#why am i writing again?

[acid-ixx]

a loving family, an unpalatable desire

reblogs and interactions are encouraged and appreciated.

a/n: would anyone hear me out if i ever wrote romantic yan! bruce (ft. platonic yan! batfam AND romantic yan clark kent alongside the superfam ofc) with a neglected spouse reader... because uhm, i've been thinking about it lately just yk... so anyways PLSPLSPLS send in asks about this, ive been thinking about it so much lately.

imagine wanting to raise a family so badly with a man who adopts problem children as a side hustle. you're not some invasive spouse, you've always been good, always been loving, so... so accepting, never questioned where or how he picked them up from the side of the streets, never once complaining about the hickeys on his neck or the once neat tussles of his hair now tangled accompanying lipstick stains on his white suit.

you love your children, you tell yourself all the time. you love them, you love bruce— even if he doesn't love you. you said it in your vows, despite it being scripted, despite your family finally sighing in relief in the sidelines at finally being able to sell you off to one of the wealthiest man in the world, rather than being wasting off under their care— your vows are real.

you wanted someone to love you, unconditionally, so viscerally eternal that it eats you up.

really, all you wanted was to play that fantasy life of trophy house spouses. all you wished for was a loving, healthy relationship. the american dream: the picture perfect family frames, your husband kissing you on the cheek as he leaves for work, your children bickering at the dining room, with the scent of homemade meals wafting about the vicinity. all you wanted was the warmth in your chest to flicker like candlelights. all you dreamed about was that domestic life, an escape from the abusive household you were raised in.

yet the manor is too cold, too unforgiving for a soul such as yours.

the longer you stay inside claustrophobic, yet oh-so large hallways, the quicker you drown in a neverending pool of self-hatred.

but you're not allowed to show them your sufferings. they've been through much worse, you tell yourself. they've suffered more, and as what good spouses do, as what you're taught, you stay silent, enabling them to turn you into their own emotional punching bag.

you only allow yourself to cry at the dead of the night, under the sheets of your too-cold blanket and your too-hot pillows. when the manor is filled with deathly silence and a looming sense of dread and ill fitting thoughts of ifs and when they'll come back in one piece, will you grant yourself temporary respite; worry for a family who never even called you their parent.

yet you've always been so considerate. despite the pang in your chest every time bruce flirts with anymore potential love interest at a gala, you chose to instead monitor your chaotic children, who have always never bat an eye on you despite you always gazing lovingly at them.

you know of their interests, they don't know yours, yet you still give them extravagant gifts on their birthdays, with tired, yet glinting eyes, and a silent excuse to return to your room; one separate from bruce.

you know of bruce's hardships, but you don't push too hard, don't force him to talk, only provide him your silence and an offer to serve him dinner; all the time he refuses without looking at you. you give him comfort only if he ever allows you, only if he allows his walls to crumble— but not even his spouse can amount to a warm, crackling fireplace. to him, you're probably only a matchstick under the deadbeat glaze of the snow in a winter night.

maybe that's why you're such a ghost in the manor, stalking through the hallways, looking out for any of your children in case they come across you with any injuries. maybe that's why eventually your resolve weakened.

and maybe the absence of familial love led you to find comfort in another man's arm.

''til death do us part,' is such a tragic saying in your case, because you know it in your fragile heart that bruce's love for you was never alive in the first place. and yet you allow him to play you like a fiddle, allow him to slowly allow you to slip away from his nonexistent grasp.

and now, you're a stand-in parent for clark's son, jon, after the tragic loss of his wife. now, your world seems a lot less bleaker, as you play the fantasy of a loving house spouse, fully abandoning the life you left behind, a life you've never been gifted with until now. you want to feel guilty, you want to feel absolutely terrible but the heartache of neglect has become too much and all you do was allow clark to warm you up each night, kissing away your tears and spooning your deep-seated anxieties away.

you don't let the past eat you up, not when the present is too perfect, too freeing, too delusionally beautiful.

your son, jon provides you every joy a parent could have. parent's day gifts, heartfelt letters at every nook and cranny of your shared bedroom with clark— even reading him bedtime stories, allowing him to sleep in your lap after he slowly nods off, with clark knocking softly on polished wooden doors, greeting you with a loving kiss on the lips and a bouquet of your favorite flowers in hand—

it's everything a parent wants, needs even.

and you're everything clark, and especially jon wants, needs in their life.

so it's such a stupid mistake, really. a slip of the tongue, a too-enthusiastic smile, incredibly bright, shining eyes. it's not jon's fault, you still love him either way. but it's an error still— one a complicated matter at hand, so dreadful for you, that jon accidentally, all-too-suddenly, mentions you as his parent to damian.

a loving, wonderful parent, he says, with a picture of you in his wallet shoved right in front of his friend's face.

[ckret2]

So y'all know the Gravity Falls production bible that leaked three weeks ago. Someone in one of my discord servers pointed this out:

And, naturally, that spawned an entire AU.

AU Concept: Ford was kicked out instead of Stan and takes a job as a trucker to makes ends meet since he couldn't go to college, while still studying the weird and anomalous however he can.

Ford driving around from quirky small town to quirky small town, drifting through the liminal spaces of truck stops, meeting odd people in isolated diners, seeing strange things out on the road—a deer with too many eyes bounding across a two-lane highway, a flirty woman at a rest stop who doesn't blink or breathe, mysterious lights in the sky at night, inhuman growls on the CB or 50-year-old broadcasts on the radio—and taking notes when he stops for gas or food.

Aside from having gotten kicked out before graduating high school, Ford's the same person he is in canon.

He's still an ambitious guy, and here "ambitious" means working hard and saving as much money as he can—so, a long haul owner-operator who spends weeks at a time on the road. (He goes through a LOT of educational audiobooks.) Plus, this is the easiest way for him to get to travel the country; and since it looks like his "travel the world" dreams with Stan are dead, he'll take what he can get.

Since he's never in the same spot long and carries his life in a truck, almost all of Ford's research is in his journal. His bag of investigation supplies has an instant camera, a portable tape recorder, a thermometer, a flashlight, rubber gloves, and a few zip lock bags—and that's about it. It has to share space with all his clothes, toiletries, and nonperishable food when he's on the road. He doesn't have much opportunity to closely examine anything odd he finds, unless he's lucky enough to run into something when he can stop for the night. He has to cram his paranormal research around the side of his full-time job.

He doesn't live in Gravity Falls, but he knows it exists. Every time he moves—to Chicago, to Nebraska, to California—he seems to inch closer. He currently lives in Portland and usually hauls loads between the Pacific Northwest and Chicago or New York. He stops at the truck stop outside Gravity Falls when he can and has gone fishing in town a few times. He doesn't have the benefit of extensive research to know that this is the weirdest town in the world; but it seems pretty weird to him, there are local rumors about the town, and he's had some weird experiences in the area.

Plus, he can't explain it, but it's like the town's calling to him. He wants to move there, but it'd put him over an hour outside of Portland where the nearest jobs are. Maybe if somebody chucked him like $100k to build a cabin in the woods; but what are the odds of that?

He does know Fiddleford. Truck broke down somewhere and Fiddleford kindly pulled over to fix it on the fly. They looked at each other, had mutual knee-jerk "dumb trucker/hillbilly" reactions, and within ten minutes both went "oh wait you're the most brilliant genius i've ever met." Fiddleford's living the same life he was in canon before Ford called him to Gravity Falls—with his family in California, trying to start a computer company out of his garage—but they make friends and keep in contact.

