#and that in the end is the real true fucking tragedy of it all

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

[pericky; a look into ricky's head during their meeting.]

---

"I'm glad you came, I wasn't sure you would." The wine pours, the sound of it drowning out the missing word in that sentence: back.

Of course, is the response, and the part of Ricky that's spent twenty years tearing itself apart to understand why vibrates with relief. It doesn't matter anymore. Of course, of course, he thinks giddily along with the words. He never needed to wonder why Pericles wasn't coming back in the first place; he was always going to.

I'm happy you invited me, and of course he thinks again. A lifetime of pretending he wasn't always going to either falls away. However harsh and lonely the world has been, all's right with it again; and the shy voice of the boy inside him that he's tried so hard to kill says, so quietly, I missed you.

#sdmi #scooby doo: mystery incorporated #pericky #ricky owens #professor pericles #anyway fucking end me actually. lay me down to die #i said i was gonna write more pericky and by fucking god i did #the 'why did you do this to me' to 'oh thank god you didn't actually do this to me' pipeline of abuse folks 🥲 #which like. their last conversation is yet another devastating example of ricky finally standing up to pericles' bullshit Too Late #ricky denounces him in the strongest terms he knows; based on his own feelings and opinions and the way he sees the world #(which: even then he can't bring himself to say 'i don't love you anymore') #(the closest he can get is 'i chose you and i can't take it back; the only way i can imagine not loving you is if i never had at all') #and pericles tries to go 'nyeh nyeh whatever i don't care' (and does a real bad job of pretending he is not obviously hurt lmao) #and ricky doesn't try to understand his logic; he doesn't try to reconcile a world where pericles didn't *really* mean to do anything wrong #his response is MAYBE YOU *SHOULD* CARE. #pericles' view of the world and what's right and acceptable are warped and *wrong* and he's the one who needs to get his shit together #'you shouldn't have abused me you shouldn't have killed cassidy you shouldn't have murdered a child in cold blood' #that is MASSIVE and i think it is really telling that pericles' response is to shut him down with force instead of trying to argue any more #and that in the end is the real true fucking tragedy of it all #ricky is making huge strides one after the other to take back his freedom from pericles emotionally #....and materially it makes no difference to improve his situation in the moment; because pericles doesn't have any less power to abuse him #he never has a triumphant moment where he Overcomes His Abuser and Breaks Out of His Control #there's nothing he can do to fight back until pericles is too Literally Dead to control him anymore #it is one of the rawest depictions of the reality of abuse i've ever seen and just. God. i love it so much #(at the same time i REALLY want to explore a version of events where he got the chance to expand further on that growth) #(the 'all witches are selfish; make all things yours; i have a duty' speech from the wee free men comes to mind) #whosebaby makes things #whosebaby writes #SDMItag #dyn: when i die i want you to die too

[devildomwriter]

A Christmas Song They Absolutely Hate

A request by an anon

Lucifer (That damn chipmunk song)

Enough said, he cannot tolerate it at all, the second he hears those squeaky voices he’ll react somewhat violently. Whatever he needs to do to get that music to stop the fastest, he will do, even launching Mammon into the speaker.

Mammon (Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer)

He hates the song. He’s not so big an idiot that he doesn’t realize everyone only suddenly likes Rudolph because they think he’s useful, he thinks it’s a bad song and the reindeer are big jerks.

Leviathan (Baby, it’s cold outside)

“Those fucking normies. They’re just all over each other, go to hell.”

Satan (God rest ye merry gentlemen.)

They literally diss him in the song, like what’d he do to those guys personally, it makes him very angry to hear carolers singing it especially.

Innocent Carolers: “To save us all from Satan’s power—“

Satan: *yelling from across the street* “I didn’t do anything to you!”

Asmodeus (That damn chipmunk song)

Like normally squeaky or soft voices are kinda cute but nuh-uh, not this one. It feels like nails on a chalkboard to him.

Beelzebub (Believe)

He doesn’t really care but the song Believe makes him kinda sad.

It’s a great song with a bittersweet message and it makes him tear up a little when he hears it so he’s come to not like it much.

