#you’re what I want

[the-writing-mobster]

| You’re What I Want | Chapter 1 - City On Fire - Excerpt | ❤️‍🔥 ⚜️ ♠️ |

CW: Graphic violence / Gore

———

Ragged breath after ragged breath huffed from a man as he sprinted through a busy street. His boots cracked against the wet pavement, his legs were jelly. His body hit a wall, and he pushed off for leverage, throwing himself down a tight alleyway, music pouring out from a club’s open window.

“Fuck. Fuck.” He breathed as he pressed himself behind a dumpster and unsheathed his pistol. A nine millimeter Chimera handgun; a sleek black model, with a tinted glass magazine and a bulbous barrel that wasn’t exactly made for bullets but something much more powerful.

He fumbled for ammo in his pockets, and seethed when a full box fell to the ground. Shouting from down the alleyway; he wheezed and stooped down to collect the ammo shimmering with various colored lights; lethal fireflies.

The man loaded the fireflies into the glass magazine and cocked the slide. He flung himself out from behind the dumpster, aimed and fired. There was a blur of orange light and as soon as it made contact with one of his opponents, it exploded in a burst of hot fire. Electricity spilled out of the wreaths of flames, its tendrils striking the other men around the target, whose guts and blood were now raining down upon them.

The man turned on his heel and continued running. He cocked the gun again and spun the nozzle at the end of the barrel. A hand grabbed him and he spun around, trapping his opponents arms in his and pressing the pistol to the man’s skull. He squeezed the trigger and a beam of yellow light cut right through. He dropped the man there and kicked him to the wayside.

Another man dropped down from the fire escape and tackled him to the ground. Another burst of yellow light sliced straight through the opponent and blood sprayed on his face and clothes. He gagged and shoved the bisected man aside, staggering to his feet and continuing his sprint.

He was getting tired. He could not become tired! He had to warn the don of the attack on their shipment of sacrifices! Of the weapon their treacherous allies would use against them! He’d made it out when no one else had. If he got tired now… the entire empire would crumble into nothing!

The man snagged a glass vial from his holster and he glanced down at it to check which one it was. Yellow smoke drifted inside and he growled under his breath. Not that one.

A motorcycle engine revved and he choked, turning on his heel and making a break for it down the street. They were going to corral him into the tunnel leading out onto Highway ninety-five! He jumped onto the sidewalk as the motorcycle weaved around cars.

People screamed as the motorcyclist unsheathed an automatic pistol and let fire. RATATATATA!

The man yanked one of the bystanders in front of him as he continued running, using the decrepit old man as a shield to the onslaught of bullets. His blood poured over him, his dead weight sagging against his arms. He peaked out from behind as the motorcycle swerved into a u-turn and brandished their gun.

He poked the barrel of his pistol over the dead man’s shoulder and let fire. The beam of energy shot through the crowd; it seared a hole through several cars and hit the motorcycle in the center, the rider’s leg incinerated clean off.

The rider screamed bloody murder tumbling across the street. The man threw his human shield onto the ground and continued to run. He spun the gun’s nozzle again -the setting it was on was much too destructive- and cocked it.

He was almost there! He just needed to lose those assholes and then—

—He was knocked off his feet by a blur of orange light. His gun went clattering to the ground and he hit the concrete with a hard thud. The air was knocked clean from his lungs and he gasped. No… no! It had found him!

There was a crazed, childish giggle that resounded through the alleyway and he choked. As he tried to reach for the pistol, the blur of orange shot through the alleyway again and kicked it far from his grasp.

.

.

.

Chapter Theme:

[tuttle-did-it]

David Tennant for Prime Minister, please.

edit- Since this is getting so much attention, edited to include descriptions of screenshots.

This woman has lost her fucking mind.

Jo, are you okay?

[podcast-hemocytoblast]

What if when Michael got Distortioned he/they/it/(?) had just kept showing up to work? Imagine Gertrude comes into the archives and finds a bunch of paperwork filled out in yellow highlighter and folded into impossible shapes, and then Michael-Distortion just walks into the room door-style and sits down at his work computer so it can email Gertrude a phishing scam.

[idolomantises]

I’ve said this before, but I always found stories that frame heaven as “evil” and hell as “good” (or less bad) to be genuinely boring. I like more nuanced approaches to each realm.

I understand that for a lot of people, Christianity is a religion they like to criticize and mock, but I feel like if you don’t even understand the fundamentals of the religion, why even attempt to critique it?