One time Ford stops at a kitschy roadside knickknack store that also sells new agey magic things—crystals, tarot cards, incense, etc. He bought a "lucky" rearview mirror ornament that looks like an Eye of Providence in a top hat and hung it from his cab fan, and ever since then he's had weird dreams whenever he sleeps in his truck.

Things I don't know yet: what Stan's up to; or why Ford's the one who got kicked out. I tend to believe that in canon Stan wasn't just kicked out because he ruined Ford's college prospects, but rather because the family thought he deliberately sabotaged Ford; so in this AU, Ford would've been kicked out over a proportionate crime.

[damian-lil-babybat]

'Dead Poets Society' gang

Headcanon that these four drop poetry and literature quotes on their conversations unprompted.

Jason 'English-major-I-only-visit-the-manor-for-the-library' Todd-Wayne

Damian 'I-master-liberal-arts-unlike-you-plebs-PHD-holder' al Ghul-Wayne

Cassandra 'I-learn-English-thru-Shakespeare-as-god-intended' Cain-Wayne

Duke 'only-title-holder-of-vigilante-poet-and-will-cuss-you-just-as-poetically' Thomas-(future) Wayne

[leave-her-a-tome]

[bixels]

The Ryoko Kui interview's reception is such a disaster over a pretty normal (yet still flawed) interview between a non-Japanese fan and Japanese artistic. This is discourse for discourse's sake, and it's no surprise that almost every Twitter user I've looked at who's using this interview to parade Kui around as a goated mangaka standing strong against Western ideology is anti-trans.

Like, I do think the interview was kinda wonky with its focus on fandom culture, which Kui clearly didn't have much interest in. But sometimes that happens. Sometimes interactions between two people, especially a fan and a creator, two people who view and interact with a piece of media in completely opposite perspectives, don't click. Does this really need to get blown up into a "West vs. East culture war" issue.

Anyways, Kui saying "I don't consider my audience's interpretations when writing. I leave it to their imaginations, but I have my own read on things too" is the healthiest, most normal thing an artist/writer who wants a non-parasocial audience could say. Artists and writers use this line all the time. If Kui didn't enjoy autistic Laius or Farcille headcanons, she would have probably voiced/signalled her discomfort, like she did on the topic of Senshi fanservice. Overall, Kui handled the interview really well. Props to her to sticking to her guns and keeping a healthy disconnect from the fandom. While I think the interviewer could've/should've been more tactful and restrained, the flaws in their questions is not a symptom of the woke mind virus trying to wriggle its way into the pure Japanese psyche. It's the sign of an over-eager fan who sees a piece of fiction differently than its creator.

[aealzx]

(continued ideas from this post, with the end part added in because of @silverspectre51 's comment about wanting a reunion scene)

The first time Danny had spoken to Jason he’d asked him not to tell anyone he had been there. He knew that the only reason his new family was safe from the enemies of his former life was because no one there knew about it, and no one outside of them knew he was still alive. So he’d asked Jason to keep his existence a secret, and was grateful when he agreed.

That didn’t stop him from taking Jason up on his offer that he was welcome there any time. Danny tried not to leave too often, for his sister and friends noticed when he was gone too long and tended to ask where he went. But sometimes the chaos of his life needed the stillness that was only brought by the small memorial Jason had made.

It also helped that Jason was a really cool older brother figure. He was gruff, and stand off ish at times, but it was easy for Danny to tell he was just awkward with emotions. There was always some sort of treat at the memorial when Danny arrived. Cookies, a candy bar, leftover chinese food. Danny always ate anything that was left, and Jason never asked how it was possible. They sometimes talked, but Danny never interacted much with the environment. It was easier to keep his presence hidden if he remained intangible, and Jason just assumed that’s how ghosts were.

It was because of the few visits that Danny found out Damian was targeted. Learned that whoever had targeted his twin had gotten the jump on him, and Jason and others had received a distress signal from him.

Danny was there first.

Being a ghost meant he didn’t have to strictly follow the laws of physics, and as Jason ran to his motorcycle Danny left him behind. His subconscious mind told him he should wait and only appear if he was actually needed. He hadn’t been needed so far afterall, so whoever these people Damian knew were, they had to be good. But the active part of Danny’s mind told him he could get in and out without being seen. Especially since when he arrived at the burning warehouse Damian was already unconscious, his limp body having been tossed to the floor.

Danny didn’t let the enemy get closer. He couldn’t make himself known as Phantom, couldn’t allow others to know Phantom had left his haunt of Amity Park. And so he allowed his true ghostly form to manifest. The one that manifested his accidentally begotten crown and matching wings, as well as the uniform he’d first died in, and the mark of his grandfather’s hand that had choked the life from him. Not even Sam or Tucker had seen this form, so he figured he would be unrecognized.

His appearance came with a distorted clap from the sound barrier being bent, his half alive form muffling the noise as though it were caught in a void but doing little to alleviate the pressure that came with it. As far as the enemy knew Damian was alone, and a blink of the eyes later a solid figure was half hovering above him protectively, an otherworldly sphere of energy held in his other hand.

“BACK OFF!”

Danny’s belted command came with a tiny burst of sonic waves echoing the ghostly screams of wailing dead. Just enough to reinforce his point and potentially burst some eardrums, but not enough to even come close to exhausting him.

They didn’t back off. Because why would they? Damian was no small prize to let go so easily.

And so Danny met their attack, his hand subconsciously scooping up Damian’s blade from where it had fallen. It had been a long time since Danny had fought someone fully alive. But his body remembered the training he’d been given. It was one of the reasons he didn’t fight with a weapon as Phantom. The blade flowed too easily for him. It was harder to be lethal with bare hands. But with a blade even someone with a form as small as his could overpower the brute that had targeted his brother. In moments he had the man on the floor, any goons he may have had having long fled as Danny raised the blade above his head, eyes locked onto the invisible target on the man’s throat.

“DANNY?! WHAT- STOP!”

The command didn’t halt Danny’s hands from plunging, but they did miss their target. The blade stabbed halfway into the concrete next to the man’s throat as Danny’s full consciousness returned to the front of his mind.

He knew that voice, and she shouldn’t be here.

“...Jazz?”

Danny’s voice shook in a whisper as he turned to look at this sister, somehow standing near the entrance of the warehouse. She wasn’t supposed to see him like this. He wasn’t supposed to do this anymore. With a gasp he flinched away from the hilt his hands had a death grip on, his form jerking away as though it had burned him.

“Is this where you’ve been sneaking off to?” Jazz demanded, her entire frame shaking from adrenaline from seeing her baby brother almost murder someone. He looked so different when she’d gotten there. So foreign to the Danny she knew. But she had long known that he had a past none of them knew about, and could only think this had something to do with it. “Have you been coming to Gotham to murder people?” she demanded. She would regret the phrasing of her question later, that obviously wasn’t the right thing to ask. But it was a little hard to think straight right now. She had followed Danny there, but she hadn’t meant to confront him about his escapades until later.

“N’no- I was just,” Danny stammered, suddenly feeling like thousands of unkind eyes were watching him, and shifting his gaze to his clawed hands.

Someone else arrived. A purple suit and blonde hair, dropping from the ceiling and running towards Damian. “Robin?!”

It drew Jazz’s attention to Damian, the hero name easily familiar. “Robin?” she asked, voice significantly quieter as she turned to look as another figure dropped in while the first started to pick Damian up after making sure he was safe to move. “Danny, were you…”

Jazz had a lot of questions that Danny didn’t want to answer. But if they stuck around there would be more people with even more questions he couldn’t answer. “We have to go,” Danny cut off, floating down to start ushering Jazz out the door. She protested, but Danny barely heard her. “They’ll take care of the rest. Please. We have to go before-”

He was frantic, not wanting the time limit to run out before someone else who would recognize him showed up. He wasn’t expecting the other time limit to run out.

