#with a fucking micro tree this time

[birdantlers]

A heartfelt and grievously expanded-upon update to this—please, please read the whole thing if you can. reblogs much appreciated.

(DISCLAIMER, for all who are saying reasons like abusive parents/legal stuff/toxic ex/triggering memories/page got deleted/job/stalkers/bullying/[[insert any other shitty life thing]], This is not concerning that—personal safety & health ALWAYS comes first, and is worth more than any media ever could be. This is my biggest reason for defending that autonomy. I would be a hypocrite to say I hadn’t deleted triggering posts of mine or ones that got me in trouble with my family.)

it genuinely makes me sad and kinda upset when someone purges all their old art off the internet like. barring harmful content what if someone liked that. What if someone would have. And now nobody will ever know and it's just gone. even people's old invader zim askblogs or whatever getting deleted feels like a micro alexandria to me and that's just something I made up. I wasn't even thinking of a specific one it just stresses me out. Is this the autism I don't get why nobody else seems to freak internally abt it like I do. I see artists whose blogs I've never even looked at go like "man so glad I deleted all my old stuff it's so clean" or saying they throw out art from when they were kids I'm like. how are you not hurling. How is that not distressing that is literally your tree rings why would you do that. I want to see what's out there. people want to see it I promise someone out there likes it

...don't they??? Does everyone get quietly irrationally upset by this as me, or is this just hyperfixation/autism/some amalgam of the two. I'm not a hoarder or obsessive compulsive or anything like that so i wonder..

Anyways. reblog if you had a favorite amateur youtube animator in your childhood whose channel got nuked without a trace one day that you still think about.

I wanted to attach this video because it condenses my point very well. A TLDR of sorts. Please watch the whole thing, it genuinely changed the entire way I think about art as a concept.

(2nd vid is "Subjectivity in Art")

“The moment your art touches an audience, the ownership shifts in an irreversible way. [They're] not having an art experience with you and your intentions. They're having an art experience with the art object.

“You can't just burn your past; it's not even your past to burn anymore. It's other people's history as well. Whether or not you like it, that art is already bonded to somebody's soul, and if you rip the art away, you're ripping a bit of the soul that has adhesive contact to it.”

The digital age makes it very easy to distance or detach yourself from the impact your work has—be it art, fanfic, videos, even memes. Online content is as important to people now as any other media, if not more. But it's also by far the easiest, fastest, and most effective form of it to erase from public access. Media so unbelievably important to people and in general. Yes, you—with the 2010s purple sparkle dog speedpaint. I still think about that speedpaint all the time, because it was the first time i learned that you could draw on a computer, and I thought it was cool as hell. I still do.

I do wish there was a stronger culture of preservation and consideration for this, because every time I see people talk about snuffing their stuff because it doesn't personally resonate with them anymore, I just think ...what about all the people it did?

I've seen lots of people saying "get over it, it doesn't even matter," but it fucking does. It does matter. Even if I didn’t make it, even if I don’t have to deal with being the one who made it, even if I'm naturally inclined to be distressed by it—It still matters. And there’s nothing you could ever say to suddenly make it not matter, because there’s nothing you could ever say to make it not matter to me.

Don't devalue the act of creation. Don't dismiss something you made. It's out there, in people's thoughts and hearts and souls, and that is real. Even if you don't know it. Especially if you don't know it. Especially in a world where physical media is being snuffed out, the internet is constantly dying without any physical remains to recover, social isolation is rampant, and simply because independently produced content online is still media.

Fanfiction can hold equal or greater significance to someone as a book, but you can’t unpublish a book. Authors don’t have a button that can vaporize every copy of their work across all time, but fanfiction authors do. I’m not counting people who download fics either—when you buy a book, that transaction is over. But online, you have the power of unending transaction that can be terminated instantly at your will. The process of publishing fanfic vs. publishing a book may be different, but people’s connection to the art is the same intensity.

So yeah. I do get depressed about the Internet being a constant Alexandria, but the times I get the most depressed is when I click someone's page and see that all their work is gone because they're ‘curating a new aesthetic’ for their page or some shit. Or weeding out all the "ugly" art. Or just went on whatever the hell 'thrill deleting' is, because they just get a kick out of it.

Fuck it—yeah! It upsets me! I’m not wrong to say that. I’m saying it!

Under the cut, because it got long as shit! Also don’t worry the ending is way sappier and more ‘beauty of human nature’ vibe so it’s not all doom and gloom lol

What if that was someone's favorite art of that character. What if someone read that 'cringe oneshot' on the worst day of their life. What if that Warriors meme vid is still burned into a college student’s mind despite being gone for 10 years. What if it's actually not just you and the ones and zeros you rent out to the world—secure in knowing the original will always be on your computer for you to do whatever you want with it.

I really, deeply wish there was more of a general awareness of this, because even though social media can be used like a diary, that’s functionally the opposite of what it is. It’s social media. When you post, it’s no longer in a vacuum, even though you can’t see the real humans that content touches—often deeply.

Media is history. You shouldn’t burn that history just because you personally believe it isn’t worth saving.

Because it’s no longer just your personal opinion. It’s no longer just your personal work. it’s. history. Memory of media is not a suitable replacement for the media itself. If it was, we wouldn’t save anything at all. Nostalgia is an agent of that. The definition of nostalgia is grief for moments of the past that are inaccessible, and the biggest balm for that pain is accessing a physical reminder of those moments. That opinion of yours is no longer personal. It’s weighed against uncountable people across all time that your thing is ALSO personal to. People who would, and will mourn its absence.

How many times have you joined an older fandom only to discover that some of its most popular works are gone? How many times have you routed through random blogs looking for scraps people hopefully reblogged? how many times have you used Wayback machine desperately praying that a fan fiction or a YouTube video will be there? How many times do you look up crunchy old vines or YouTube videos or anime AMV‘s? How many times do you remember old fanfic.net sex that impacted you in middle school, only to shake your head and go ‘probably no point even looking.’

i mourn the absence. No, people can’t and shouldn’t have their agency over what they post revoked, but they should be conscious of that weight. If you’re reading this and getting extremely annoyed, and you’re not in the pink text above,,,, good.

I honestly do hope it gets under your skin. I hope it sits with you. I hope you feel it every time you hit that button, and whether or not you do hit that button—if you hesitate, if you remember this, even spitefully, I’ve done my job. I am howling into the void. And I may not want an answer, but I do want my anguish to be heard and remembered. Because it isn’t me just being melodramatic.

I know I sound that way writing so much, but if my favorite writing YouTuber can drop trow this week and go, "yeah, sorry, all my video essays from less than a year ago that you listen to in the car all the time? I'm "rebranding" my content so i deleted them. besides, my personal views don't really agree align with the analyses i did, or the techniques i taught in them anyway. Sorry if some of the literal tens of thousands of you used them, but I don't want to feel shackled to having youtuber "classics" tied to me”

….then i guess I'm just going to have to sound dramatic! That fucking sucks! Hours of work and knowledge gone! This was a new channel too. It’s very likely there’s no archive of any kind, because who would think someone who worked hard enough to write, record, and edit hour-long videos, would just turn around and nuke it all? I definitely didn’t see it coming, but I did just start a new screenwriting class a few weeks ago, so I’ll tell you at least one person is REALLY missing those fucking videos right now. Because a lot of them were about specifically screenwriting, which I know jack shit about. and that specific person’s pace, editing, and style of breaking down information was the best suited style I found that I could focus on and absorb. There’s no replacement for that. No alternative for his individual perspective. his jokes. his opinions.

No, they may not resonate with him now, but in this decision, he’s put up a big middle finger to everyone who might have. And he has like 100k subscribers! Those are confirmed supporters! Imagine how many silent and untethered observers are feeling this loss right now. Imagine how many will not have it in the future.

If he never posted them at all, we wouldn’t know we had it. It wouldn’t be a loss. But we did. We did have it. Until he decided that no, we didn’t, because he just happens to be the one out of millions of individuals holding the button to burn it in a hundredth of a second.

His personal work, the attachment I had to it, and the ways that it helped me are now just ripped away. I am one person out of millions, literal MILLIONS of people who saw and liked this content before it vanished. The soul has been ripped, the access severed, and by CJ’s (and my) definition, the art is functionally dead. Not for the YouTuber or anyone else lucky enough to save a link or download, but everyone else. From this point until the end of time, even if people even two weeks from now don’t know it. Even if someone who stumbles upon his channel today, doesn’t know it.

We only mourn the concept of Alexandria because we had some kind of scope for what was inside. Yes, maybe you got self-conscious and deleted your 12 year old deviant art account. Do you know who else is doing that?? THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of other twenty somethings who ALSO feel self-conscious about their old socials. Art. Fanfic. One direction fan videos. anything.

Suddenly, an unquantifiable amount of information from your age group—an entire age group in 2012, is. gone. And we will NEVER know what’s been erased from that history. We will NEVER know what could have been significant to us ten years from now. Twenty years from now. A hundred years. A thousand.

You could have deleted a fanfic that would have been someone else’s new go-to panic attack distraction tomorrow. You could have deleted a video someone used to laugh at with their friend who died yesterday. When you delete something, you risk tearing a hole in unknowable personal histories.