Belphegor (Anything hard to fall asleep to)

It doesn’t matter the song, if it’s too uppitty he can’t fall asleep. Even Christmas gospel can send him to sleep but not something like All I Want For Christmas is You.

Solomon (That damn chipmunk song)

It needs no introduction. It’s a song he’d hoped would die out soon after its release but it’s been well over a decade and occasionally he hears it playing and sighs deeply at how disappointing human musical taste has become.

Thirteen (That damn chipmunk song)

She hates it and will only occasionally tolerate it by playing it whenever Solomon is nearby in hopes of seeing his face fall.

Simeon (Santa baby)

The song really drives him nuts, he doesn’t have a real reason he just really dislikes it. Maybe it’s the greed at Christmas time which isn’t even about gifts, but it just really irks him.

Luke

He loves them all, except super romantic ones because that’s not what Christmas is about!

Raphael (All I want for Christmas is you)

That’s not the point of Christmas at all and the song mentions nothing about the true meaning of Christmas everything about some random romantic interest really irritates him. He’s not above spearing the sound system if the song isn’t changed.

Michael (12 days of Christmas)

It's just so long and repetitive.

He’d rather listen to shorter songs than one that just doesn’t seem to end, like get to the next song already, turtledoves aren’t even an existing species anymore—don’t remind him of such a tragedy.

Mephistopheles (Basically all of them)

Mephistopheles isn’t a Christmas demon, he only tolerates it for Diavolo’s sake but he’ll be damned if a song plays around him and Diavolo isn’t there. He’ll contact whoever he needs to to change the music immediately.

Barbatos (Dominic the donkey)

He hates it because he believes it’s rather stupid but also because it cracks Diavolo up so Diavolo plays it a few times a day to amuse himself and Barb is really sick of hearing it.

Diavolo

He loves all of them, even the damn chipmunk song. Even the Christmas gospel doesn’t really bother him but he doesn’t pay as much attention to it as he does humming along to the other songs. He does laugh when he hears Satan’s name in God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, so he actually likes that one.

#obey me headcanons #obey me 25 days of christmas #25 days of obey me christmas #obey me diavolo #obey me solomon #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me thirteen #obey me simeon #obey me luke #obey me raphael #obey me Michael #obey me barbatos #obey me mephistopheles

[itiswormtimebaby]

Born

Pairing: Lee Bodecker x Fem!Reader  CW: Dark Lee, dark themes, gaslighting, dub!con, cum eating, parental abuse, parental death, implied age gap, daddy kink, manipulation, references to Lee hitting reader, religious themes, sex, breeding, non-graphic murder, Reader doesn’t see it this way but UNHEALTHY RELATONSHIPS. A lot is left vague but still, please take warnings into consideration. 

“Y’know, Honey, some people were born just so they could be buried, but not you, you were born just to be mine.” 

He’d said it the first time with his pants undone, limp cock still sticky with cum hanging lewdly from the open fly of his uniform pants. He’d said it as he forcefully guided your head down, insistent upon you cleaning up your mess, because it was your mess, you’re the one who didn’t place the pepsi cup right. Even though the cold congealed globs of semen made you gag, settling heavily in your stomach like paste, you knew it was something you had to do. Taking responsibility was a lesson you’d learned early in life at the end of your Daddy’s belt. Ever since he’d died, shortly before Mrs. Bodecker, Lee took over for him, reinforcing it at every opportunity,  he was just looking out for your best interest. 

Besides, and you shuddered to say it, afraid it teetered too close to speaking ill of the dead,  Lee was a much better Daddy. He only slapped you in the wake of truly serious offenses, like shirking a wifely duty or meeting up with friends without permission, and most of his spankings were intended to instill pleasure, not pain. Most special of all he gave you a purpose, you didn’t think you had one of those, but he made it clear you did, you were born just to be his. It was a tragedy about his wife, a freak accident, but you liked to think it was all part of the Good Lord’s plan, how could it not be when her and your father’s deaths served to bring you and Lee together. As awful as it was, as much as you worried over damnation for even thinking it, it was the truth. Through their deaths you had been reborn, given a purpose, or rather shown your purpose as it was always meant to be- you were his. 

