#you indulge me and i love you for it sldfkjs

[altschmerzes]

Hello! I would love to know more about 'The Ghosts are On the Porch' (Ted Lasso) and 'The Wild Dogs are Hungry' (The Bear)

which put together sound like the stanza of a poem :D

SO 'the ghosts are on the porch' is the name i gave to the zipties nightmare fic! aka my bad things happen bingo fill for 'zipties' which i described briefly here. some further information now includes that a prominent feature of this fic is jamie being like. why would i tell anyone what happened here there's no point. nothing even happened. my wrists are a little fucked up and i've got a few bruises but i'm otherwise unharmed. i've been hurt worse falling during a match. cue him needing it outlined very clearly that like. you were like. kidnapped actually. that was incredibly fucked up and of course you aren't okay. ft. this summary of his attitude in this fic from a discord message:

buddy bikes to training because he can't stand to get in the car and has a panic attack when he tries. he wears long sleeves to hide the damage and ignores it until someone sees and the cat's out of the bag. and then we get to explain to jamie that bad things that happen to him ARE bad actually and he's not being a whiny baby.

'the wild dogs are hungry' is, in short, about natalie and richie planning michael's funeral.

i think a lot about how it had to have been the two of them. how there is no way donna was... in a state to be involved in that and carmy was in new york and didn't come and like. who else could it have been. it had to be them. and the like... strange bedfellows effect of 'you're the only person i have to do this with' and how that would've been for both of them to like. only really have each other to lean on in that process, because their relationship was rocky prior to richie's transformative forks experience lmao.

there's a specific scene i have in mind where like. donna is at natalie's house, where she and richie have been working on getting things together, and things sort of. go badly. and she gets... the way she is. and it's too much to handle and donna makes natalie cry, to which richie actually kicks donna out of the house which is. it's a lot. it's a lot for richie to like... do that. in the moment. because this is his best friend's ma, his very recently dead best friend's ma, and someone he owes more than he will ever be able to repay, and kicking her out in this situation feels like anathema to everything in him but also. she cannot be doing this to nat right now. and the scales of Which Berzatto Needs Me The Most Right Now tips in natalie's favour and he steps in to handle it.

and it's obviously a lot for natalie too which is like... this is one of the worst days of her life, easily, and she's got this person she does not like in her house standing up and protecting her from her mom and helping her plan her brother's funeral and like. at this point it's very she doesn't like richie but she loves him, y'know. he's family. and she needs him. they need each other. sometimes all you got is This Specific Person and so you stick together and you do what you need to do because you lost someone you loved and everything fucking sucks and you want to scream and your husband didn't grow up in your fucked up nightmare of a family and you love him but he doesn't get this shit and he's trying to help but you kind of can't stand talking to him about this right now but you can't do it alone either. so here's this asshole. this asshole you grew up with. you lost your brother. he lost your brother too.