“Danyal?”

The voice that spoke was barely a whisper of recently regained consciousness, but it caused Danny’s heart to slam into his throat with a harsh gasp. Danny’s old name dragged his attention from his new sister to the one who had spoken it, small frame cradled in another hero’s arms as the rest of them stopped to follow Damian’s gaze.

“...Dami?”

Danny’s response came without him wanting it to. It caused Damian to double his efforts to remain conscious, which in turn exponentially increased Danny’s panic. He shouldn’t be there. So he wouldn’t be there.

“I can’t do this,” Danny gasped with a breath his lungs didn’t have, his hands reaching to rest on his throat before he fled as quickly as he’d arrived.

___________

Jason hadn’t been the first to the site to rescue Damian, but he was the only one who knew what Damian’s frantic babbling was about. Demands for the others to let him go back to the warehouse, refusing treatment even though his ribs had definitely been cracked. He’d only started to behave when Jason got there, firmly holding him on the bed to keep him from making his injuries worse. No one knew what they were talking about when Jason promised to take care of it. No one else knew why vague words of reassurance, and a promise to handle everything was enough to calm Damian down enough to stay still. And no one else was given any more answers as Jason left to return to his apartment after asking Stephanie what she had seen when she’d first arrived at the warehouse.

The presence Jason was starting to get familiar with was behind his apartment door again, as he’d thought Danyal would be. But this time when Jason quietly entered the room instead of sitting quietly near the window Danyal was curled in a tight ball in the corner, sobbing. He also wasn’t see through. Something Jason noted as he silently closed the door and approached Danyal, sitting on the floor across from him.

At first Jason wasn’t sure what to say, and Danyal seemed too distressed to be the first to speak. So instead Jason reached forward to cup his hand under Danyal’s elbow, noting how the lad jerk in mild startle, and how he felt a strangely chilled warmth from him. “C’mere,” Jason coaxed, pulling Danyal towards him gently.

It didn’t take more than that for Danyal to lurch forward, crashing into Jason’s chest and wrapping him in a tight hug. It wasn’t something Jason was used to, but it didn’t stop him from doing his best to comfort the lad, resting his hands on his small back and rubbing gently. “It’s okay. Damian is safe at home now, and police are taking care of the rest,” he tried to assure, trying to guess if that was what had Danyal in such states.

It took several attempts being cut off by sobs and hiccups before Danyal got a response out. “I s’screwed up! S’she w-... wasn’t sup’posed to see. He w’wasn’t supposed to see me.”

Jason wasn’t sure who ‘she’ was, but he guessed Danyal meant Damian for the second person. It was something that had confused him for awhile, why Danyal didn’t want to see Damian, and he couldn’t help asking. “Why did you run from Damian? I thought you got along.”

It was a question Danyal hadn’t had an answer to, even for himself. He’d wondered at first why he’d asked Jason to keep it a secret that he was there, even from Damian. But he’d never been able to answer it. He wasn’t angry with Damian, like Jason had first asked. He didn’t blame Damian for anything that had happened. He didn’t resent Damian at all. But for some reason the thought of seeing his twin brother filled him with dread. He didn’t want Damian to know he had a different family now. Another life, away from him and all they had grown up with. Not because he thought Damian would ruin it, or try to get him to leave it behind, or anything like that. He realized now it was because of an overwhelming feeling of guilt.

“I abandoned him,” Danyal choked out, answering the question for himself as well as Jason. “I left him alone in that shit hole of a family, to be used as a toy, as a weapon just to kill people. We were just kids and I left him all alone.”

The revelation caused Jason’s grip to tighten around Danyal, anger towards Ra’s smoldering brighter in his soul. But this wasn’t about him, so Jason stifled that flame in favor of something that would be of greater use. He could try to tell Danyal that Damian didn’t hate him. That they both apparently felt the same ill begotten guilt, believing that they had somehow failed each other despite having only been children. His own words to the others came back to his mind. 

‘I was just a kid you know.’

They were just kids. They were still just kids. And shouldn’t have to deal with such grief over something that had been caused by adults. Jason knew he could sit there and talk, and try to convince Danyal that he was wrong, and his feelings didn’t have to be what they were. But he also knew there was a much easier way to solve this, and a lot of other tasks.

“...Danyal,” Jason spoke, getting his attention. “Can I ask you to trust me?”

“...W’what?” Danyal asked, his sobs thankfully starting to quiet as Jason piqued his curiosity.

“Will you trust me? And allow me to take you to Damian?” Jason repeated, hoping the hold he had on Danyal was comforting instead of smothering. “Trust me that I know Damian, and know this will help both of you?”

It was somehow a simple request in Danyal’s mind. Trust Jason, the only brother who Damian trusted enough to tell him about his dead twin, to know how to help them. For some reason it was easy for Danyal to turn his brian off, and agree. “...Okay.”

___________

Jason soon learned that Danyal wasn’t a ghost. A comment about finding a hoodie to hide his white hair for the trip led to Danyal revealing that he could easily switch forms between human and spirit. A ring of light briefly passing over his form, and Danyal had black hair, regular green eyes, and completely lost that intimidating presence. Now he was just another regular boy. And he looked exactly like Damian.

He still asked for the hoodie.

The trip back to the Wayne manor was quick, and silent on Jason’s motorcycle, the spare helmet shoved over Danyal’s head. He seemed reluctant to take it off when they stopped, and Jason couldn’t blame him. He seemed very keen on not being recognized.

“Don’t worry. Not even media cameras make it here. Bruce likes his privacy,” Jason assured, resting a hand on Danyal’s back in what he hoped was reassurance even as the kid pulled the hood lower.

Unfortunately because of the recent circumstances the manor wasn’t empty. But Jason ignored the others with short quips when they got nosy. It was only Alfred, the one who always looked after them when hurt, and who was just leaving Damian’s room, that they stopped for.

“Welcome home, Master Jason,” Alfred’s usual greeting was the first words exchanged. “Might I ask who our guest is?”

Alfred didn’t sound like Danyal was unwanted, but he didn’t miss the protective tone subtly in his voice.

“A visitor for Damian,”Jason responded simply. A half answer. It would take too long to explain, and they weren’t there for the others.

“Are you sure this is the best time for visitation?” Alfred asked, knowing that Jason was well aware of Damian’s current health status.

“Trust me. They both need this,” Jason confirmed, his hand never leaving Danyal’s back even as he kept his head low and face away from curious eyes.

“Very well,” Alfred relented after a small pause, stepping aside and gesturing for them to pass.

Jason thanked Alfred, and took charge of firmly leading Danyal through the open door. He could feel Danyal’s body tensing with rattled nerves, and didn’t want him to suffer in second guessing any longer than necessary. So when Bruce turned to look at them from the bedside where Damian was refusing to fully rest, Jason took care of introducing their arrival. “Couple of dead boys, here to visit.”

It was certainly unexpected, but while Bruce’s expression scrunched in confusion Damian stubbornly sat up and a tiny snort escaped Danyal. The humor was almost out of place, but appreciated, and Danyal allowed Jason to move him forward a little before taking the hood from his hands.

Letting the fabric that was hiding his face slip from his fingers, Danyal lowered his hands to replace it with the front of the hoodie instead, giving a shaky, nerve wracked smile as he clenched the oversized hoodie. “... Hey, Dami.”

The greeting was easier than Danyal thought it would be, and he didn’t have to wait long for Damian’s response. Despite the protest of his battered body, Damian ignored all the rules he’d been given to stay in bed in favor of launching himself towards his twin. “Danyal!”