The Internet isn’t just a big library of Alexandria. It’s a library containing libraries. And those libraries have their own libraries in those libraries have their own as well. libraries inside libraries, inside libraries, ad infinitum. To conceive the amount of destroyed history on the Internet is crushing.

And I just can’t help but I ask myself how in gods name people can choose to contribute to that, instead of reposting everything to trash heap alts titled “hall of shame” or some shit.

You can offload to alts. Put up disclaimers. Make password locked blogs, or dropboxes, or anonymous imgur dumps. Anonymous reuploads. Orphan fics. Make a playlist or linktree of unlisted videos. Cut off the watermarks. Delete all references to it on your main. Make a dedicated unlisted playlist. make a google drive. Make new portfolio sites. Delete any questions you get about it. Change pen names. Pretend it never existed.

Give a heads up.

Something.

But don’t. kill. the media.

The knowledge that our stuff is going to forever be tied to us is a cross we have to bear, but the responsibility that comes with putting it out there in the first place, can’t be ignored.

Anyway. I'm not trying to start conflict. This is not a bash on anyone, nor a call for witch hunts. Or anon hate, or blocks and unfollows or anything of that nature. I'm not wishing ramifications or hate of any kind on anyone who does wants to do any of this.

I'm also not guilt tripping— I am not saying that you should feel bad. I AM saying why it makes me feel bad. That’s not guilting, it’s a dialogue. One I personally feel is long overdue.

It's me yelling into the void: please consider the real people on the other side of the screen before you hit that button. Realize and know that whatever you're about to erase from history could be the most important thing in the world to someone.

Art is an experience. It's why we revisit it. If art and history simply lived in the matter and code of media, we would only need to look at it once. We wouldn’t put things in museums. We wouldn’t build libraries. We wouldn’t look up vine compilations.

If you're able, consider (and I do mean consider, this is not a call to action) not destroying that. And don’t shrug it off as some pretentious asshole venting on Tumblr. You only need to look in the notes and tags to see that it isn’t just me. it’s never just me, or you, or the pixels.

And even if you do shrug it off, then at least recognize that what you make matters. Whatever you think about it, if it’s out there, that's not your discretion anymore. If a tree falls in the woods and even one person is around to see it, it fucking mattered. Because it happened. Don’t mulch your tree rings if you don’t have to. Because if enough people do it, a whole forest is gone. Media is history, no matter whether you think it’s worth putting in a museum, or only has 30 notes.

Thousands of years ago, a child named onfim doodled on his homework. They’re crude, and everyone has the wrong amount of fingers, and they’re also priceless archaeological artifacts recognizable throughout the world.

the only thing separating Onfim’s doodles and your MS paint Pokémon doodles is time. The only thing separating your old MS paint Pokémon doodles from being a priceless artifacts, thousands of years in the future is time. Your creations are already priceless artifacts. No matter what you do, don't ever, ever deny that. It isn’t blowing up your own ass, it’s artistic and anthropological fact.

The mundane and the supposedly unworthy are often the first things lost to time, and that’s why they’re so precious. That’s why artists who were before their time are scorned first only to be celebrated later. Do you think they knew that was going to happen?? What if they nuked it? Many probably did! But now that’s happening exponentially and instantaneously everywhere, WITHOUT the artist having to destroy their only copy—which makes it way easier and more dismissable.

Sometimes, If you’re revolutionary enough, people will make an effort to preserve your work, but recognized and thoroughly recorded work is rare compared to unrecognized and thoroughly recorded work.

Sometimes something is beloved enough that it would be impossible for it not to go down in history, but even then it isnt a guarantee, and it’s rare. But if van Gogh burned all of his paintings in a fit of despair before his death, we would have no van Gogh. Because he wasn’t respected as an artist in his time, but that wasn’t what defined the worth of his art. The people after him did, because his art was still there for them.

If you rip the art away, you're ripping a bit of the soul that has adhesive contact to it. If you belittle your art, you belittle the very real relationships and emotions and revisitations people have with the media. You defy the inherent worth and weight of a creation. you created. That's effort. It's passion. No matter how flippant or unskilled or worthless you think it is, it matters. Because at the end of the day, you could have chosen to make nothing at all, and you didn't.

•

Muting notifs

[entitled-fangirl]

Two idiots in love.

Joel Miller x anemic!reader

Summary: Ellie notices the two lovebirds, and decides to ask Joel about it after the reader falls asleep.

Words: 1,584

Warnings: talk of death, anemia, mutual pining, cursing, Ellie being a shithead as always...

Author's note: The way I write about this man all day long but none of the fics go together 😦

Part 2!!!

Masterlist

.......................................................................................

Joel decided to set up camp for the night, only outside of Boston by 10 miles.

Tess had just died, and things were still tender between Joel, Y/N, and Ellie.

Tess was Y/N’s older sister, and she looked up to her more than anyone.

And so did Joel.

Tess was their rock. Their steady hand in hard times. And she was gone.

But at least Joel and Y/N had each other.

They had been in an awkward “Are they? Aren’t they?” Situation for the past two years. 

They liked each other, that much was clear by the stolen glances and small smiles they gave one another. But they hesitated. 

They didn’t want to invest too much in each other just to watch the other die in front of them.

So, they remained friends.

Friends that like each other a lot.

And Ellie noticed it too.

She saw the way the two “friends” would share food. His hand was always placed on her waist or shoulder. Her eyes always flickered to him in a situation. 

She knew they loved each other.

Y/N sat her pack down, her body sore. She sat down, leaning back against the trunk of a tree.

Joel immediately took notice of her exhausted behavior, “Hey.”

She looked up, her voice soft, “…what?”

He kneels down next to her, “…you alright? Not… hurt or nothing?”

She pulls up her sleeve, revealing a nasty bruised where an infected had grabbed her.

He immediately pulled her arm in front of him, studying it.

“I’m fine…really. Just a bruise….”

His thumb grazes over her forearm lightly, his mind wandering a million miles an hour.

But that mind stilled when she spoke again, “…you alright, Joel?”

He nods, “Yeah. Fine.”

She takes that as an answer, studying the frown lines in his face with a smile of her own. She couldn’t help but like the older man. How kind he was to her. The caring touch he always gave her. She always felt her heart jump when he’d give her a soft look after practically murdering someone in front of her. In a way, it was… sweet.

Ellie had a shit eating grin on her face, watching the exchange with a careful eye.

If Joel noticed, he didn’t care enough to comment, his worry focused on the woman in front of him. “You take your meds?”

She sighed, her shoulders falling slightly, “…no.”

His eyes hardened, “Take them.”

A small smile came to her lips, “…Joel…”

“I fucking mean it. Take them. Now.”

Her smile fell, realizing how serious he had become. Her eyes watched the micro-expressions in his face change too.

She pushed herself up slightly with a huff. She pulled her pack to her, flipping the top up with a bit of an attitude. She dug around for a while. Finally, she found them, pulling out the orange pill bottle with a content sigh. 

Joel reached back, pulling out his canteen, handing it to her. “Go on…”

She took the pills, taking a drink from his canteen and handing it back to him. 

He smiled, “Good girl.”

And with that, he stood, going to check the perimeter.

Ellie watched him walk away, her eyebrows furrowing. She stood up, walking closer to Y/N. She then kneeled down, not much differently than Joel had. “What, uh… what was that?”

The woman scoffed softly, “…you’ve never heard of medication before?”

Ellie rolled her eyes, “No. I know what that is. I meant… you two. Like… what… I don’t know… what are you two?”

The woman looked up at the sunset. Or, at least, what she could see over the trees. She sighed, “I don’t know, El. Don’t ask things that there’s no answer to.”

Ellie huffed, moving back to her previous spot.

…

A few hours later, when the sun was long gone, the three of them sat around a small fire. Ellie sat across from Joel and Y/N, occasionally looking over at them.

Y/N’s eyelids were slightly drooping. They had been like that since they stopped for the day. It seemed that she couldn’t keep herself awake. 

And Joel noticed. Of course, he did. 

So, he let her lean against him, her head resting on his shoulder. 

He leaned his head down, his mouth in her hair, “Wanna sleep, sweetheart?”

Her grip tightened on his arm just slightly, “no… I… I’m fine… I’m awake…”

Joel chuckled. “Nah, honey. Go to sleep. Ellie and I will watch, right?”

Ellie’s head perked up and she nodded quickly. 

Y/N seemed to take that for an answer, slowly beginning to move to set up her sleeping bag. 

Joel grabbed her wrist, “Hey. Just… stay here, yeah?”

She turned to look at him, her eyebrows coming together in confusion. But the confusion didn’t outweigh the exhaustion, because she quickly nodded and moved back.

She leaned against his shoulder once again, feeling his arm snake around her waist to hold her against him. 

“Just sleep. I gotcha, darlin’.” 

She let her eyes close, the sleep calling to her.

A silence resounded through the forest, only the cricket’s chirping being heard.

Joel held her close, relishing in the feeling it gave him to know she was there. Safe in his arms. He could see her resting next to him, her chest moving up and down with each breath.

He lightly kissed the top of her head.

It seemed only then he remembered Ellie’s presence, because his gaze shifted her her. 