___________________

“You were born just to be mine.”  Sometimes it was a growl as he fucked you from behind, fingers locked around the back of your neck, pressing you face first in the mattress as he took what he wanted. 

“You were born just to be mine.”  Sometimes it was a sweet whisper as he kissed and licked his way up your neck, sucking reminders into your skin, sweet bruises to mark his claim and his desire. 

“You were born just to be mine.”  Sometimes it was almost desperate, pleading, like when he fucked his cum back into you and spoke about how you’d make him a Daddy for real. 

“You were born just to be mine.” No matter how he said it you knew it was true. 

___________________

“Some people were born just so they could be buried,” Lee thinks as he pulls the trigger on your Daddy. 

“Some people were born just so they could be buried,” Lee thinks as he cuts the break-line of his wife’s car. 

“Some people were born just so they could be buried,” Lee thinks, often, all the time, about damn near everyone, but not about you, never you. No, you were born just to be his. 

#Lee Bodecker x Reader #dark!lee bodecker #Lee Bodecker smut #unhealthy relationships #dark fic

[shsl-heck]

Thinking about the Chevalier interlude, specifically the inaugural team of Wards. Like in universe, they sell it to this first group of kids (and presumably the rest of the world) as a place for second chances, to find friends and mentors who understand what youre going through, where you can learn to use your powers safely while making good memories. The kids broadly seem to believe in these noble intentions of course, but what really gets me is that I've seen readers buy into it!

"Oh, it's such a tragedy that the Wards program became this awful thing that traumatizes kids even more, and expects them to die for the sake of civilians! It's fallen so short of what it was originally supposed to be!"

No it has not??? The fact that the triumvirate and Hero are saying it has this noble goal doesn't make it true. The Wards was pretty clearly always a way to increase the amount of bodies the prt could throw at threats, and we know this because it was started by the fucking Triumvirate as a part of the Protectorate! Alexandria literally came up with the idea of the Protectorate to legitimize the power of capes, and have a consistent source of heroes Cauldron could throw at problems. That is the whole reason for the PRT/Protectorate existing. So when we have this group of children brought in a subsidiary, there are 2 real options.

1). Cauldron and Alexandria decided they would be really niceys and created this program with no intentions other than helping these kids out.

Or 2). As things got worse, they realized the Protectorate didn't have enough manpower to do what they needed, and so they expanded it to include children (the demographic most prone to triggering). That way, they greatly increase the number of capes who they can send to fight and die as needed, and the ones who do survive their tenure in the Wards will be better trained when it comes time to join the actual Protectorate.

At the risk of sounding conceited, I think the second one is far more likely based on everything we know about Cauldron. Maybe it was originally a little nobler, and the goal was just to create more well trained heroes and cut back on young villains, but there's no way Alexandria, Doc Mom, and Contessa didn't factor in the ability to sacrifice the kid heroes if it improved their chances of success. That was absolutely a perk at minimum.

That's the real tragedy of the inaugural Wards. The kids were lured in with promises of safety, comraderie, and second chances like lambs to the slaughter. All the while, Alexandria and Cauldron knew that many (if not most) of these children would suffer abuse by the prt (like in the case of Reed), die, or face a fate worse than death like poor Mouse Protector. It's horrifying! The idea that they didn't know the danger these kids would be in is literally inconceivable. Especially when one of you is also the head of the prt! They knew, and they didn't care. It improved their chances at the end of the world, and so they did it no matter the cost.

#the same ppl will talk about Taylor being an unreliable narrator who we cannot trust #and then take Alexandria at face value #i think a lot of it is that this genre of guys very uncritically support and assume the best of authority figures #especially law enforcement #in a way that they just dont when it's a teenage girl who's never so much as glanced in the direction of a healthy coping mechanism #the great irony here being that fundamentally the prt/protectorate and Cauldron are all *also* being run by traumatized young women #and also that pretty much every negative opinion Taylor expresses abt the prt is 100% vindicated as the story goes on #genuinely baffled ppl can read Worm and be like 'Taylor's distrust of the prt was irrational' #it's the same energy as calling a woman hysterical #yes this *is* just me remembering the We've Got Worm podcast guys #they are my mortal enemies when it comes to wormposting #worm spoilers #worm #worm web serial #worm wildbow #parahumans

[freckles-a-constellation]

The Doctor is a tragic character in the best Greek tragedy tradition.