Danyal’s breath left him in a slight huff as a figure the same as his own slammed into him, arms being thrown around him without any hint of hesitation. As Damian babbled broken chatter, Danyal found he couldn’t fully focus on what he was saying. Just the familiar voice from half a lifetime ago, slightly different with just a bit of age, echoing in his ears. It was easy to return the hug, Danyal’s hands remaining gentle in consideration of Damian’s ribs, yet also squeezing as tight as he dared. Fresh tears caused his throat to tighten once more, but this time he didn’t mind. Even the brand new voice behind him did little to deter his desire to stay right where he was.

“Holy shit! You have a twin!”

“Shut up, Tim. You’re ruining it.”

______________________________________

Friggen huge post but I'm not planning on making this an extended fic so just splatted it all out in 1 post X'D

The first part of this is what that design of Danyal I did was for. And a day of brain fog and just the right kind of positive motivation got me to actually do this.

I feel really out of my element because I only know the DC group from Wayne Family Adventures, and a few fan content things my sis reblogs |D I hope they're not too out of character.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

I've been doing a lot of reflection as of late, especially after this past class.

This past class was about the Torah and Tanakh in general, and the way the rabbi talked about the commandments (specifically the ten commandments) has made me really reflect on how I interpret them, specifically the fifth commandment, or honoring your mother and father.

This is a commandment I have wrestled with for a long time - in fact, it brought me away from g-d at multiple times. I was severely abused when I was incredibly young by my mother, and I used to feel insulted at the implication that I were to honor her while she got to live a better life. It was hypocritical, in my eyes.

But this rabbi surmised that this particular commandment was because parenthood is an act of creation, something that is like the g-d from which we come from. My realization is this: I don't think we're necessarily meant to take even these commandments literally.

I this particular commandment is more of a call to honor creation - creation is a gift, and like any gift, many people simply will not like it and will discard it. The person who abused me created me, but she did not honor creation. She didn't honor me, but I can still honor it.

I have started to honor creation much more. I'm too young, too unstable, not mature enough to be a father (though I fantasize about it), but I create all the time. I create relationships, I create with my hands through crochet. I create memories, I create my world. And I can honor who I am and where I came from that made me who I am. I've been learning one of the mother tongues of my family (Italian, since part of my family originates there) and it was judaism that inspired me to do this.

I don't think g-d wants me to honor my abuser. I think He wants me to remember the Holy action of creation. When I am a father, that act of creation will be Holy, and indeed, I am already joyful about the thought.

I have seen many people struggle with this particular commandment, but I think this perspective helps me personally. I don't think I ever have to forgive my abusers (plural), and I don't think I am commanded to simply because they happened to be family. I am commanded to recognize the holy, to elevate the mundane. In doing so, I will remember g-d. Through creation, I honor g-d and everything he has done for us, for me, and for our collective people.

[evilkaeya]

skk au where everything is the same except Chuuya and Dazai have literal red string of fate tied to their pinkies. It appears when Chuuya kicked Dazai down in Suribachi. No one can see the string. They've tried to untie it, cut it, burn it, rip it, bomb it- but to no avail. There's no limit to the length of the string. No matter how far they go, they're always tied to each other.

[deoidesign]

For my birthday... read my webcomic! It's literally free! (Unless you want books. Those are not free)

It's beautiful, it's gentle, it's funny, they're canonically t4t and gay... And it's about time traveling vampires solving supernatural mysteries!

I've spent thousands of hours writing and drawing it, and it's really good! I'm not biased!

It's on hiatus right now and coming back in 2 months, so it's the perfect time to get caught up

[witchinatree]

who up thinking about they "why is it so easy for you to imagine losing me?" vs "i deserve to lose you, the pain caused by losing you will never outweigh all the bad i have done. it will hurt me forever but it is what i have earned." jonmartin dynamics

[roger-that-cap]

seven summers

bradley bradshaw x fem! reader

this my first fic in what feels like a century for a completely different fandom. i have been gathering up the courage to do this again, and i've been sitting on this for about two months now. take it easy on me y'all i feel like a sixty year old veteran re-enlisting right now and i have NO idea how to reload my weapon

warnings: absolutely none! well theyre a little sad for a minute but nothing that tumblr can't handle

word count: 5.9k

Loud spaces weren’t really in your list of favorite places. You could tolerate bars more than you could do clubs, though, and your best friend took that into consideration when she planned the night out for you two. The music was loud and the people were starting to get rowdy, but at least no one was grinding on you or begging for a dance. That was always when you would wrap it up for the night, shaking your head at even thinking that it was a good idea. 

“Thank you,” you told the bartender, an exceptionally gorgeous older woman who always seemed to have a meddling look on her face. Her hair was lightly waved around her face as she looked you up and down for a second. You thought she was going to say something, but she just nodded at you once with a small smile before you turned away again, facing the crowd of people you were about to delve back into. You were just leaving the bar top with a soda (you were the DD, as always) when you tripped over someone else’s huge shoe. 

“Oh, shit,” a manly voice said as you tripped, and hands caught your arm before you fell over all the way. You looked up and saw a blond man in an achingly familiar navy uniform looking down at you, and your eyes narrowed as his eyes grew wide. “I’m sorry.” 

His uniform nearly brought you to a scene of painful flashbacks. You knew you were bound to run into attractive men in uniforms so close to a base, but there was an air about this man that made you feel like you were almost running right through the mist, right through the shadow of a man that you once knew, and a man that wore that very same uniform as he walked away. 

You loved Alexandra, your friend you met through other friends. The only downside was that she was in the Navy, and that meant that you were almost always surrounded with memories of your ex boyfriend when you were with her. Him and that stupid uniform that stole him away. 

“No worries,” you said after a few seconds, smiling at him. “It’s crowded here.” 

“Oh, nice tattoo,” he said, and your hand immediately went to your collarbone, where the one tattoo you had rested. It was a nicely done tattoo of a honeybee, a mark of your past. Something you probably should have gotten removed, but every time you tried to convince yourself, you gave another reason to not get it removed. Deep down, you knew why you couldn’t go through with it.

“Thank you, I got it a while ago.” That was all you could say as memories flashed in your mind, but you managed to smile. 

“You look really familiar,” he said, and you noticed that he also had an air of confidence to him as well as familiarity. He was an attractive man, almost too perfect. And he had a smile that you knew lured girls in far too often to be completely innocent. 

“I’m kinda new to the area,” you said, shrugging your shoulders. “Maybe we’ve run into each other at the grocery store or something? Or if you’re a frequent flier at the hospital.” That happened a lot. People you had never had as your own patients would sometimes recognize you, especially if they were often there. 

“Yeah, maybe.” He looked you up and down one more time, almost like he was genuinely trying to figure out what his own mind was trying to remind him, before he nodded his head at you with a small smirk and a toothpick between his lips and left just as quickly as he came. And then your friend was taking his place, jabbering on about something as you tried to clear your own head. 

You never wanted to be one of those people that lived in the past, and for the most part, you weren’t. You lived in the moment. You loved to make new memories, find new things to do, and meet new people. You loved meeting new people. However, the problem with meeting new people, especially men, was that there was that one guy from that one specific relationship that you had gotten yourself in that made it feel like everything was all for nothing. 

Bradley Bradshaw. 

You didn’t even know exactly what it was. You had been in plenty of summer flings that were passionate and fun, but you got over them easily enough. You had met so many people, loved and lost, and they all stuck with you in different ways that all felt sweet in one way or another. But Bradley? There was something about him that stayed with you in a different way. The thought of him kept a lingering taste of something distinct on your tongue. 