[ghostpunkrock]

when you ask him directly he says no but later he'll tell you one anyway.... real fucked up

[magic-owl]

I don’t believe in gatekeeping at all but if you flat out admit to me that you’ve consumed little to ZERO of the canon media and have gotten all of your information based off of reading fluffy fic with woobified characters, I will not be taking ANY of your fandom opinions or meta seriously

[itsaprosthetic]

we are so back

We are so back

[morganbritton132]

Towards the start of Eddie’s popularity on Tiktok, he gets stopped at the park by one those Tiktokers that stop people in public and ask them questions.

Eddie’s game to talk so they’re having a little conversation when a man runs by, slaps him on the ass, and says all breathy, “Looking good, Munson.” Then they’re gone.

The video blows up and people are offended on Eddie behalf that he was assaulted by this jogger. People even slow the footage down to try to see what the guy looked like but he was wearing sunglasses and a hoodie so there’s no good angle.

Eddie responds to it all with a video from his car like. “Guys, relax. It was my husband.”

He then pans the camera over to the passenger seat of the car to what is pretty much just an ass shot because Steve has his top half hanging out the car window so he can argue with Dustin and Mike. Eddie’s just like, “See. Same shorts.”

He has a hold of the waistband of said shorts because he does not trust Steve not to fall out the window. Though he does let go to pinch Steve on the ass. “And now we’re even.”

Steve sticks his hand back in the car and swats at Eddie’s hand, and then just holds it. Eddie turns the camera back to himself and ends the video with a pleased smile on his face.

[francesderwent]

Taylor Swift really wrote an album with the thesis “a man who tells you he loves you and lives together with you in a committed relationship for six years but never ever proposes is essentially the same as a man who tells you he loves you to get you into bed and then ghosts you a couple weeks later”

[turtleblogatlast]

Was thinking about this again haha

Anyway I adore Hueso and Leo’s dynamic and wanted to include Hueso Jr in it because I like to think Leo can be shockingly good with kids

[aria-greenhoodie]

You see, @localcanadiancryptid22, I’m a motherfucker who LOVES drama, so I fw anything that can create that.

I’m normal. Btw. In case you were wondering.

[potato-lord-but-not]

Your most recent post I just made me think about John (because I’m always thinking about John) and if having his wrists pinned would freak him out. Like, the level of trust he would have to build with Oscar to give up what little control he does have, give up that little piece of autonomy he clings too. Idk your art makes me crazy and then I get thinking and here we are—

no you’re so right my god. I need to draw more of these three navigating being intimate because it makes me go INSANE. I need more John being reluctant to trust Oscar and Oscar being patient with him because he’s probably a little bit scared of him but also he knows what it’s like to be ignored and to lose some of your autonomy (I mean he’s coming from the religious trauma stand point but still you get me) NOW YOUVE GOT ME RAMBLING DAMN IT I need to draw them so bad

[ecoterrorist-katara]

The tragedy of Katara’s parentification

Sokka and Katara were both parentified, and it’s a profoundly life-changing thing for both of them. One of the saddest things in ATLA, though, is how Sokka sort of got to outgrow parentification, but Katara never did.

Sokka’s told to be the man. The provider, the protector. He’s not so good at the former (his hunting failures are a consistent source of comic relief), and he takes failures of the latter very, very hard. He doesn’t manage to save Yue, and that wrecks him. After Yue, he becomes extremely protective of Suki in a way that’s borderline offensive to her. He’s willing to do anything to protect his friends and his family, including something as irresponsible as breaking into the Boiling Rock. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Sokka is the only one of the Gaang who unambiguously kills. The rest of them may technically have clean hands because of cartoon logic, but Combustion Man is very dead, and Sokka is the one who killed him. We don’t know how he feels about it, because the show never goes there, but I have a pet theory that Sokka is so uncharacteristically (remember he was team “leave Zuko to freeze to death”) against Katara confronting Yon Rha in The Southern Raiders because he’s the only who knows what killing feels like and wants to protect Katara from it.

But by the end of the show, Sokka’s in a place where he can start to let go of his need to protect. Objectively, all his friends are unbelievably powerful and can take care of themselves, including his sister and his girlfriend. Suki is the one who saves him in the final battle, representing not only a reversal of his initial cartoonish misogyny, but also demonstrating that he is worthy of protection. And of course, he and his friends saved the world, so there isn’t really an enemy that he has to protect them from anymore. Sokka’s loved ones create the conditions under which his parentified behaviour is no longer necessary. Sokka would still have to take the first step to stop seeing himself as the one who has to lay his life on the line, but at least it’s possible for him.