So y'all know how the most common driving factor for intelligence to develop in species is if they're social? (Octopi aren't very social but let's ignore that real quick, the Doctor's a vertebrate anyway so invertebrate intelligence can probably be dismissed as irrelevant) Because after a point, more intelligence isn't really needed to avoid danger or gather food. But more intelligence does make it possible to communicate more efficiently, form more complex social bonds, eventually develop culture. Cue why social species tend to be more intelligent than solitary ones of otherwise comparable lifestyle. And cue why humanity is the way it is.

Now look at Gallifreyans. (I am purposefully ignoring the Timeless Child thing bc I don't rlly believe it and besides, even assuming it's true, The Doctor is similar enough to Gallifreyans to have flawlessly believed himself/themselves/herself to be one for 13+ regenerations, so anything that can be concluded to be true from analysis of Gallifreyans has good basis to be presumed true about the Doctor, whatever the fuck semantics you wanna use) So, Gallifreyans. A species much more advanced than according to DW canon humanity will ever be. More intelligent than humanity. High levels of education and not on the basis of private tutoring. Lives in cities. Has complex language and technology capable of instantly translating pretty much any language of any other species to be understandable to them. (Hell the TARDIS consistently still translates shit to English for the companions while they're outside it.) Complex social structure. That's one fucking social species.

And it gets better. The TARDIS is meant to be operated by a team of six. And even if River was joking about six, it's still clear that it should at least be more than one. Compare the Doctor steering the TARDIS alone to when he was with Susan. I mean, even those two looked like they could use an extra hand. Have you ever seen a human private use vehicle designed with 2+ pilots in mind? Definitely a species more social than humanity.

And the telepathy thing? Hello? Insanely, mind-boggingly social species.

Now take a being this fundamentally social and do something to them so that they see no recourse other than to take one (1) same-species (as far as he was aware disclaimer ig) companion, steal a ship they have little to no clue how to pilot, leave everything and everyone they've ever known and run without ever stopping for breath, no matter how much they miss home, no matter if it hurts. (And I do believe something must have happened to make him run like that, since the beggining, way before the Time War) Have them be scorned, judged, punished, mistreated and rejected by their species, again and again, for ages. Have them love, again and again, only to always lose everyone they've cared about, through abandonment or death. Have them essentially be forced to exterminate their whole species and believe themselves to be the last of their kind, only to be proven wrong by the whole Master situation, which alright is better, but also in some ways is worse. Have them, once again, form deep bonds with companions and once again lose all of them in various varyingly tragic ways until they have no hope left that anyone can ever truly stay for any amount of time even close to satisfactory, that love can for them end in anything but loss and pain. And they can't even avoid love altogether in an effort to spare themselves the inevitable agony of losing loved ones, because they're incapable of not growing to care for those around them. And they can't be without company either, because their sanity goes straight to hell in a handbasket within like,, 5 minutes of being alone.

Let me remind you this is not a human we're talking about. It's a member of a species much more inherently social than humanity. My point?

The Doctor is literally more lonely than the human brain can comprehend.

#*shoves this at any and all unfortunate people* #doctor who #the doctor #classic who #nuwho #doctor who meta #or at least i think it is? #first doctor #war doctor #ninth doctor #tenth doctor #eleventh doctor #twelfth doctor #thoughts tm

[trickstarbrave]

Actually b4 I sleep:

I see in the bg3 arguments (carried over from ppl rules lawyering 5e too hard) that if a character wants to do something it is unethical or “gross” to use persuasion rolls to convince them out of it. Examples: that you should let Astarion ascend because he wants to, or let Shadowheart become a dark justiciar because “it’s all she’s ever wanted”

These arguments are stupid.