In a way, he was the biggest waste of time you had ever spent your life on. There were two years that you shared being officially together, but it felt like forever. You should have known he was trouble the second you saw that military-grade mustache, and the confident walk he always had. You should’ve known he would cause you some pain the second his eyes and his smile proved to be a deadly combo. You poured so much love into that man in a short time in the grand scheme of things, and looking back, it was as much of a waste as it was a privilege. 

For a while, you prayed for his return. He had broken your heart right before he left for his deployment, but that didn’t mean that you wanted anything to happen to him. You prayed for a while for him to come back safely and then come right back to you, and then that progressed into you praying to never see him again. You wished for his safety, you always would, but you never wanted to hear anything about him ever again unless it was saying that he landed safely back on US soil. After that, you wanted his name to be gone with the wind and buried with the dust of time. 

Either way, he was in your thoughts forever and always, regardless of how many summers passed or how many people there were after him, how many you had met to pass the time. And as you stood in the middle of the bar with Alexandra, you were frozen in shock as you realized that you probably manifested the very fighter pilot in front of you.  

He had seen you first. He was surrounded by attractive people in uniforms that you knew had to be his friends, and when you caught the eyes of the very blond man that you fell over before pointing at you with the angle of his head, your jaw dropped a bit. The man from earlier looked at you and slapped Bradley on his back, giving a blinding smirk before saying something to him that you couldn’t hear. 

You were sure you looked silly standing there, freezing up the second you recognized him with a pool stick in your hand. You felt all the tension in your body work together to keep you as straight as a board. You blinked when your friend nudged you, completely oblivious to the mini panic attack you were about to have, and you swallowed and looked away like it didn’t nearly hurt you to stop looking at him. 

You felt like you were drowning. 

“You’re not tapping out or anything, right?” Alexandra asked, narrowing her eyes at you. “We’ve barely been here an hour, and you already have that uncomfortable look on your face.” 

“What look?” You managed to murmur, completely aware that he was still looking at you. His gaze felt as familiar as it had back then.

“The one where you’re looking for escape routes,” she teased, even though she was starting to look concerned. “You do it all the time. Hey, are you okay?” 

“Yeah!” You said, way too loud to be normal. “I’m good.”

You prayed he didn’t approach you. He had plenty of distractions on his side of the room, lots of friends to talk to even though it was obvious they were trying to get him to go over to you. You were hoping that he would never come up to you or look your way again, but you were sick to your stomach when you realized that him walking away would mean he didn’t care nearly as much as you did. 

You closed your eyes for a moment as you tried to understand that none of what you were seeing was a dream. 

“Hi!” A woman’s voice from behind you said, and you turned around. You saw a woman in uniform smiling politely at both you and Alex, and you assumed that she knew her, but then her attention was on you. “I’m sorry, I just had to come over and say I love your dress.” 

You were a simple creature, and one of your fatal flaws was that you were exceptionally friendly. That easily, the tension left your body as you spoke to the woman. You smiled kindly at her. “Thank you! I got it at a thrift store, but you can check the back to see where it’s from if you want!” She grinned at you, and then you saw her eyes wander to your hand. 

“Oh, your ring is pretty, too!” The woman said. “When’s the wedding?” She joked, and you laughed. You wanted a big wedding, back then. Back when you could see the groom in your head, imagine the words he would say, and even imagine your first name combined with his last: Bradshaw. But that was nothing now. 

“Thank you! You’re so sweet. It’s from my mom though, she gave it to me a few years ago.” She gave it to you, her big, shiny ring that her first husband had bought her just as a gift. Instead of pawning it, you begged her to have it. It had no sentimental value to you at all. It kind of looked like an engagement ring, but you couldn’t bring yourself to take it off. It warded off men for the most part, and it was a piece of her. 

“Aw, that’s so sweet. I’m Nat! Most people around here call me Phoenix.” 

You grinned at her and shook her hand before telling her your name, and you knew right then that you liked her. She was extroverted, but very polite. Just your type of person. 

“It’s nice to meet you.” 

“You too!” She smiled at you before she continued her walk to the bar, and you didn’t think anything else of the nice girl in uniform.

The next few minutes went without any issues at all, and you felt like you could ignore the situation at hand and have a good rest of the night with Alex before it was time for you guys to head home. 

“Hey.” 

You weren’t hearing his voice. You just weren’t. You made your next shot in the game and ignored him. 

You could feel him get closer to you, so close you could smell his cologne. Your eyes watered when you realized it was the very scent you picked out for him all those years ago. He still wore it. 

You heard a very manly throat clear from beside you, and you realized that he wasn’t going to give it up. “Hi,” he tried again, and you breathed through your nose and finally turned around, looking face to chest at him before you looked up. 

He was smiling down at you. He was smiling down at you as if nothing had happened, and no time had passed. You smiled back at first like muscle memory, but then your face dropped to a frown almost immediately. His smile fell, too. He nodded at your friend in acknowledgement, but she was too busy eyeing him up and trying to decide if he was a threat to you or the night to know that he was being friendly. 

“Bradshaw,” you said, and his frown got deeper when he realized you called him by his last name. He hated that. You weren’t in the Navy and you had been together, you and he always insisted you reserved the rights to using his real name. Not his call sign, not his last name, but the one his parents had given him. “It’s been a while.” 

“Bradley,” he corrected gently, almost like he thought you genuinely forgot, or like you threw out his first name from your personal dictionary. As if you could ever forget a detail about him. That was the blessing and the curse that he left you with. “You look-” he stopped talking for a moment, and you could have sworn that you saw an ocean of fondness in his pretty eyes that shouldn’t have still been there. “You’re still so beautiful.” 

Your words felt caught in your throat. You wanted to tell him that his tan made him look beautiful. You wanted to say that he had filled out so nicely, and that his scars still fit his face perfectly. You remembered kissing them while laying in the summer sun and you remembered kissing them under the tiny Christmas tree you guys had bought together and plugged in. You were both so broke it only had about ten ornaments on it, but that never mattered. Never to the two of you. “You… still have that mustache.” 

“You always liked it,” he said, a small smile coming back into his expression, but you didn’t give one back. 

“So you’ve kept it growing in hopes to run into me?” 

“Maybe I have,” he answered, and you blinked at him. He had always had a flirty personality. 

You just blinked. “Uh, yeah. That’s nice.” Was it? It was opening every old wound you had ever had. Every wound that was partially healed by another person’s fleeting kisses was being torn right back open by one sighting of Bradley Bradshaw. 

“It’s- it’s amazing to see you, how have you been?” 

You were becoming more and more confused. How in the hell was he being so chipper? Maybe chipper wasn’t the word, he was being polite. Or, maybe it was that he wasn’t falling apart like you were. How? How was he managing politeness when you were hardly breathing? The thought that he would walk away from the conversation like it never happened made you irritable and defensive at the same time. “Why do you care?” 

His brows furrowed, and he was looking at you as if you were saying all the wrong things. “Because I care how you’ve been.” 

“Why?”

He took a look at your friend, who was still staring him down. “Uh, can we talk for a second?” He asked, and you pursed your lips together. 

“No, she’s good right here,” Alexandra said, and you gave her a small smile. 

“No, it’s okay, he’s fine. He’s big, but he’s harmless.” You saw his chest puff up in just the slightest at the mention of his physique, and you rolled your eyes. “We can step outside, but I’m not going home with you.” 

“Okay!” He said, a little too loud for the setting, and you fought back a smile at how excited he was just to talk. You squashed the fondness down. “Okay, uh, come with me.” 