She had a large smirk on her face, her eyebrows raised.

Joel scoffed, “Oh, shut up.”

“I didn’t say nothing.”

“You said enough.”

She laughs to herself, going back to staring at the fire. 

Y/N shivered lightly, her body temperature dropping. 

Joel immediately shrugged off his jacket, moving her in his arms to wrap it around her. 

It woke her up, just barely, as she began to mumble. “No… don’t… I… I’m not cold...”

He wrapped her in it, pulling her further into his arms, trying to transfer some of his heat to her. 

“…Joel…”

He leaned his head down, “It’s alright… I wanted to… Let me look after you. Please, sweetheart.”

A soft breath left her lungs as she relaxed again, presumably falling back asleep.

Ellie studied the transaction, curious about something. 

Joel rolled his eyes, “What now?”

Ellie continued to stare at the woman, “What’s wrong with her?”

Joel’s jaw clenched. “There’s nothing wrong with her. She just… has a harder time than most.”

“...Well, that was vague as fuck.”

“Ellie… Goddammit. Just… ugh.”

“...Well…?”

Joel sighed, “…it’s anemia. She’s anemic.”

Ellie stared at the fire, thinking, “I don’t…”

“It’s a blood disease.”

Her mouth formed a small ‘o,’ her eyes moving back to him. He took this as a sign to continue. 

“The body needs oxygen. And a lot of it. There are these… carriers, I guess you could say, and they carry the oxygen through the bloodstream to different organs. They’re called blood cells.”

Ellie nodded, trying to follow along.

“Well, she doesn’t make enough of them. Her body doesn’t get enough oxygen. Makes her tired… and… whatnot…”

“So, that’s what her medicine is for?”

Joel nodded. “Hard to come by but… better than nothing.”

Ellie gulped. “And… when she doesn’t have any more?”

Joel's gaze hardened. “She has enough for the trip, alright. This is the most strenuous thing I’ll ever make her do,” his hand rubs across his face, “…fuck..” He sighed under his breath.

“So… it makes her tired and…what?”

Joel looks back up at her, “…dizzy, nauseous… she passes out sometimes, but… it’s rare. Out of breath… she’s having a harder time right now because… well.. you know…”

Ellie’s stare was blank, “…how the fuck do I know?”

Joel sighed again, his voice slightly raised, “Goddammit. Her… time of the month…”

“Oh. She’s on her period?” Ellie said with a smirk.

“Yeah. Yeah. So… even more less blood to go around… so… we’ll take it easy the next few days… give her a break.”

Ellie nods. Silence sets in before...

“You love her, don’t you?”

Joel’s head perks up, a surprised look on his face. “��What? No, I don’t…”

“Yeah you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Look at yourself, Joel.”

Joel looked down. His arm was wrapped around her waist, the other arm rubbing up and down her leg to create heat. He let out a grunt, “This is why I don’t fucking tell you things.”

Ellie scoffed, “You didn’t fucking say it. I’m looking at it, idiot.”

“Go the fuck to bed.”

“Wow. Just... wow. Way to be an adult, Joel. Real mature.”

“Goodnight.”

…

Y/N woke up a little while later to Joel moving her in his arms. She shifted, her eyes starting to open.

“Shh…. Go back to bed, baby," Joel whispered in her ear, "Just… go back to sleep for me.”

She was laying in Joel’s sleeping bag with him, his arms wrapped around her tightly, her head resting on his chest.

She hummed, “mmm… but…”

She could feel his smile, “None of that. Sleep, sweetheart. I’ll be here when you wake up. I always am.”

…

Surprisingly, Ellie was the first one to wake up that morning. She sat up, craning her neck to check for her companions.

And God, she wished she had a camera.

The two were wrapped in each other’s embrace, Joel’s soft snores echoing.

They were just two fucking idiots in love.

And Ellie made it her mission to get them together by the end of the trip.

.................................................................

Author's note: I made a part 2!!!

[loucifersbitch]

He can't breathe. 

It's been half an hour.

He's soaked through.

He can barely hear through the wind and the yelling and the panic.

He can't see as well as usual, as if his vision has been reduced to a small tunnel, his peripheral vision nearly nonexistent.

He's numb and probably cold - he stopped feeling it around the 10 minute mark - and he can't. fucking. breathe.

Suddenly he hears it. There's a pop followed by a bang and then he's running. He doesn't know if he yelled at the rest of the team or if they heard it, too, but they're all with him as he bursts through a bush and dodges a tree, nearly sprinting toward the area where the sound came from.

He may have long legs, but Chimney’s faster as he cuts across in front of him, yelling something over his shoulder that Buck doesn't quite catch. The rain is so loud and so heavy, but they run as fast as the terrain will allow.

And then it's in front of them, the yellow and white body of the helicopter mangled amongst the downed trees, a weak line of smoke pouring out of the tail and immediately doused by the downpour. And a gloved hand sticking out of the cockpit window, lying on the ground at an unnatural angle. Not moving. Too still.

“Tommy,” he croaks. It's then that he realizes he's crying - has been for a while if the gravel in his voice is anything to go by.

They should've gotten here sooner. They should've found the crash site earlier. They should've left the station as soon as the mayday call came in. They could've saved at least a few minutes by leaving their turnouts behind. They would've -

“I've got a pulse!” Hen yells over the rain. He hadn't even noticed her or Chim move. “It's strong! He's just unconscious. Possible TBI, obvious compound fracture to the left ulna and radius, a few lacerations that I can see from here.”

Buck releases a sob, and his legs give out, but two pairs of hands catch him before he goes down. 

Chim is climbing into the cockpit gingerly, trying not to jostle anything - or Tommy. After a few moments, he yells, “Ravi, I need that backboard!”

“I got him, I got him,” Bobby says as Ravi leaves Buck’s side. Buck leans into Bobby and turns his head to his other side where - Eddie, of course - is also holding him steady.

“We got you, Buck,” Eddie says. Then he adds, “And they’ve got Tommy. They’ll get him out, and we’ll all go to the hospital with him.”

“A-all of you, too?” Buck grits out.

“Yeah, Buck. All of us,” Bobby answers. “You know that’s what we do when one of our family is injured. Tommy’s family, too.”

Buck can only nod. He swallows roughly. He’s already lost the battle with his emotions, but he knows his voice will crack and he’ll break down again if he thanks Bobby out loud.

Time is moving differently than it should. Soon he finds himself in the back of the ambulance with no recollection of how he got there. But he has Tommy’s good hand in his own, and that’s all that matters right now.

Tommy’s cold and drenched, and his face is covered in micro lacerations, and there’s a distinct smell of fuel hanging in a haze around them, but Tommy’s here. His hand is as soft as it always is and his pulse is beating steadily under Buck’s fingers lingering on his wrist. Hen and Chim work nearby, running IVs and giving Tommy medications and moving around Buck without disturbing him. They set his arm as well as they can, and he can hear Bobby in the front seat call in their ETA to the nearest ER, letting them know what to prep for.

They’re almost to the hospital when Tommy’s eyes flutter open briefly.

“Ev-?” he starts to say, his voice raspy, but Buck cuts him off.

“I’m here, baby. We’re all right here. We’ll be at the hospital soon. We’ve got you.”

Buck doesn’t know if Tommy can even comprehend what he’s saying, but Tommy hums in acknowledgement before immediately passing out again.

Then the doors of the ambulance swing open, and Tommy is out of sight in seconds. 

part 1

part 3

part 4

[evilminji]

Okay it's continued to bug me? >.>

Midi-chlorians. They exsist in symbiosis, right?

Theoretically using us as a host to live and populate in, in return for the sweet ability to feel the Force goodness? Interact with it maybe. They vibin.

But like?

....has? Has?? Anyone tried meditating at THEM?

Yeah, THROUGH them, you can connect with The Force. Cosmic Wonders etc. Taste the time particles. But that is A->B->C with you being A and the Force being C. Like connecting over the internet. But? In that analogy? Has anyone tried to talk to the COMPUTER?

They can "talk" to animals. Trees. Kyber.

Surely their OWN midi-chlorians would be receptive?

Little confused at first, probably. Because that's not how they usually function. But? Hey! New trick! We would like more iron in your diet please! And that guys Vibez? Rancid. You should get more hugs! :D ×10 trillion micro-organisms (in cheerful, teeny tiny, lil barely there Squeeky Voices, probably)

Cause like? All things are possible in the Force. But? Sometimes being IN a reality? Means you accept a certain consensus. One that might not be TRUE. Such as? "You can not TALK to midi-chlorians" and "you can not encourage them to multiply, thus RAISING YOUR OWN FORCE SENSITIVITY"

A WISE experiment? Fuck no. It was probably really stupid.

And "talk" is a strong, anthropomorphizing sort word in this context.

But STILL! For not technically sentient microorganisms? They are doing a GOOD JOB! We are very proud! And hey, it taught us so much! Like? How to ASK stuff! Such as?

"Aren't you TIRED? Just completely DONE with this guys rancid vibes and poor eating habits? Don't you want to LEAVE? Maybe make a cool new Force baby? My buddy Anikin Skywalker was a force baby! This Sheev guy keeps using you for wack shit. You gonna take that? Put up with his SHIT?"

