of shame and guilt for what he’d done.  Mia had said he would come back, but he wasn’t so sure.

So when the familiar sound of footsteps sounded from down the hall, the floorboards creaking in a way Oliver instantly recognized, his heart lurched.  

He’s here he’s here he’s here

I want him here

Why is he here

He flinched when the doorknob turned, the door opening loudly on its old hinges.  He could see Simon’s shape even in the almost pitch dark, his shadow moving along the wall, illuminated by the small night light plugged in next to their bed.

“Simon?”  he whispered, voice strained.  He knew it was Simon, he knew, but it was dark and his heart was racing and-

Oliver's thoughts stopped in their tracks when Simon crawled into the bed without a word, curling up with his face buried against Oliver’s shoulder.  He was stunned for a moment, blinking in the darkness before slowly wrapping his arms around the older boy.

He was shaking, Oliver realized.  It took him a delayed moment to realize he was crying.  All his anxiety dissolved in a heartbeat, the feeling replaced with deep worry.  He pulled a blanket over them, pulling Simon closer as he ran a hand up his back and neck, up to his hair to run his fingers through it.

The sound was agonizing, tears soaking into his shirt.  He rarely ever saw Simon like this, the sheer vulnerability a stark comparison to how well he usually kept himself in check.  It shook Oliver, scared him even, but that wasn’t enough to make him freeze up.

No, Simon needed him right now

He resisted the urge to let the training, or the urge to be good take over.  He remembered nights like this with someone else, where he was expected to make someone feel good to take away the tears.  That's what he was taught.  That's what he knew he was supposed to do to make someone feel better.

Simon didn’t need that, though.  Oliver knew that.

So he pushed away all the training, all the being good, and he was just there.  Simon just needed someone there to make up for all the times he had to be that someone.  Someone cracked inside him, something scary but good, an ability to care for someone in a way he never felt capable of before.

“I’m sorry,”  He whispered, holding on tight.  He rubbed circled against Simon’s back, knowing there were scars there, underneath fabric, that hurt just as much as his.  He rocked back and forth, letting him cry it out, murmuring things almost without even realizing it.  He buried his hands in Simon’s hair, thumbs brushing across his temples and wiping away tears like what had been done for him so many times before.

It leveled the two in such a jarring way, made Oliver realize they were so similar in ways he’d overlooked for so long.  Simon was hurting so, so much, was just as powerless as him in the face of everything they had been through, everything they were trained for.  He was used and torn apart just like Oliver was, but it was done for Oliver, just like he had been for Cedric.

The thought made him sick, tears filling his eyes as he tried to comfort the other, grabbing a blanket and dragging it over them both.  He moved Simon onto his side, holding him and reassuring him with touches that always worked with him.  A thumb brushing across his cheekbone, a hand running up into hair, a kiss pressed to the top of his head.  Oliver held him with the importance and care of holding a universe together, the fragments of shattered being like stars holding everything together.

Simon eventually quieted, fingers shaking as he clutched onto Oliver’s shirt.  He looked so small, curled up so tightly under the blankets in the dark.  Oliver brushed the hair out of his face, tenderly tucking a strand behind his ear.

Silence hung between them, a quiet understanding of grief and a desperate need for solidarity.  Simon leaned into the touch, eyes shut, all the tension leaving as if he didn’t have the energy to hold it any longer.

Oliver might not have been able to carry Simon, or protect him in all the ways he wished he could, but he did what he could, and he held him like his life depended on it

---

taglist

@insanitywishes @18-toe-beans @castielamigos-whump-side-blog@simplygrimly @cinnamonflavoredhugs @finder-of-rings @deluxewhump @ashintheairlikesnow @briars7 @albino-whumpee @thatsthewhump

[thedapperrabbit]

She-Ra Rewatch: season 3 and onwards through season 4, and boatloads of Introspection time!