The second your foot hit the gravel outside, his fingers were touching yours. The touch was innocent, but you still yanked your hand away. He backed away understandingly. “Force of habit, sorry.” 

And it was. You remembered his little quirks. You were always pretty independent, and he had always been touchy and protective, so the compromise back then was that he would lay off while you were inside of a building, but he would hold your hand and guide you all he wanted to the second you walked outside. 

“I- uh, I wanted to talk about us.” 

“The past?” You said, crossing your arms. 

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” he said slowly, like he was just then realizing he was treading on very thin ice. 

“We knew each other,” you corrected, fully aware of your friend piecing the situation together by the expression on her face, and you gave her a look that held promises of filling her in. 

“Don’t be like that,” he said, coming a little closer, and you felt your eyes burn when you smelled his familiar scent even more. Your tradition of buying men cologne that matched their personalities had died after Bradley. It was something you didn’t really understand why you did it yourself, but it was fun, and Bradley loved it. He was the fourth guy you had done it with, and he was the last. It just didn’t feel right with anyone else, and it was simply something else you kissed goodbye when you and Bradley went your separate ways. 

“I’m not being any certain way.” 

“I would definitely say that we know each other,” he said, a short chuckle dying on his lips, and you could hear the hurt in his voice.  “We were together nearly every day for two years. We’d sit on the river and on the beach and talk about everything for hours. We road-tripped cross-country. I remember everything you ever told me back home, and I remember the last summer we had together like it was yesterday.” 

You looked back up at him with eyes that you knew had to be full of sadness. “That was four summers ago.” 

You saw it set in with him how much time really had gone by. You watched his eyes widen and his lips poke outwards as he breathed out. “Wow.” 

Had time really not passed for him as slowly as it did to you? 

All you could do was swallow and turn your head away from the breeze. “Yeah.” 

“Do you have a boyfriend now?” 

Part of you was so thrown by his question and his lack of tact, especially because he had been such a good flirt back then. Maybe time had changed him. “I’m married.” 

Immediately, he shook his head with a small smile. “You’re not.” 

You narrowed your eyes at him, even though you were enjoying the back and forth. It felt so familiar. “How would you know that?” 

“That was the first thing I checked before I came over,” he admitted, and you cocked your head at him. “I looked at your finger and saw the ring before you even noticed me. And then I asked Phoenix to go over to you and make sure it was what I thought it was, and I was right.” 

You gasped. You should have known that that stupid nickname was a damn callsign, the glaring beacon of a person that meant that they were a pilot. And pilots were… they were hard to love. 

“I knew that if I came over to you, there would be no way I could hold my tongue from trying to win you back, so I had to make sure you weren’t married first, at least. But I’m not even sure that would’ve stopped me,” he muttered under his breath, and you rolled your eyes. 

You were still a little bitter over him sending one of his friends to talk to you, and how well he knew you. He knew you never would have responded to a random man the same way you did Phoenix. “How do you know I don’t have a boyfriend?”

“I’m praying.” And then he sighed. “I don’t have anyone either.” 

You would have laughed in his face if you weren’t so gutted. “I find that hard to believe.”

“What do you mean?”

“Considering you broke it off so you could run around and meet other girls, I would be very shocked if you didn’t have one with a ring on her finger by now.” 

His eyes widened to a size that was almost comical. “What?” 

You rolled your eyes at him. “Before you deployed. You know, when you broke up with me so that you could go talk freely with other women.” 

His facial expression was so shocked that you almost bought it. He looked genuinely thrown in a loop by your words. “I didn’t break up with you to meet other people, Bee.” 

You nearly caught whiplash at hearing your old nickname pouring like straight up honey from his mouth. No one called you that in a long time, mostly because ‘Bee’ was reserved for Bradley after a day he met you in freshman year of college, and you did an entire presentation on conservation of bees with passion that none of the other students had in their slideshows. It was what had drawn him to you in the first place.

 “That’s what it felt like.” It still felt like that, four years later. 

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head slowly. You hated how handsome he looked even when he was confused.  But he had no right to look confused. “That’s not what happened at all.” 

Your tone said it all for you as you crossed your arms. “Um, that’s what I remember, Bradshaw.” 

He ignored what you called him, but you saw it in his eyes that it still bothered him. “I cut it off because I felt awful that you were going to be forced to wait for me,” he said, taking a step closer, and you saw his sad brown eyes begging you to listen. “We were still so young, you were even younger than me. It wasn’t fair for me to ask you to keep waiting for me, especially because I kept going on dangerous deployments.” 

His words were bouncing around in your head. You calculated what he was saying, narrowing your eyes and trying to make sense of how it was changing your entire perspective of what happened, second by second. 

“Are you fucking stupid?” You blurted, but he wasn’t surprised. In fact, he looked relieved. You never really made a habit of swearing, not even while arguing, but when you rarely let a word slip, it meant that you cared a lot. 

Bradley wasn’t quite sure which way you cared and if it was in a good way or a bad way, but he was determined to change the passion to a way that would benefit the both of you. 

“If you want me to be,” he rasped, and you narrowed your eyes at him. 

“Did you just say you didn’t want me to wait for you?” 

He blinked. “Yeah. You were what, twenty three? Your whole life was ahead of you. It wasn’t fair for you to have to wait for me to come home when you… you’re full of so much life. You had just gotten your dream job at the hospital, and you were so happy. If you were to stick it out with me gone, you would just have to decide between your job and me anyway when I got home. I ended up getting stationed somewhere else not too long after I came back home, just like I knew I would.” 

“Bradley, I told you I wanted to travel, anyway. That job was not my forever job.” 

“But-”

“I was prepared to wait for- for forever.” It was his turn to look shocked. “I really would have, Bradley. You just never even gave me the chance to. You pulled the rug out underneath me. You didn’t even ask me.” 

He ran a hand over his face as the weight of the decision he made for the both of you settled heavy on his chest. “Oh, god.” 

“I assumed you were deploying and you wanted to meet new people. I mean, I know that a lot of… you guys are cheaters. The stereotypes are true a lot of the time. I just figured you were sparing me from the cheating and cutting it off before it could get to that point.” 

“Oh, god, no.” He shook his head. “You- thought I was cheating on you?” 

“Well- what else was I supposed to think?” 

“I would never,” he said, using his hands to make a broad “no” gesture. “You’ve always been it for me, ever since we met. There couldn’t have been anyone else, and there hasn’t been this whole time.” 

You tried to mask the way you were falling into a puddle at his feet. “You’re so dumb.” 

“Is it dumb of me to think you’ll hear me out a little more?” 

You rolled your eyes at him, but your skin felt like it was on fire being so close to him again. “You’re plenty dumb, Rooster.” 

“You never called me Rooster.” 

“Well, I don’t know Bradley anymore.” 

“I- why are you saying that?” He asked, and his face grew even more distraught. “You do know me. Nothing’s changed. Nothing is different at all besides the time. I still- there’s nothing that has changed about the way I feel for you.” 

“What do you want me to say?” You couldn’t confess your love to him again. You loved him, a part of you always would, but you couldn’t handle him coming out of the blue and telling you everything you had secretly been wishing he would say to you for years. He was coming in like a dream. It was far too good to be true. “We got lost in translation four years ago and there's nothing we can do about it. Unless you and your pilot friends have been smart enough to build a time machine.” 

“I would build a thousand time machines if it meant that I could change what I did, I was stupid. I was so stupid.” He stepped closer. “But I never stopped loving you. Not even once.” 

A tear ran down your face, and that’s when you knew it was time to go find Alexandra again. “I-I gotta go, Bradley.” Before you could even turn around all the way, he took you by your hips and turned you back around, both pairs of your eyes wide mirrors of the other. 