.....heeeey, wait a minute.... O:< she's RIGHT! They DON'T have to put up with this! Thanks, bestie! We're gonna leave! *the CHANCELLOR OF THE FUCKING REPUBLIC explodes*

[alchemistc]

For the micro story: nr. 15: trembling hands or nr. 20: alone, finally?

I did 15 here!

20. alone, finally

"Sorry, we're leaving, I promise, I'm sorry about my drunk friends, it's just -- you guys are so cute together!"

Tommy watches a baby Queen march her drunk friends away from the LAFD tent, herding them like cats. It's almost dark out, and most booths are at least in the process of packing up. That is firmly not part of his agreement to man the booth for four hours, so he stands before Sal can comment on being mistaken for a couple again.

"Have fun packing up!" He calls out, already pushing up the back end of the tent, reaching for his phone in his back pocket, hoping desperately that Hen and Karen haven't gotten his baby bi too drunk to stand. He'd looked a little wobbly earlier that afternoon, but he'd accepted the ice cold water Tommy'd handed him with the kind of smile that usually meant he was thinking about sucking Tommy off.

He doesn't have a single text from any of them, and the concern starts to ratchet up before a fairly sober voice calls out "Hey handsome."

He's -- Christ, he's just drunk enough to know what he fucking looks like, leaning against the palm that had given them a modicum of shade all afternoon, long long legs in tiny tiny shorts, a tee shirt just barely long enough that, when paired with his comically out of proportion torso, isn't quite a crop top. Blue and purple and pink a little smeared on his cheekbone, dick necklace still around his neck.

("Where did you even find this," Tommy asked, his boyfriend two sheets to the wind and giving Sal a narrow eyed smile, like he suspected Sal might be up to something, volunteering to run the LAFD Pride booth with Tommy for the later part of the day.

"Karen ordered them online!"

Sal, two hours in to listening to Tommy bitch that he wasn't out there enjoying himself with his silly, beautiful, dressed-like-a-goddamn-whore of a man, had flicked his finger out at a particularly fat pink dick and introduced himself without any of the normal vitriol he reserved specifically for the men Tommy dated.)

"Hey." And they're alone, he realizes, the whole row of booths on either side broken down for the evening, street closed off for the rest of the weekend, Sal grumbling in the tent behind them.

"I brought you a change of clothes," he tells Tommy, unfolding a pair of shorts Tommy has doubts will fit over his ass. He's gonna be showing more thigh than he's been comfortable with since he was newly out. The shirt is -- doable, and definitely preferable to his department issue tee he's certain has permanent pit stains.

Tommy crowds Evan against the tree, enjoying the way he fits between the sprawl of Evan's legs, the way he's still a little sloppy as he kisses back, nose crushed against Tommy's cheek, tongue a little uncoordinated. "We don't have to go to the bar," Tommy wheedles, and Evan wheels his head back enough that the only reason he doesn't smack it against the trunk is the pressure from Tommy's hand preventing it.

"It's my first Pride. Are you gonna deny me the right to show off my hot firefighter pilot?"

God, it never takes much to convince him, when Evan pulls out those puppy eyes. He makes a grab for the clothes tucked under Evan's arm. "If Sal sees my ass when I'm changing, you don't get to fight him this time."

Evan tugs him in for another kiss instead of arguing the point.

[innocentlymacabre]

They Bring Me Flowers

Innocently Macabre Presents: Micro Monday Edition 2

tw death, grief, funeral

“They called me selfish, you know,” Ishaan said, settling down on the ground with his back resting against a tree. He took a heavy swig from the bottle of whiskey he had tucked under his arm and set it down next to him. “For not being there yesterday. You don’t think I’m selfish, do you?”

Ishaan didn’t know what to do with his pauses so he drank again. He followed the burning sensation trickling its way down his throat until it settled in his stomach and vanished instantly.

“No,” he finally said, prying the bottle away from his lips and answering his own question. “You don’t think I’m selfish. How could I have been there, man? Thirty years, we knew each other. Thirty fucking years. No one in that room had anything on us. None of ‘em could hold a candle to that kind of time.”

Despite himself, Ishaan chuckled involuntarily at his accidental joke and turned to face Aayush’s pyre for the first time since he sat down. “Guess you showed them, huh?” he said, looking at the candles arranged around the burning body. “Largest candle around.”

Ishaan paused to slowly sip on some more of the single malt. He wished it burned more, but he’d been drinking for so long his throat had been numbed.

“I always said I would never drink when sad. Didn’t want to make that association in my brain and whatnot. But what else am I meant to do right now, really? If you were here, I would have drank only half as much, so it’s your fault really. Guess something good did come of all this, eh? Free pass to blame the dead guy.”

Ishaan toasted with the spirits around him and drank some more. He wondered how much he would have to drink to actually start seeing ghosts, and then wondered if he would find out tonight. He knew the bottle with him wasn’t enough on its own, he needed more than that. His memory was already hazy though, so he couldn’t say with certainty how much he’d drank before he stumbled onto the funeral grounds.

He hadn’t intended to end up there. He just wanted to get out of the house. It was beginning to feel like the walls would cave in at any second and trap him underneath, suffocating him while he died a slow, agonising death.

But he wasn’t the one who was dead. Aayush was. He was here and Aayush was gone.

“I came, you know,” Ishaan declared, looking straight at the pyre. “None of them know this, but I was there. Briefly. For a moment. I was there. That hill behind us,” Ishaan pointed, turning around, “you could see everything from up there. I saw them light you on fire. I saw the fire grow and fade into the sky, and then I left. When I came back, there were only a few people left, but I stayed up there anyway. They milled about, not really saying much to each other, and I didn’t bother to try and make out who they were. It didn’t matter. None of them were me and you.

“Anyway, I stayed long after they left too. I stayed and I just…watched. I watched the fire take you over completely and I, I couldn’t do anything. I had to let you burn. What else could I have done? You don’t think I’m selfish, do you? I wasn’t meant to stop that or anything? Did you want to be buried? Nah, you wouldn’t want to rot away with the maggots and shit. Yeah, this was better.”

Ishaan didn’t say anything for a long time after that. He just stared into the fire fuelled by Aayush’s burning body and drank in silence, accompanied only by the occasional crackling of the pyre. The wind picked up and buffeted him so he scootched closer to the only source of warmth around.

Aayush burned with interesting patterns, Ishaan noted. All the little flames were various hues of orange, some deeper and angrier than others, but they all danced to their own beat. Ishaan wondered who the band was, but then remembered music was for weddings, not funerals. Unless you’re in a movie. Then everything gets a song.

Some of the little orange people danced in a circle, as if they were trying to raise the dead. Ishaan would have very much liked to join them. Others strung one another along in a strict, straight line and looked very serious, as if they had somewhere important to be. There were a few that seemed to have been cast out to the side. Ishaan reached out to touch these ones.

They were warm, but they didn’t burn. He liked dancing his fingertips across those little droplets of fire, playing the keys of an imaginary piano. If Aayush were there, he probably would have said something about that being the only piano Ishaan could play. But Aayush wasn’t there.

“It was meant to be us against the world, man. Till the very end,” Ishaan muttered. “You promised.”

Ishaan put the bottle to his lips and started gulping down the remains, not caring to pause even when he had the almost uncontrollable urge to cough up the liquor that had just been poured down. He stopped just short of the end of the bottle. He looked at the tiny volume left inside the tinted glass, and, for the first time in two days, a small smile appeared on his lips.

“Last sip’s yours, right? I’ve got a lifetime of last sips ahead of me, so I’ll let you have this one.”

Ishaan poured the remaining whiskey over the pyre and watched as it violently rose and cracked satisfactorily.

When it had calmed back down a little, he lay down next to Aayush, Ishaan and Aayush under the stars together one last time, and, unable to fight off the exhaustion any longer, gave in to sleep.

↝✧↝

thanks for reading! if you want future installments sent directly to you way before the rest of the world sees it, hop on over to innocentlymacabre.com/#micro-monday!

if you want to support this series, I would absolutely love you forever if you could buy me a coffee!

ko-fi 💜 • newsletter ☕ • instagram • masterlist

taglist in the replies. ask to be added/removed!