Normally I don’t go hard on the “this is a stupid argument” bc most of the time complex moral situations require nuance and you shouldn’t try and call ppl stupid for differing perspectives but. No this one is stupid.

Persuasion rolls are not magical mind control. They are literally using the force of charisma (whole other conversation but again it isn’t mind control) to talk about something to a character and have them see it from different perspectives. High rolls are not you overriding their will power or decision making—if they rly didn’t wanna, they wouldn’t do it. You can do this for objectively horrible end goals, but also good ones.

Not to gamify real life tragedies but IRL, talking someone down from a suicide attempt would be a charisma roll (I’ve been suicidal so I’m using this example). The person really “wants” to kill themselves—or at least, they really think they do. This isn’t a choice made in a vacuum. Ultimately people want to die when they think there is no way out of their problems be it bad mental health, abuse they’re constantly subjected to, insane amounts of debt they feel they’ll never be able to pay off, social isolation, grief, and so on. It can be a combination of factors, but really what they ACTUALLY want is a solution to the problems that are overwhelming them and making them feel like being alive is worse than being dead. Talking someone down from suicide is not a BAD thing to do. In fact it would be morally bad to go “well we have to let people do what they want. Go for it man here’s a loaded gun and some pills”. But you have to persuade them to help them. Because they’re in a really dark place and can’t see reason.

Shadowheart was raised in a cult. She doesn’t actually want to be a dark justiciar, she wants to feel accomplished and like she belongs. She has been punished, isolated, and hurt her whole childhood and had her suffering justified by those in power above her. She’s been abused and told being a dark justiciar is the best thing a sharran can be. That it is the height of Shar worship. And that Shar took her in and “loved” her when “no one else wanted her”. Her ideals and goals are built upon lies and abuse. You, as an outsider, can give her that perspective and tell her that no matter how hard it gets she is worthy of love and can uncover the lies used to cover up and erase her past. She is just so narrowed in on what she thinks is “right” based on what she’s grown up with that she is not thinking for herself, she’s falling back on cult doctrine to think for her.

Astarion “wants” to ascend because he wants to feel like no one can ever hurt him again. He wants to spite Cazador. He wants to feel safe. And not worry about burning in the sun too. But are those things worth your actual fucking soul and your ability to love and connect with other people? No. Astarion doesn’t actually want the power, he doesn’t actually want to rule the world, and this power will not actually keep him safe. He has mistaken power for freedom because of 200 years of abuse and also was almost killed via human sacrifice like a minute prior (turns in dnd are only 6 seconds). He isn’t exactly thinking rationally give he’s been free for a week and nearly died a few seconds prior. He’s running on base instincts. He’s leaning into the lies Cazador has drilled into his head: the weak suffer because they are weak and the only way to be safe is to be the strongest person around. But this is an ideology that isn’t true. Cazador wasn’t safe. He wouldn’t have been safe even ascended. Astarion won’t be either. It’s literally a Faustian bargain and the game hits you over the damn head with it multiple times. Talking him out of it means you to see Astarion for who he is: as a person beyond his abuse and what makes him useful or not.

Hell, on a smaller level, Wyll wanted to kill Karlach. You can find out very easily though that she’s not actually a bad person, it’s just a technicality of Wyll’s contract. Or are you gonna say Karlach is manipulative and immoral for telling the truth and pleading for her life??? Because it’s getting in the way of what Wyll wants to do! Mizora told him she’s heartless! He’ll suffer if he doesn’t! Gale wants to blow himself up and thinks it’s the right choice, better miss out on all of act 3 because why are you trying to convince him out of it???

You can still ofc make different choices in any storyline bc this is s video game I’m not here to tell you what you can and can’t do. Just arguing “actually it’s morally bad that I have to roll persuasion—“ is a dumb argument I need people to stop making.