“I have been haunted by the thought of you for four years now,” he said, voice as soft and gentle as the breeze, but the grip he had on your hips was so desperate it almost made you sob. “I haven’t even- I’ve tried, but there hasn’t been anyone else. Not emotionally. Not even close, Bee.” 

You couldn’t say the exact same. You tried and succeeded for a time, but they were never complete fixes. Just when you thought you were happy with someone else and free of the clutches of Bradley Bradshaw, he snuck right back. He ripped that rug out from under you every time without fail without even being present. That was your problem with each “relationship”, you were looking for a remedy and closure for a relationship that the next person had no idea about and no obligation to make better. 

But you had definitely been haunted by the lack of Bradley Bradshaw. He was there all the time with you in your mind, whether you wanted him or not. 

“This,” you said, shaking your head, and judging by the look on his face, he knew he was losing you. “This is a lot.” 

“Wait, don’t walk away. I just got you back.” 

“I’m not back, Bradley.” 

“You’re back in front of me,” he said, and you stopped turning away from him. “That’s all I could ask for. Even if you want nothing else to do with me ever again, I just want to stand here and look at you for one more minute. Please.” 

You put your hands over your face the second you felt your eyes start to burn and overflow with tears. You could feel his energy before you even felt his true touch, and the second you felt his arms around you, you broke down. 

“I thought- I thought you were so nervous a few days before you left because you were going to propose to me.” 

You couldn’t believe the words that were leaving your mouth. You had been so humiliated about jumping to conclusions that you hadn’t even told Alexandra about that part. You never planned on telling anyone that was the reason why you were so hurt, especially not the man who caused you all that pain. It had been sitting heavy on your chest, the humiliation and the sadness alike, for all four summers. You never planned on letting it loose. 

But you had already said it. 

“You boys get married so fast, and honestly, I was ready. I thought you were nervous because you were going to ask me to marry you, not because you were breaking up with me.”

 “Oh.” 

“It gutted me so bad when you broke it off. I thought it was going to be the opposite- I thought we were going to start our lives together and then you just…” you looked down at the ground as you tried to swallow back down the memory, even though everything was coming back so strong. “It was gone, that fast. And I realized I loved you a lot more than you ever loved me, obviously.” 

“That's not even close to being true,” he said, shaking his head rapidly. “You can ask any of the guys I shipped out with. I was fucking miserable the whole time. And I know you don’t know the new guys I’m with, but this new squad even knows that there’s nobody else. You’re the one that got away.” 

“You let me go,” you corrected, and he smiled sadly. 

“Because I loved you.” 

“That’s so fucking dumb,” you said, but you couldn’t stop yourself from getting closer to him. “That’s for fairytales, stupid.”

You felt yourself leaning into him, and he was letting you. His body language was inviting you in. You could see it in his eyes and you could feel his hands trembling as he moved them from your waist to hover over your back, like he was ready to pull you into him the second you gave in. You knew it was only a matter of time before you did give in, and the longer you felt his hands hover over you like you were stained glass, the more you craved his familiar, burning touch. You felt the pull to him like you were magnets. Like he was the sun and you were Icarus. You were the moth to his enticing flame, but he had always seen you as a butterfly. You were terrified to get burned for the second time, and fall from grace all over again. 

“That one pilot said he recognized me,” you blurted, and you felt his eyes on you even though you couldn’t look at him. “I’ve never met him before, have I?” You might have. You used to know a lot of his old friends. He shook his head. “How did he know me?” 

Without hesitation, his answer came. “I have pictures of you in my cockpit.” 

That was what threw you.  “What?”

“Most pilots keep photos of important people in their cockpit. It reminds them to fly safer. In the worst cases, it’s so that they can see a glimpse of family before they go down.” 

Your heart was soaring so high that it was breaking with the pressure of it. “You have a picture of me in there?” 

He had absolutely no shame about it as he nodded his head firmly. “Yeah, I have pictures of you. In my cockpit and in my locker.” Were you his screensaver, too? You didn’t know. 

But you were in his locker. It made your heart flutter and it sent you right back to highschool. “More than one?” 

“I have so many that my squad recognized you without me even saying anything. Hangman was the one who told me you were here.” 

“Oh.” 

He kicked the rocks underneath his foot, and then he was squinting back down at you. “You thought- you thought I was going to ask you to marry me?” 

Just like that, your soaring, cracking heart plummeted again. “You don’t have to rub it in, Bradley.” 

“No, it’s not that at all. I just- you would’ve said yes?” 

“Of course I would have said yes, stupid.” You ignored how his eyes lit up and turned your body away with crossed arms. He was always so expressive, even when he didn’t want to be. “But that was a long time ago.” 

“Not too long,” he rushed, and you shook your head. 

You fought the urge to roll your eyes, especially because it was mostly to get the tears away. “It was a while ago, Bradley.” 

“There’s no amount of time apart that would make me not want to be with you, Bee.” 

Your head swiveled to him upon hearing your nickname from him again. “It- it doesn’t just work like that, dude.” 

“Why not?” 

“We were stupid back then. We lived off of blind faith and a whole lot of hopes. It doesn’t work that way anymore.”

“We make our own rules, that’s the glory of being adults.” He took your hands and you faced him, and the hope in his expression nearly floored you. “Who said we can’t pick up where we left off?” 

You scoffed, even though you weren’t even close to laughing. “You’re crazy.” 

“Crazy about you, but you’ve always known that,” he said with a smile. “You’ve always known how to work with it, too.” 

For a moment, you felt a glimmer of hope and you felt the whisper of a smile come onto your face. And then you crashed again, and he must have seen it all over your face because his own smile went away and was replaced by concern. Before he could even ask what happened that fast, you threw your face into his chest and wrapped your arms around him. 

He held you back just as quickly, and you knew he had been waiting for you. He smelled like home and he even felt like it, and when you opened your eyes all you could see was that stupid, loud Hawaiian print. 

“I-if we do this again you- I can’t handle it if you leave me again. I couldn’t take it. Please, Bradley.” 

“Don’t you even worry about that,” he said firmly, holding you so close that it felt like the two of you were physically molding together. “If you give me the chance, I want a shot at forever.” 

You pulled your wet face away from his shirt and looked up at him as your heart raced in your chest. “Huh?” 

He stared down at you for a moment, and you could see in his ever-expressive eyes that he was thinking about saying something to you that was about to change everything. “I fully intend to become your husband when we’re ready, if you let me. Just the way you wanted, and the way I’ve always dreamed about. I’m not going anywhere.” 

The logical part of you knew that he was being ridiculous. Bradley was nothing if not overzealous, nothing if not reaching for goals that were just short of being unattainable. He was the version of Icarus that always managed to get back to earth safely by the skin of his teeth. He always put the cart before the horse, but somehow he always managed to get there. 

So, you knew he was being serious. As crazy as he sounded, he was. 

“Do you really mean that?” You didn’t have to ask that question. In fact, the words felt like acid on your tongue, but your heart pressed you to ask it anyway. 

“Nothing could get me to leave you again, especially not my own stupidity.” He was holding you even tighter. “I promise.” 

You were going to hold him to that with the same intensity that he held you with. 