[wildfire317]

@liveleaker @jaquesmes

Alright listen here you little inbred, KKK wannabe chucklefucks news flash neither of you are main characters and your barely even background characters so quit acting like you dumbfucks are worth more than the dirt under your toenails. Nobody in their right mind actually thinks your dumb racist, homophobic and sexist comments are funny or cute, you two just look like absolutely moronic dipshits with micro-dongs and chihuahua complexes. And another thing you living condom usage advertisements, Nobody wants your defective sewing needle sized, piss poor excuses for cocks that not even a rat could choke on or your rotting in the middle of a dry summer sewer smelling, flatter than a piece of paper asses any where near them and if you think they do your even less intelligent than a single cell organism. You both claim to be adults so goddamn act like it because as things are right now you're both acting like a pair of rocket propelled spaz maggots spring-loaded face first up the asses of psychedelic freakout weasels on idiot drugs. Also you want to call someone swagless and bitchless you might want to take a good long look in the mirror because I don't see a singular molecule of swag on either of you or a single bitch and I'm not surprised considering you both look like the kind of guys that order boneless, dry rub chicken wings and then lose a fight to a chihuahua. And by the way just because you pieces of dick-cheese started putting out at twelve and peaked at 15 doesn't mean you get to drag everyone else down the perverted dunkass tree with you. Also your 8 decade curse is the biggest joke in the history of curses from any religion it isn't even an actual curse, it barely even qualifies as a jinx and thats ignoring the fact that it's basically useless the way you attempted to use it anyways and was over all a monumentally stupid waste of everyones time so stuff that in your prison cell and sit on it. You two blithering, feculent, shit holes are such lame wastes of genetic material i would not be surprised if both of your probably absentee fathers wish they had worn a condom at the time of your conceptions which explains your blatantly fatherless behavior and I bet your mothers change the subject when anyone asks about you and envy people who have never met or heard of you. Your "your momma" jokes are the most pathetic I have ever seen, were either of you actually even trying or was that the extent of your creativity? Because they were the weakest, most uninspired and embarrassing "your momma" jokes I have ever had the displeasure of reading to the point that they barely even qualify, And don't even get me started on your insults because I have met 3rd graders who have better insults. Your "oh look at me I'm a terrorist" shtick is so stupid and pathetic i couldn't help but cackle at your waste of energy like what do you want a cookie? Because you don't even deserve the crumbs of crap after someone else ate a cookie so who even gives a barfing fuck about it? You jackasses are about as threatening as some mild flatulence. I hope you piss ant's have fun dying alone and unwanted and that every time you think you have to fart you end up shitting your pants, i hope that every time you go to put socks on they are soaking wet and ice cold, i hope that the next time you are anywhere near a lego set or box of thumbtacks you step on one, i hope that every time you go to bed both sides of your pillow are annoyingly hot and give you lice, and lastly i hope that every single time you go to walk past a piece of furniture that you bang your toes on it hard enough to break your toe bones. Isn't it funny how quickly your bullshit unravels when someone actually intelligent calls you out? Do the world a favor and delete all of your social media, go apologize to whichever trees are working their proverbial asses off to replace the oxygen you're both wasting and then sew your mouths shut you cowardly wastes of skin. Id say you could learn from this but then I'd sound just as stupid as you two. Sayonara you worthless, crotch-stained barf-puppets.

( @warringwarrioridiot @p1n34ppl3-c4t24 for your reading entertainment)

[whitegoldtower]

Sorry but I’m gonna smack u all with my ‘tism stick

Have my favourite spider, favourite crystals, favourite poisons and favourite mushrooms

African Black Velvet: eresidae gandanameno sp. “Pretoria” - I want to keep one as a pet, desperately. 10/10 perfect spider.

CHICKEN OF THE WOODS (laetiporus cincinnatus) - if I ever found one of these I would bash my head off a tree in excitement and glee

Fly Agaric (Amanita Muscaria) - I found a few of these while out walking with my uni group 2 years ago and accidentally held up the whole group with a TED Talk. Luckily they were all also mentally ill / autistic /nd art students so I didn’t bore anybody

Ghost Fungus!!!!! (Omphalotus Nidiformis) - if I had the money I would 100000% fly to australia and venture out into the blue mountains at night just to see these beauties bioluminesce.

Vivianite: anyone who brings up crystals around me has probably heard me go “DO YOU KNOW VIVIANITE GROWS OUT OF CORPSES” at some point. It’s a ferrous iron phosphate mineral that grows in a monoclinic crystal system and thrives in anaerobic boggy environments. It forms when the hydroxyapatite in your bones (major source of phosphate) reacts with water from a waterlogged tomb and the iron in any surrounding rocks, resulting in cool shit like blue skeletons and crystals growing out yer teef

Grape Agate: it’s not agate. It’s not chalcedony. It’s not amethyst. It’s a variety of quartz silica which are commonly termed as ‘amethystine’, and instead of taking on the macrocrystalline monoclinic formations typical of normal quartz, it’s made up of up micro crystals that grow radially in a botryoidal form. Also comes in green and white. It’s only found in the Manakarra Beach in Indonesia.

Strychnine: (Strychnos Loganiaceae, Nux Vomica) - the one that leaves you with a hideous grin. It causes violent muscle contractions, enough to make the body bend back to an unnatural degree before the victim finally dies of asphyxiation. Particularly horrid as the victim remains conscious throughout the ordeal and is very much aware of what is happening. In fact, the victim is hyperaware. Nasty stuff. It inhibits your postsynaptic glycine receptors in your spinal cord, which causes the intensely painful and involuntary contortions. Also it’s mentioned in the Herbal of Rufinus as ‘good for helping to balance the phlegmatic and choleric humours’ through purging (vomiting, hence why it’s called the ‘vomiting nut’), and was a medicine to be used with great caution.

Giant Hogweed (Heracleum Apiaceae, Mantegazzianum): all parts of this plant are toxic. man fuck this stuff, if you touch it you’re literally gonna be burning and blistering every time the sun touches your skin for months and possibly even years after coming into contact with this hellspawn plant. Its active constituents are furanocoumarins, which basically mutate your skin cells to become incredibly sensitive to light. It’s a mutagenic and possibly carcinogenic photoactive compound.

Mandrake (Mandragora Officinarum): it’s in the nightshade family (Solanaceae)! Revered in folklore for the way its roots look like a person, said to ‘scream and cause death’ upon being uprooted. It’s a powerful narcotic, hallucinogenic and emetic plant, meaning that you try and eat this shit and you’ll be absolutely off your tits and vomming your guts up before you kick it.

Other honourable mentions that make for interesting reading:

Orpiment, Gasteracantha Cancriformis, Gasteracantha Arcuata, Sugar Fluorite, Jelly Lichens, Monkshood (Aconitum), Bleeding Tooth Fungus, Amorphophallus Titanium

Stupid fact about me: I have, in fact, ingested wormwood (Artemisia Absinthium) to see what sort of effect it would have out of curiosity, but didn’t get very far as it tasted fucking awful (I made a tea). Tastes like nail polish remover, 0/10 do not recommend. Didn’t ingest enough to feel any sort of thujone effect and my little experiment was safely conducted. I did, however, burn some to see if that would do anything and it made me feel rank in the tummy. No hallucinogenic effect. Again. 0/10 do not recommend.

[talenlee]

Fundie Vibeology

There are two competing and conflicting rhetorical tricks you’ll encounter dealing with Christian apologists which is the way that their feelings are fundamentally true and your feelings are just as fundamentally disqualifying.

Do you know what I’m describing? Here are the two points in contrast:

Deconstructors and anti-apologetics people are really just expressing some personal hurt or injury that they’re then incorrectly relating to the whole of the church.

And also:

For me, I think the greatest argument for god are everywhere, they’re just everywhere! Look around you, look at this tree! The complexity of it, the wonder of it, doesn’t that fill you with awe and show you the presence of God?

Which is to say, in one capacity, if you’ve got hurt, upset or negative feelings against their arguments, like I do, then your feelings are just feelings. They are feelings that lack for depth, they are feelings that mean your opinions and positions cannot be trusted. Their feelings, on the other hand, are literally expressions of objective facts.

I feel like that’s that, I just like, done with the article, we’re all wrapped up here because that’s just how it works and it’s an observable, quantifiable fact that this is a thing these people do, or even that they do it without making any excuse for it or even notice that they’re doing it. It’s very important to remember that when you’re dealing with Christian Apologetics, which is the foolish infant clown of the religious studies discipline, that you aren’t actually dealing with a form of scholarship. You’re operating within the parameters of an immense landscape of vibes.

The fundamental vibeology of Christian Apologetics then is about expressing an idea of the normal that is filtered through the vibes of that same church’s existing structural space. And that means even the supposed heavy hitters in this space, like, William Lane Craig, is capable of going ‘well yeah, you know if Divine Command Theory is true, based on the vibes,’ and he’s a serious heavyweight intellectual, and if you say ‘that’s fucking horrifying and stupid,’ you’re the one being emotional and immature and foolish.

And the thing is when you’re at that stage of things, when you’re looking at the world through this set of contrary and counterpoint vibes, you don’t realise it but most of the time, what you’re doing with your life and your world, is instead elevating your emotional reactions to the level of the word of god. A level that just happens to include your personal feelings of pride and disgust.

But you can’t point that out.

The public discourse, like the attention economy based job of ‘being an apologist’ is one of the worst things happening to a truly terrible industry, mind you. Because now it’s a micro-influencer economy of people selling vibes to people under the branding of their eternal souls, but it’s not using colloidal silver or brain force ultra to monetise. It’s the threat of eternal life being wielded like a gun as someone sells you their fucking vibes and they do so in a way where if you’re disgusted or angered by that, the problem is you, and these are the people who own the fucking government.

On the other hand, my entire life of being willing to identify myself as an atheist, I’ve been dealing with people trying to explain to my how whatever my position is, regardless of my points or my arguments or anything even in that family, that instead the conversation needs to route around me. What I am needs redefining, because hey, an atheist actually means, or a materialist really means, or the fundamental philosophical perspective on what atheism really means or how positive claims work — and that’s just vibes. Because I don’t get to control my identity or express how it’s treated or what that means for me, because I’m an Angry Atheist.