So Ive been rewatching She-Ra with my partner, because sharing Entrapdak is caring. I could probably squee on about that for a century or more (because eeee, sharing things i love with people i love AND THEY EVEN PAY ATTENTION TO THE THINGS AND REMEMBER THEM!)...but ill spare you, kind internet strangers who for some reason find my thoughts mildly interesting enough to be reading this. This is going to be a lot. Like, a LOT. A lot especially from a stranger that youve probably only seen a notification from due to me sticking a heart on your content or for reblogging something lovely youve made in pictures or words. I dont think anything is going to be violently trigger-y because im not always great at judging that stuff and also ive yet to feel quite comfy enough to be  fully open-posting specifics about my own past trauma, other than a vague allusion to self-harm and distant-ish unspecified abuse aaaand the usual childhood garbage truck of assholes....but i suppose you could possibly draw some darker potential conclusions from the content im focused on. Also, my ADHD makes it incredibly hard to keep to a straight and non-branching narrative so...ramble-y bits and expressions of brain frustration ahoy. Either way...you are forewarned, just in case. Sorry in advance, this is going to be a small booklet by the time Im done explaining, and thinking, and then attempting to stick words to abstract feels which sometimes im great at, and then others i fucking suck at...but at least this is all written and not me trying to say this to any of your faces! Thats....a mercy all of its own. Haa...  Anyway, while rewatching with my partner, I realized just how much more painful parts of it are to sit through now...they were the first time, and each time since, but NOW having spent a while mulling over the series as a whole a bunch, and reading a lot of other peoples writings on here and finding myself largely in agreement with most Entrapdak fan’s assessment of things, I just....feel like all the air is ripped out of me during some moments, watching  with keener insight. And despite thinking i had myself reasonably well figured out by my age, its all also made me further consider a few things about myself as well. Particularly my notable internalized fury response to chunks of it which have been consistent through all my viewings of SPOP. With Hordak at least, its way easier to understand my reactions. For me at least. Maybe not so much for the people around me. And, shittier due to intensity and subject matter, but still easier in the long run because...the broken bits in me that he resonates with are fresher and sharper and still more recent, like within the last ten years, and thus more towards the front shelves in my head, compared to things that resonate with Entrapta, which are all old, lifelong dull aches at this point. I feel like nothing i can point to is fully sufficient to fully express my feels involving Hordak. But, maybe the best representative moment is with the crying i do every damn time I see his face looking up at Prime just after he glimmer and catra were beamed up...because ive seen that face in the mirror. I HAVE MADE THAT FACE. That same. Goddamn. Face. I may not have gotten a jab to the back of the neck directly from the person I made it at...but they often seemed to silently goad me to harm myself in an attempt to jolt my brain out of getting stuck in re-looping through what theyd just done/said to me. Likewise, much of his interactions with Entrapta are very...very weirdly familiar in feeling, but in a good way. Watching the stuff with Hordak hurts because fuck me if it isnt frequently like watching myself back in 2008ish to 2013, which was the duration of the worst parts of that particular circle of hell i parked my ass in. So...that makes sense. Hes so well written in those moments, it occasionally gave me PTSD flashbacks (still does a little, but now im prepared and braced for it and can shrug it back off....thanks, lifetime of therapy and years of studying abnormal psychology! Still totally not an expert, just very passionate...just, as a disclaimer).  Entrapta though...Entrapta is a different story. Mostly, I see Entrapta and in her free expressions of delight and joy and her bouncy enthusiasm I am reminded of a younger, less discouraged me in some ways, and in others, a “me” I could have been, but...well, extremely early-onset anxiety and depression made me insanely self-conscious super-super early on...not that i was great at hiding or...i guess the term people seem comfy with is “masking”? Which was a huge problem, or so it was in the 80s when far less was understood of such things. Id do so for a bit and then would forget to, in a way (because id forget long enough to go and trust again reflexively) and would get badly bullied and would squish everything down until id feel a crumb of safety again, and then almost instantly ADHD would pop that mask right the rest of the way off aaand it would start all over again. Ad nauseam until my teen years, where the depression sort of “fixed” that, and made it much easier to destroy my desire to share much of myself freely at all, save for with one or two people, and to a less deep extent a broader circle of nerd friends. Course, then i hit 30 and ran out of the majority of fucks I used to give. Or I became so damaged and salted with anger that parts of me dont grow any fucks anymore? Either way, plowshares to swords, WHEEEE!) And, maybe thats where this time while watching, I started to really think back to all that, and to how i see Entrapta treated by the other princesses, or really just in general except by Hordak...and why it burns my biscuits so badly. Every time I see someone roll their eyes at Entrapta’s beautiful unbridled enthusiasm or try to make it seem distasteful or at least weird and unwanted and uncomfortable for them but then dont even bother to try coming to terms with why they feel that way... or how they seem to feel free to grab and manhandle her without her consent, or the way they try to lessen her contributions because shes non-normative? Like its the fucking least she can do to make up for being weird in their space (...okay, that might just be the anger kicking in..but i dont feel like its an entirely innacurate assessment, is it?)  All of that...seeing it inflicted upon someone, It feels like someones punched me right in the damn sternum, but because its a hurt that im so desensitized to, it seems to have a much different effect than the sharp, violent crushing pain that i feel when I relate to Hordak a little too well for comfort. Again, i could go on, but its nothing more eloquent people on here havent already spoken volumes on. And my first gut reaction is always “I dont understand! why is that their reaction to her?! it doesnt seem logical at all, i dont seem to be able to parse it correctly, how is this acceptable? I HOPE SHE IMMOLATES YOU ALL.”. Which...I suppose isnt entirely usual for me (the silent wishing that people be immolated, I mean...i blame my past years of working in retail. And devouring too much Warhammer 40k contentl).  (oh gods...and this is going to be the most clusterfucky part cause i can feel my meds kicking in and thats gonna be hard to keep coherence on but i gotta get this all out of my head or ill forget it or get too scared of you fucking BRILLIANT insightful smart people on here and then ill continue to live scared and regretful that i never said..anything, and just sat here like “noticeme, entrapdak sempais!”  Ehhn...which is to say, if this is a garbage dump from here down, dont worry, when i wake up ill fix it...but hopefully itll at least make a tiny bit of sense ) But I realized something...something I hadnt ever rememberd much about due to the shitty neuronormative (apology if thats wrong term) behaviors continuing over years and years but in less and less directly aggressive ways as i grew older and was more prone to losing my shit in , (and likely because I got excessively lucky and managed through...uhhh...agonizing determination? Sheer stubbornness? Alleviatory rebalancing of universal karma? fuck if i know --to  curate a surprisingly supportive circle of other castoffs and misanthropes.) That was exactly how people used to treat me.  OKAY THISLL BE EDITED LATER to add in the rest of what i was gonna say...im...too full of Ambien sleep meds and damn write it anymore...and im aing trouble separating realigty and dream...an i k apawing at the kybord...not safe Lov yous for reading this far. Il fix it later, swears.