*****

oh boy.

so this one i’ve been sitting on forever and i’m tired of looking at it, but i have nothing but love for this fic that is pulling me out of a writing slump. i wrote it out of pure love for rooster though so i felt like i had to share it!! also- this comes from two main things;

two songs (“7 summers” and “ ‘98 braves” by morgan wallen) and then me being dumb enough to get involved with a military man of my own. he’s been gone for a while so i’m manifesting he comes back soon. anyone who is thinking about getting with a person- especially man- in the military (i can only speak for the united states military bc that’s where i’m from), you better be tough. i know they look good. i know they have this energy to them- trust me i’ve been obsessed since i was like 15. way before top gun maverick. but if you’re gonna be stupid, you better be tough 💀💀💀 and if you need any guidance to being stupid, i’m always here!!!

if you’re new here thanks for stopping by and checking it out! if you’re from an old fandom of mine but read it anyways i love you so much, it means a lot. 💕💕💕

[likesdoodling]

Guess what I just finished ehehehe >:D

Oh yeah- the 'I see your wife' was a bit hard to do so I just replaced it with the next best 'murderer plus innocence' parallel I could think of-

(and the tags I got to cover the last few bits got cut off, so I have decided to include the last minute of dramatic commentary here instead-

:(:( Alas alack~ poor Finrod-

Oh look it's Gondolin! And Maeglin too, fancy that. Wonder why he's there, anyway, moving on-

Fingon gets some more screentime, -and no. I am not naming the Balrogs involved. They don't deserve it >:(

And after that it's pretty self explanatory.

I mean.

If you know who Feanor and his sons are you probably get what's going on here. :'(

>:)

[shadowtraveled]

this is a largely meaningless observation but, based on the fleki uniform demonstration comic, mithrun seems to wear the default style of the canary uniform, probably because he has no desire to personalize it or preference for how to do so, etc. when he does seem to pick his own clothes, though, they don’t look super in-line with what we’re shown of elven clothing styles in his region: high collars look like they’re fairly popular with elves in general, but out of uniform he tends to be a lot more covered up than everyone else—long sleeves, long pants, boots rather than sandals, and he dresses that way both prior to getting eaten and after the events of the series. anyway it’s kind of cute that after everything that happened to him, someone cared enough to remember what his clothing preferences used to be.

[tulliok]

we stopped watching around the later seasons and barely remember what happened in them so we're encouraging you to talk about what you dislike or want to criticize

Got asked, so here’s my abridged season 8-9 thoughts.

As someone who grew up watching the show from the beginning, I have a lot of gripes with how “friendship” is defined as a power-up or a material resource. However, it really wasn’t that big of a deal because I understand that MLP is a show targeted towards young girls that enjoy playing with toys, and the show was able to still portray realistic and educational lessons. 

The introduction of a friendship school in season 8 was a poor decision for so many reasons. Narratively, it locks our main characters into a single location, and we go from having a cast with unique occupations and storylines… to one where all six share the same responsibilities as an instructor and tackle the same lessons. Especially when some of them don’t seem like the type to enjoy teaching at all.

But the biggest issue I have is that the school validates the show’s idea that friendship is a unique resource that has to be taught, and that comes with a load of problematic implications. To get to the worst one right away, the school came packaged with a storyline about xenophobia and Equestria’s prejudice against their foreign neighbors. The coding of non-pony species in the show has always had weird racial implications (yaks and dragons being depicted as loud, unintelligent barbarians, the buffalo and Zecora representing members of real marginalized groups), but it is made even worse in this season by depicting them as people that are uneducated and need to be taught basic social skills and lessons in a foreign land. The Friendship School is literally a project designed by Twilight to spread Equestria’s idea of friendship to other countries! On top of that, they introduce what is essentially a conservative, white supremacist pony as a villain, and to beat him Twilight needs to prove that the exchange students are worthy of being taught. I really don’t think I need to explain why this is extremely weird and shouldn’t even be in the show in the first place.

I love the show because of episodes like Amending Fences, Leap of Faith, and No Second Prances—episodes that teach children that relationships aren’t big battles of morality and power but are complicated experiences that everyone has a unique response to. These experiences cannot be taught in a school with sewing lessons and apple picking and taking exams. They are also not unique to any particular community or race—that is a fact of life that most children should immediately understand. It’s extremely disheartening watching the show regress to the point where Rarity is telling a young girl that her cultural costume isn’t pretty enough and she’s dolling her up in wigs to cover her braids and giving her etiquette lessons to “fit right in." I don’t care that the moral was that she was wrong; what’s wrong is that the show even bothered making episodes like this at all. 

Season 9 concludes with a happy ending where all is well, but it isn't because the young child villain, the one character that needed friendship lessons and the grace to grow up, was turned into a garden accessory without a second thought. All while surrounded by the redeemed villains that the series arbitrarily decided were more worthy of our sympathy.

I don’t want to overwhelm anyone with my opinions and I want to be as fair as possible about what made me so uncomfortable with the show’s conclusion. I am a longtime fan, but I also care a lot about children’s media being responsible with their messaging, especially when they tackle subjects that require a great level of care, such as race and relationships. MLP (whether older fans like it or not) is ultimately a show about teaching children valuable social skills and providing moral lessons with every adventure.

I doubt this mixed messaging was intentional on the writer’s part. Rather, the last seasons were recklessly handled. To a viewer’s eyes, there isn’t a difference between these two.

[ganondoodle]

"to even give people the mere chance of starting to understand how you feel about this character and this story you made up around them you have to actually draw that comic, you are at chapter 2, even just the rough draft for it took you a year despite your best efforts on being faster"

[mad-c1oud]

thinking about the Charlie's birthday stream. not the ending, no, we think about that too much. no I think about everything else:

the happiness, the joy, the warmth of it all for nearly two full hours

the lack of mob spawns that night because it’s Charlie's birthday and he has eggs with him. how intentional it is. how funny it is and how sad it makes me because its so considerate

thinking about Tallulah by Charlie's side the whole time, diligently leading him from item to item as his little "guardian angel". Charlie trying to be a good tio and falling a little short sometimes, accidentally leaving Tallulah behind when she crashes but still trying cause that’s his sobrina. how she has to actually hit him to get his attention and how bad she must feel but it's so fucking funny each time

(how can anyone blame him when he never gets to hang out with the eggs enough to know he should wait for her? Charlie had Juanaflippa for what- 10 days? and was practically shunned by several others and himself from interacting with other eggs after his action, which is understandable, but only for so long. can they not see how he plays with the eggs? hear how soft his voice gets around them? don't the other islanders understand?)

this is maybe the longest he's gotten to hang out with tallulah since he got his backpack. Wilbur is his best friend and this was the egg he left behind. He's still learning and Tallulah still loves him despite it. Two people missing someone dearly, yet they have each other even if it's hard to realize

thinking about "Maybe Tallulah, you were the gift. I think you're the gift, Tallulah."

thinking about Richas, his nephew because Charlie has Mike, an actual brother that is equally excited to see him time and time again. A nephew coming around with the slime head and slime balls, like a mini Charlie, who is decked out in a full ghillie suit. Charlie who plays with the egg, pretending to be a spooky monster and richas playing along and getting scared

thinking about Charlie not knowing how to use the ghillie suit properly so he's still clearly visible to the eggs, yet they act like he isn't for his sake. shepherding him around from place to place because charlie is a little clueless yeah (he's in exile, go easy on him), but they are patient and happy to "tag along" and let him lead

thinking about them all taking a picture with him in the school, charlie wanting one with both of them, something to remember the day by.

thinking about how charlie is clearly loved by the eggs, his huevos, and how he clearly loves them back and is trying to be better for them even if he struggles so much

thinking about Charlie Slimecicle on his birthday, for once happy after everything he's been through, Tallulah and Richarlyson by his side

just him, his sobrina, and his nephew on a little scavenger hunt under the stars while the rest of the server remains quiet and calm. asleep while they remain lively

just them

happy