This is because, as with so much of this fundie junk, that fundamentalism isn’t actually, despite what people like me seem to claim, it’s not a wholly united problem across all religious factors. Christian fundamentalism is in no way linked with Muslim fundamentalism even if they’d both have reasons to dislike some scientist or other. Christian fundamentalism is a wheeling arm on the edge of the machine that is Christian Supremacy, ensuring to pull the machine over to the side; to set the edge that the rest of the operation gets to wield.

We’re not so bad. We don’t hate women that much. We give blankets to the homeless queers we turned out of their homes. We support those laws but we’re not rude about it. We don’t want you to die, we just don’t want you here.

We’re not those ones.

Why are you so emotional about this?

It’s all the same technology. It’s all the same system, the same artifice and it’s the same evil and cruel system of digesting people in the name of sustaining power that is coming out of the face of a wannabe cool Youth Pastor in a church hall or from under the deliberately made-for-youtube styled wannabe bore Content Creator or the same grimming smugly teenaged fuckface who thinks he’s got the whole Bible worked out because he can call Daniel Maclelan a faggot. It’s the same terrible, terrible, terrible thing, and the best of intentions never means having to look at what the system you’re engaging with supports, never having to consider your arguments as sensible things because the Well-Maybe-It-Could-Be-True-This-Way justifications are just ways to hang onto and hold tight onto your vibes.

I hate them.

I hate them whether they’re the ones who try to start fights in Pride Month about ‘the homosexual agenda’ or ‘encroachment’ or whether they’re the ones who wear fucking rainbow pins and tell us that actually, Jesus wasn’t anti-homosexuality so the church isn’t against them after all and in fact, in their view, in fact, really, it’s very backwards to focus on that.

Same machine, many mouths, and it’s all vomiting out the vibes of the worst impulses of selfish, demanding, cruel, digestive power.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[oiladgivememoney99]

Newscapepro SCP Rewrite Season 2: Alpha Strike

“Alright, are we all ready for our first mission as Alpha Strike?” Triana said to the rest of her team, all of which (Excluding Lara, obviously) were in the same helicopter as her. All wearing the, in Cory’s humble opinion far better looking green uniforms, including the bullet proof vest with each individual soldier’s insignia posted on their chest.

“I’ve been ready since we got back to base,” Hooper chuckled.

“Course I’ve been ready, these uniforms are sick!” Scott laughed.

“Yeah,” Cory nodded. “I look really good in green,”

Nikole didn’t speak, she just kinda crossed her arms and waited to land, uninterested as ever.

“Good enough, we’ll be attempting to recontain SCP-280. Use the flashlights provided to you to move it into an area that can inhibit it’s movement,” Lara cleared her throat. “Scott, you will use the experimental Micro HID Canon to stun it for a longer period of time,”

“Sounds good LT!” Scott chuckled.

“Glad you’re confident, cause we’re landing soon; everyone else ready?”

Everyone else affirmed, pulling out the flashlights, the brightness on them was enough to blind someone, and hopefully to do whatever it was supposed to do to this Skip. Admittedly Cory wasn’t paying much attention when Triana was explaining what it was. He didn’t have much time to ask anyway as they were landing in a forest. A forest with tall, dark trees that made the ground appear nearly black. Cory felt a small shiver go up his spine as he looked at it.

“Whaddaya scared, Cory?” Hooper slapped the man on the back, Scott and Nikole both chuckled.

“N-No! Maybe…” Cory mumbled as he held out his flashlight like a gun, sweat dripping down his forehead.

“You’ll be fine, Cory,” Triana reassured. “I’ve gotten you out of worse,”

Nikole cleared her throat. “We’ve gotten him through worse,”

“Yes, yes, let’s get moving now,” Triana tapped her headset. “Any signs of the Skip, Bluejay?”

“Flying a drone above the area now, I’ll let you know when I see it,”

“So uh… what’s this thing look like?” Cory asked as the team of 5 began to walk through the forest.

“Cory, were you listening during the briefing?” Triana sounded somehow both defeated and like she had the pent up frustration to tear down one of these trees.

“Uh…”

“It’s a pair of white eyes and some shadowy stuff!” Scott interrupted. “If you see some white eyes just flash your light at it so I can zap ‘em!” Scott chuckled as he slowly lifted up the incredibly heavy looking railgun.

“Thanks Scott!”

“Y’want help with that?” Hooper asked.

“I’m a big guy, I can carry it dude,” Scott chuckled reassuringly.

Nikole chuckled too. “True on that first part,” The two chuckled together.

Cory silently counted the trees in front of him, and glanced to the ground and the drone above him as his team walked through the forest, flashing their lights around the forest to see, the sound of bats above him kept him on edge as he-

Woosh

Wooshing sounds, wooshing sounds, wooshing sounds. Cory felt his blood go cold, the rest of the team felt it too, though to a lesser extent.

“Behind you, behind you, I can see it!” Lara exclaimed, the whole team turned around and flashed their lights at the pair of white pinpricks like eyes, held within a pitch black smoke within the illuminated part of the forest.

“We got it, Scott, now!” Triana ordered, Scott smiled widely as the canon slowly charged up, electricity surrounding the barrel as the shadowy creature was practically immobile from the amount of light on it, the charging sure was taking awhile though, the creature began to slowly move back.

“What’s taking so long?” Nikole shouted.

“I-It’s not firin-”

POOM

The gun exploded, a good chunk of the forest was shrouded in blinding white light. Every single MTF was launched onto the ground, they all groaned in pain as the light subsided, and the creature was gone.

“Alpha Strike, Alpha- fuck it, guys what happened?” Lara yelped over the radio. “My drone’s disabled, what did you do?”

“We *cough* we’re fine,” Triana said as she slowly got up. “The-”

“Oh shit!” Scott shouted, clicking on his flashlight only to notice that it wouldn’t turn on, no matter what he did. He took out the battery from the back which had completely exploded.

“The fucken’ gun exploded!” Nikole shouted, sounding as defeated as she did panicked. “And it blew up all the batteries, and now we’re gonna fucken’ die cause that fucken’ Kraut couldn’t bother to-”

“Nikole, calm the fuck down,” Triana calmly spoke over the older woman, hiding her own panic as Nikole let out a sigh of anger “The Micro HID Cannon didn’t fire properly, the batteries for our flashlights have been destroyed alongside the…” Triana looked at the cannon to assess the damages, only the part of the gun holding the energy core was damaged, the core, and the casing around it exploded and charred.

“Tri, the what?”

“The Canon’s core exploded,”

“Okay, okay it’s not as bad as I thought,” Lara breathed in and out. “Holy shit that was bad, there should be extra batteries and a spare core at the helicopter,”

“Great, Scott can you repair the Micro HID Cannon?”

“That’s uh…” Scott was breathing in and out to calm himself down. “Like, my entire job; hopefully I can,”

Hooper had seemingly calmed down pretty quickly. “What about us?”

Cory completely zoned out, utter panic on his features as he stood like a deer in headlights; not paying attention to a word of what Triana was saying as the blinding light and the events leading up to it flashed in his mind-

“Cory!” Triana shouted.

“Agh! What? What is it?”

“I- we’re going back to the helicopter to get batteries,” Triana explained. “Move!”

“Yes ma’am,”

The five ran through the forest, attempting to ignore the fwooshing around them, or the smoke in the corner of their eyes, or the white pinpricks they’d see alongside it, or the-

“Agh, it’s got me!”

Cory turned towards Scott being attacked, held down by the smokey creature. Panic set into him as the rest of his team desperately clicked their flashlights to no effect.

“Fuck fuck!” Triana yelled.

“No, nononononono!” Cory slapped the side of his head in panic, desperately trying to calm himself down-

FLICK

A light shone onto the shadow man, he slowly moved away from the Armorer, covering its eyes as it slowly backed away.

“Holy shit,” Scott was breathing heavily, panic and exhaustion evident in his voice. “You save me, man,”

“I… did?” The panic hadn’t worn off yet, Cory was still counting the trees he could see.

“Your eye er… lens is glowing, Cory,” Hooper announced.

“Yeah, forgot you had a camera for a face for a minute there,”

“Oh my God, I… saved you!” A huge smile grew on Cory’s face, he hadn’t failed somone, he hadn’t failed someone!

“This is great!” Lara sounded just as excited. “Now all Scott has to do is repair the Micro and we can go back to base,”

“Yeah Cory, you saved this mission,” Triana patted him on the back. “And Scott’s life,”

“Enough talkin, we’re burnin’ daylight here,” Hooper said.

“Of course, let’s get moving; someone guide Cory through the forest,” Triana ordered

Hooper grabbed Cory by the wrist and gently led him out of the forest, Cory felt his heartrate speed up (from the adrenaline of saving Scott’s life, of course)

Back at the helicopter, sooner than Cory thought they’d be. The shadow creature was long gone.

“Scott, get repairing the Micro HID Cannon,” Triana ordered, handing the man the glowing blue mass, encased in steel cage.

“On it, I’ll try to see what went wrong with it,” Scott said as he crouched down with the broken gun, a toolbox and welding equipment. He quickly got to work putting the core into place and welding the outer shell together.

Cory turned around, his lens light shining onto the man.