But not Katara.

Katara had to take on the mom role after their mother was murdered, which meant she was responsible for domestic labour and emotional support. Sokka says in The Runaway that her role was to keep the family together. Unlike protection, that’s always a full time job regardless of the war. We see Katara spending more screen time than anybody cooking, getting food, mending, and generally doing women’s work. We see Katara giving everyone emotional support, including strangers and her enemy. We see Katara putting aside her own discomfort and her own hurt in The Desert because if she falls apart, they all die. Nobody ever showed her that she doesn’t need to be the only one who cooks, or that somebody else can be responsible for the emotional wellbeing of her friends, or that — god forbid — someone else can actually be responsible for her emotional wellbeing.

That’s why I never cared for the Ka/taang argument of “he teaches her to be a kid again!” Putting aside the fact that Katara ends up taking care of Aang a lot more as the series goes on, the whole tragedy of parentification is that you can never again be a child. That part of your childhood, your god-given right, is robbed from you. It is extremely precious and important to still be able to be a kid, but breaking free of parentification is not about seeing yourself as a kid. It’s about breaking free of being responsible for everyone’s feelings and behaviours.

For Katara, that responsibility is not problem of perception, but of reality. Unlike Sokka, who was told and shown that his loved ones are capable of protecting themselves, Katara has zero reason to believe that her loved ones are able to feed and clothe themselves and not fall apart emotionally. Between Toph and Sokka who emphatically don’t want to do this work, it all falls on Katara. Telling a parentified child that they just need to loosen up is akin to telling an overworked mother that she needs to just relax (“happy Mother’s Day! You get a break from chores, which you will catch up on tomorrow because nobody else is doing them”). It doesn’t accomplish anything if nobody creates the circumstances under which it’s possible to let go of responsibilities. A lot of Zutara fans, spanning all the way back to the early days of the fandom, like the “Momtara and Dadko” trope where Zuko also does chores. Why? Because even without the concept and language of parentification, many fans recognized that Katara’s performance of domestic and emotional labour is inequitable and probably very taxing.

Growing out of parentification is about more than just letting go of old expectations: it’s also about finding a new way to value yourself beyond the role you grew up with. I’ve said this before, but it’s very important to acknowledge that just because a kid is parentified doesn’t mean they’re actually good at being a parent. In fact, it’s probably a given that they’re not, because they’re kids performing roles that are developmentally inappropriate! Sokka remains a shit hunter; he becomes a decent fighter but he’s still miles behind his friends. A big part of healing from his parentification is finding another area — strategy, engineering, project management (what else do you call that schedule) — where he actually excels, to which he can dedicate his time and from which he can derive satisfaction and a sense of identity. For Katara, fighting for the oppressed and combat waterbending give her that. Crucially, however, Katara does not stop being a girl when she becomes a warrior. She’s still responsible for domestic and emotional labour. Unlike Sokka, whose protector duties were more or less relieved as the series went on and he found new ways to contribute to the group, Katara continued to perform her old role in addition to her new one (which is depressingly realistic btw, look up feminist theory around the concept of the second shift). Still, it’s important that she found these new ways to value herself and her contributions…

…which disappear in her adult life. Where’s adult Katara fighting for the oppressed? Where’s adult Katara enjoying her status as a master waterbender? Where’s Mighty Katara? Where’s the Painted Lady? Where’s the person who vanquished a whole Fire Lord?

What do we know about adult Katara? She’s no longer a rabblerouser or an ecoterrorist. She did not translate her desire to help the downtrodden into a political role, like being Chief or on the United Republic Council. She’s not known as the best waterbender in the world, only the best healer, even though her combat abilities are what she took the most pride in. Even as a healer, she established no hospitals, trained no widespread acolytes (except Korra, I guess?), and made no known contributions to the field.

What Katara is known for…is being a wife and a mother. The same role she was forced to take on at age 8. One which she performed for the next 80+ years.

[paperglader]

they really put alicent in bridgerton blue on the reunion and genuinely expected me to think that she didn’t in fact march all the way to dragonstone to get wifed up? bfr

[kelenia]

The robes are hanging on for dear life

[bagginsgotdabooty]

I bought an embroidery machine…