“Do you know how to turn that off?” Nikole asked.

“Uh… lemme just,” He slapped the side of his head again, the light turned off. “...I do!”

“Great, I’ll have this done in a jiffy!” Scott smiled under the welding mask. “Also I’m pretty sure I know what was wrong with it; the steel holding the energy core wasn’t thick enough,”

“What?” Triana sounded pissed, most than she usually did. “That is… incredibly irresponsible of The Foundation to give us a faulty prototype,”

“Hey, big Tri, standin’ up to The Foundation n’ all that,” Nikole chuckled.

Triana nodded. “I’ll be having a talk with the higher ups after this… especially Otis,”

“Right, it is his prototype,” Hooper said.

“That guy gives me the creeps,” Nikole shuddered at the thought of the Professor. “He’s just-”

“It’s back!” Cory shouted as he slapped the side of his head, the shadow creature that began to bolt towards him had been stopped in its tracks. “Gotcha!”

“Shit, are repairs finished, Scott?”

“All done, ready to lock n’ load!” Scott laughed semi-maniacal as he aimed the massive gun at the creature, it began to rev up and rev up, the tip of the barrel glowing blue before-

BZZZZZZZZZZT

The beam, a light blue combination of electricity and light hit the shadow, sending the smoky mist to the floor, completely incapacitated; a first for any recontainment op.

“Hell yeah!” Triana raised her hands in celebration, the rest of the team followed suit, Cory continuing to stare down the creature.

“From that I assume that shadow boy is dealt with,” Lara chuckled over the comms.

“You bet your ass it is, never doubted you Cory!” Nikole patted the man on the back.

“You said we were gonna die like 10 minutes ago,”

“I was jokin… let’s get this thing in the helicopter and go home,”

And so they did, Alpha Strike’s first mission was a stunning success, even with the mild hiccups it had.

---

Professor Otis sat in his office, tapping his fingers uncomfortably on the paperwork sitting on the table in front of him, he groaned as he readjusted his hat, his tie, every part of his clothes until-

“Professor Otis, what the hell?” Triana burst open the door, putting her hands on the desk. The man jumped a little in his seat as she entered.

“Lieutenant, what are you doing here?” Otis asked, a look of offense and annoyance in his eyes. “I am incredibly busy-”

“I don’t care,” Triana deadpanned. “You gave my team a faulty prototype, I would’ve liked to know about the fuel container’s faults beforehand,”

“We didn’t know, we-”

“Then you should’ve tested it more, your incompetence nearly jeopardised the entire mission,”

“Are you here to insult me, or are you here to talk about something useful?” The man sounded angrier. “As Alpha Strike you should understand that your job entails more risks than the average Mobile Task Force,”

“I understand, but I would like for unnecessary risks to be removed from the equation,”

“And I did what I could, anything else like this and I will have you court martialed,” A small smirk formed on his face for a second before going back to his normal scowl.

Triana grumbled. “I hope for your job that you did, I’ll be going now, Professor,”

Triana left the room.

“Good riddance,” Otis grumbled under his breath.

[msperfectsheep-posts]

Natsume's Book of Friends Reaction Blog - Episode 1

(Below the cut as to not destroy my followers' feeds)

My pure unfiltered thoughts, in chronological order, for Episode 1:

[DISCLAIMER]

oh great we're starting off by calling women despicable--i see how it is, show /j

"just think of all the babes and bikinis you'll meet" what an odd sentence

ooh i love natsume's eyes

they're like a bronzey copper

"is everything okay with you? since you're, like, covered in dirt" "i'm good. anyway--" natsume my friend you were just running from something that called you a despicable woman

"what's weirder: the weather, or natsume" my man is running for his life don't bully him too

nevermind natsume is yokaiphobic. kill him girls

RIP bozo he didn't even make it to a shrine

well that was a short anime

ARE YOU DEADNAMING HIM?

HIS NAME IS NOT REIKO!!!

oh god we have an evil advisor yokai edition

everyone keeps misgendering my man natsume this is so sad

AND they're misogynistic towards him

unbelievable

my poor man

"lets tear out her tongue so she can't utter a word" MY MAN CAN'T EVEN SAY HIS PRONOUNS?

KICK TO THE EYEBALL RUN RUN RUN

oh god this kid has been seeing The Horrors

Takashi Natsume... we have his first name, folks

this poor fucking guy

he gets misgendered and misnamed several times

he gets slammed against a tree and probably breaks several ribs

he's threatened to have his tongue cut out

he has been seeing yokai since he was a kid and was labelled mentally ill and attention seeking for it

he just tripped over a giant rope and landed on said probably broken ribs

THE TRIP JUST UNLEASHED A DEMON

AND INSTEAD OF DOING ANYTHING HE JUST LOOKS IN FEAR AND SAYS "ah. here we go"

THAT CAT DEMON IS SO FAT??????

the smug fat cat demon: "are you not afraid?"

takashi, clearly dissociating: "i'm just used to it, that's all"

HIS NAME IS NOT REIKO!!!!!!!!!! LEAVE HIM ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!

my god the entire yokai world is trying to either deadname or convince him he's a transwoman named reiko

oh that makes more sense. his grandma is reiko. but now this just says more about reiko if her grandson looks practically identical to her???

"unlike humans, we do not concern ourselves with things as inconsequential as gender" based???????

DAMN THIS CAT DEMON REALLY DID JUST CALL HIM A LONELY BITCH

oop cat's gone

"i'm fit as a fiddle, honest!" (had all the experiences above)(takashi you are either Lying or very out of touch with what it means to be fit)

oh AND he's an orphan too

leave the cat in the wall

GIVING A CAT WATERMELON???

> calls it the book of friends

> is a roster of every yokai his grandmother took down in combat

AND THEIR NAMES BEING WRITTEN DOWN BOUND THE LOSERS TO HER FOR LIFE

BASED GRANNY

EVIL ADVISOR DUDE IS BACK

TAKASHI MY MAN HE JUST TRIED TO EAT YOU

oh wait he actually listened to me

the way takashi takes physical pain/damage is so concerning to me. he is constantly falling/running/getting squeezed to death and he just brushes it off afterwards but it isn't in a plot armor-feeling way. it's in a way where it feels like he's just not processing the pain and that's Worse

"and if i happen to die in the process, then so be it" TAKASHI PLEASE

CHOMP HIM

Super interesting first episode!!

Other thoughts now that the episode is done:

I love the animation--I'm by no means someone who can really tell good animation from bad animation because all animation is really cool in my opinion and it's hard for me to usually distinguish what's stylistic and what isn't, but NBoF's animation is so simple but pretty to me??? Like I love the way Takashi is drawn and how he's so deeply expressive with micro-expressions that are usually hard to make on anime faces without being super exaggerated. It has a cozy slice-of-life look but then it hits you with what i saw above and I'm like????? curious to see if it goes further with "Takashi Natsume experiences the horrors in a nice setting" or if it cools down and becomes much more chill with time. I'll have to see but I literally have NO clue

And because you specifically requested this, @versaphile! Hope you enjoy :)

[divinekangaroo]

Just A Prompt!

Characters: Tommy Shelby, Alfie Solomons. Also I love Polly so any inclusion/mention of her would be a bonus.

Phrase: The blind leading the blind

No limits, sex is fine, gen is fine

Happy holidays!! Love your writing.

Dear Anon - I gave in -- because after well over a week I keep micro editing this part and not getting on with the rest of the words, so am hoping to move on to completion by anchoring this bit with a post. Hope you enjoy (progressively!)

death is a tree you plant in my chest (Ch 1/3) - pettiot - Peaky Blinders (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

Primarily set in the evening of S4-E4, Tommy invites Alfie to dinner after they finish establishing terms regarding Bonnie's debut fight. Flashbacks between S3 and S4, Alfie's youth, and Alfie's war experience.

Might be the last time they don't fuck, Alfie thinks. Why not.

.

Tommy Shelby/Alfie Solomons, Tommy Shelby & Alfie Solomons, Alfie Solomons/George Sage, Polly Gray, Charles Solomons, Many Other Contemporaneous Gangster Mentions, Solomons Family, Various Italians, Sabini | Unrequited Something-Something, Violence Fetish, Masochism, Chronic Pain, The Intersection of Kink Masochism and Chronic Pain, Longing, Fear of Death and Incapability, Cancer Diagnosis, Diagnosis Repercussions, Shock, Flashbacks, Not Coping Despite Appearances, Theatrical References, Backstory, Hand Jobs, Fantasising, Fisting, Fucking, Frottage, Dinner Date, Terrible Humour, Humiliation, Gangs, Jewish Rituals and Traditions, Unreliable Narrator, Internal Monologue, Mass Animal Death, Death Fetish, War Trauma, Class Issues, Ethnic Slurs, Slaughterer Trauma, Attempted Gangrape, Rape, Crossdressing, The Book of Leviticus, A Surprising Amount of Procreation Imagery, Deep Friendship, Deep Hurt, Prostitution, Complicated Relationship with Religion, Piercing, Tattoos, Dehumanisation

Shout out to @dandelionfool's tommy x alfie artwork which has a mood and vibe which has greatly inspired me!

.

[talentforlying]

don't know why i started thinking about it, but i've decided that constantine's sleep habits should be clinically studied, i think.

on average, he's running on maybe 3-4 hours of sleep, 6-8 if he's with someone. he's got a nasty habit of trying to delay the morning/use every hour available to do shit he didn't have time for during the day, even when his insomnia isn't actively plaguing him. he's also been known to flat-out dissociate and/or micro-sleep his way to daylight on multiple occasions.

re: "6-8 hours if he's with someone", he doesn't like sleeping alone. he's done it plenty, he's used to it, but he truly sleeps better with someone else next to him, be it a partner, a lover, or a friend.

a fairly deep, if restless, sleeper in general (if he manages to sleep at all), but a sound, sound car-and-public-transit-sleeper. will miss every stop on the tube if he makes the mistake of closing his eyes, and he can knock out in the back of chas's cab practically on command. he mostly chooses to try and stay awake for the latter, because any stretch of uninterruptible time with his best mate is something he will take full and complete advantage of, but if chas starts to get gossip-y about people he doesn't know/care about, or complain about work? night-night, out like a light.

re: above, he's pretty easy to wake up normally, but it is impossible to wake him up from a sound car-sleep, and even if you manage, his brain will not come online for a very long time afterwards. shake him awake during a car ride and ask him to get you something from the gas station, he will slog around like a zombie, not get what you asked for, throw something else at you instead, and promptly pass out again as soon his head hits the backseat.

surprisingly early riser when his mental health isn't flooring him, but always and without fail is so, so grumpy about waking up at all. he's not a morning person, yet he's saddled with a morning person's schedule. it's hell.

with his wombo-combo of extended manic periods and chronic insomnia, he can be prone to bouts of micro-sleeping, which for him just looks like abruptly losing focus, staring off into space, and full-body twitching out of nowhere. his eyes almost never close when he's dozed off, but they do glaze over and his pupils dilate. all of this can be very fucking freaky when you've hung around him long enough to recognize the early warning signs of certain kinds of possession, and he's been panic-decked by jumpy occultists several times.

he sleeps either fully on his front or fully on his back, and prefers to sleep naked, so if you wake him up in the middle of the night, you are almost guaranteed to see either the pine tree ass tattoo or full frontal. if he's living with other people, he trades in preference for outrageously gaudy floral boxers, because he thinks they're funny enough and amuse other people enough for him to keep buying them.

he has so many nightmares, but it's usually almost impossible to tell he's having one until he wakes up; most of the time, he's quiet as a lamb and then just sits bolt upright from a dead sleep, sometimes with a yell, other times gasping for air. he usually smokes afterwards, and then keeps a light on whether he's able to sleep again or not. (usually not.)

[pebblysand]

You are so generous and you shall preserve everyone’s morale at this difficult time. Mia POV of literally ANYTHING, please and thank you, but if Mia’s voice is too difficult or otherwise not desired, Ginny or Hermione, essentially same prompt. You know where to find me if you’d like something more specific. 💕

❤️ for you and for @frizzyfoureyes who requested "Mia in Paris, pretty please?" also sorry this is more than three sentences, it's basically a scene out of the Mia fic i will never write.

.

we only said goodbye with words (i died a hundred times)

.

christopher found her, that summer.

she was always told wizarding owls were clever, clever enough to find the addresses of people you didn't even know - he found her in the scorching parisian heat after she'd let him out before boarding the train, thought border control was unlikely to let an owl through. 'you'll find me, won't you?' she asked, and felt stupid, talking to a bird like people don't even talk to their dogs, but she was trying to hold back tears and wondering what if she lost him. what if it was her fault? would he be able to find his way back?

'it's okay,' she said, 'don't be scared.'

(stupid, fucking talking to herself.)

he took a couple of days. she doesn't think she slept. there were too many things to do, anyway. unpacking and buying food and mapping out her new commute. the streets of paris were littered with dog shit back then, and screaming kids on micro scooters, racing through the luco. the fourth, straight from saint-sulpice to réaumur-sebastopol.

she heard a soft knock in the evening, the tapping of a beak against the window of her sixth-floor chambre de bonne on rue du cherche-midi; it's so small she has to drape a sheet of plastic over her bed when she showers so that splashes don't wet the covers. christopher's feathers were all ruffled and dirty but he bumped his little head against her arm as soon as she let him in and asked for biscuits - she gave him treats and cried and said: 'i'm sorry.'

things got better. he still barely goes outside - very much not a hunter - but he sleeps while she is at work and greets her in the evenings, flying to stand on top of her shoulder. it makes working twelve-hour days sowing pearls more bearable. sometimes, she goes for walks to clear her head in the night and he follows her; she sees him in the trees, like he's checking she's alright from up above. he nibbles at her fingers when she lies on her bed, drawing, or, whenever he wants attention.

it's september now, but the air is still hot; she's with her friend, bastien, sharing saucisson and cheese and bottle of cheap wine, the window open to let the air in. the sun is setting; she is sitting on her bed and bastien is yawning on the one chair she owns, backed against the wall, his long legs extended and crossed at the ankles on the tiled floors. her friends think it's quirky she has an owl, but bastien asked how she got it. he is the other intern at gaultier, started the same time she did. they tried to pit them against each other, but it didn't work.

his dad is english. he talks with his hands and she's never seen him dressed in anything that didn't contain sequins. sometimes, she convinces herself he can see into her soul. they've been best friends ever since they met, and she's never met anyone like him. like they have entire conversations in just a few words, like it's easy to just sit here in silence and not try so hard, for once. he likes to tell her about the boys he sees and she likes to listen. it feels easy.

christopher nibbles at the phalange of her index finger and she thinks about him, though. not about bastien or his lovers. not about christopher either.

and: 'what was his name?' her best friend asks, once.

she toys with the wine in her hand. a film of red liquid against the glass. she shakes her head. bastien rolls his eyes.

he is out for blood on this one. she made sure he would be. presented the story like she was in a sort-of relationship with this boy who broke her heart and dumped her after sex and punched her father in the face. it's not a lie and she hasn't spoken to her father in months.

'god, you won't even tell me his name! was he famous?'

'yeah.'

bastien laughs.

the thing is: sometimes, she's wondered if bastien asking how she got the owls wasn't also his way of telling her he knew about owls, without actually telling her he knew about owls. she wonders if there are people-who-keep-owls in france (didn't she meet that bloke at the pub who said his wife was french, once?), wonders if maybe she should have pushed it. but, she is slightly drunk, now, and it matters less, and it is a million degrees under the slated paris rooftops, there are little lights in the sky outside and she is tired and slightly sad again.

she could tell bastien his name and see. she could also go back to england and sell her story to a lot of papers for a lot of money and probably get him into a lot of trouble for telling her about owls in the first place. yet, she shakes her head and keeps him close to her chest, protected, and she isn't sure why. she wants him to stay hers, like that. her secret of sorts. and she wonders if he thinks of her as often as she thinks of him and comes to the conclusion he probably doesn't.

christopher nibbles again. she gives him a bit of bread and lets him burrow against her chest, sitting in her lap. 'he wasn't all bad, you know? he gave me the owl.'

bastien's gaze narrows. 'right, yeah.'

he did a lot more than that, a lot more that she'll never tell anyone. when bastien asks if she still loves him, she's not even sure what to say. that part of her probably always will. that it's okay. that she tried so hard to hate him and it didn't work, so now, she just holds chris close and lets it come, lets it pass, and maybe one day, she won't think about it as much. she doesn't even want to hate him.

'he made me realise i wasn't alone,' she says, then. 'that was a good thing.’

and, bastien smiles, shakes his head. 'you're not, babe.'

[this-has-returned]

If you wanna play a realtime strategy game, but dislike StarCraft, here are some fun alternatives that are super underrated. You'll notice a pattern of a reduced focus on micromanagement, which StarCraft (in)famously takes to an extreme. If you're looking for an alternative that has more micromanagement then...idk play League of Legends, I guess?

Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance | This is what the community considers the current "standard" game of the series for online play. Supreme Commander focuses on group composition, a balanced economy, and climbing a tech tree. Most matches can last quite a long time, the maps are insane in scale, and you will be managing land, sea, and air. Each faction is pretty similar on the macro level, and the differences appear when it comes to tech and group composition.

Grey Goo | This game has a scale similar to StarCraft, but uses an economy similar to Supreme Commander, where resources are represented by inflow and outflow, instead of explicit cache sizes and instantaneous costs. This is a fairly high-speed game where your energy will be focused on optimizing production, scouting the map, and rearranging your production according to scouting. Every faction has a wildly different approach to every facet of the game, which creates fascinating interactions with mechanics that are otherwise simple.

Achron | Similar to StarCraft in scope and economy, but the micro has been scaled way back. Also, there's time travel. Actual time travel. In a multiplayer environment. If you fuck up, simply go back in time and stop yourself from fucking up. You will spend the majority of your time scouting and reviewing the past, searching for changes made by your time-traveling opponent. Because of this, while some units can perform special abilities on request, they're extremely specific and are just additional tools available for pulling silly stunts, and are not a primary part of gameplay. Like Grey Goo, each faction also has a wildly different approach to economy, and the player can change what faction they chose as part of the time travel mechanic.