#bg3 spoilers #bg3 #Astarion #shadowheart

[lizhly-writes]

laying facedown on the couch. au where kim dokja's dad realize he's being a terrible human being and 1) gets sober 2) actually makes an attempt at parenting.

that's too early of a change. kim dokja grows up with two present parents and a far more emotionally healthy childhood than his canon self. imagine that! a childhood where neither of your parents were murderers; a childhood where you were never called a son of a murderer; a childhood with no murders involved at all, not even your own.

there's no reason to find any ways to survive a ruined world if your world was never ruined, you see?

at this point... that's a completely different character, isn't it?

kim dokja was his mother's child, and in his childhood, he learned from her example.

here, this is how you read a book. here, this is how you show love. see, it's fine, sweetheart. It doesn't matter what happens to me as long as the people i love are fine. i know it hurts, but that's love. this is the only way i know how to love at all.

it's true that i haven't read this story in a while. i've forgotten some things by now. still, i think he learned the art of self-sacrifice from her.

it's that tragic backstory he's got. there are some characters whose every action bears the shape of their past. that's kim dokja. what is he without tragedy?

his father never dies. his mother never leaves him alone. this is a different sort of love than he should have learned. he grows up decently liked and decently treated. an average korean man, by all standards. it never, ever occurs to him that he should protect people he loves by throwing himself headfirst into the fire.

picture this: two identical men turn twenty-eight. the first man has at least two messages from his parents congratulating him and perhaps mentioning going out for a birthday dinner, and possibly some friends he made in high school. the second man doesn't have any messages from a real person at all, because no one has fucking bothered to remember his birthday except for those automated "get a free <item> on your birthday!" promotion deals.

come on. there might be some nuance there, but it's not hard to decide who's living the happier life.

knowing this, you have to wonder: why?

in some alternate timeline, kim dokja has a much more well-adjusted life. why is that? why was it that this kim dokja's father decided to sober up, for once? what changed?

it's hard to say whether that timeline is better than what actually occurred. without his mother's example guiding him, without the lessons beaten into him as a teenager, would kim dokja have reached the end to the story he'd wanted? would it still be worth it after everything was over?

still, you have to wonder: why was it that timeline and not this one? "why was it you and not me?"

you can come up with a thousand reasons, driving yourself mad trying to figure out why. did your father love you more there? were you a better child in that world? somehow, were you more worthy of happiness?

...that's enough.

kim dokja lives a happy, normal life. you don't need to see anymore. this isn't a timeline you need to watch. doing so makes you... unhappy isn't the word.

whatever. it doesn't matter. let those windows flicker off and away, glimpsing into some other possible past and future -- this is only one worldline out of many. it's not even one you need to watch. it's unimportant. it's not the story that you loved - love -- so much.

go on. forget about it. you've forgotten so much already. one more story doesn't make a difference.

that kim dokja could never be you.

#orv #liz rants #something something about whether or not a character remains the same without a tragedy #complete word vomit

[mulderscully]

so here we are again, i'm breaking up with doctor who again? and i have a lot of asks about why and i have some asks from people ranting at me because they know me well enough to know why these specials would upset me.

i wanna go over why i'm upset a bit, and i'm gonna do it on main because at the end of the day my tumblr career started here.

as a lot of you may be aware, i have been a huge fan of journey's end and of tentoo for over ten years. my god, i have been in the absolute trenches defending that ending for rose and defending the metacrisis doctor for so long that it's honestly part of who i am.

when rtd was announced to be returning as showrunner i was really excited because i thought he was such a brilliant writer who understood the show and his characters. rtd has always been imperfect, but his original run was about life, death, happiness, pain and how you cannot have one without the other. it was about the human experience and the tragedy of the doctor always being on the outside of that. so close but never having it fully.

that's what made it compelling.

now, i was pretty convinced that the fourteenth doctor was going to be tentoo or that something tentoo related was why that face came back. not just because i wanted it but because it made sense. tentoo is half of the metacrisis, he is why donna lost her memories and the toymaker is a villian who messes with universes for fun! all these pieces fit.

it wasn't primarily about rose because i knew billie wouldn't be in the specials, it was about this making the most sense for donna and for the doctor and their relationship.

my biggest issue now is that... fourteen is not ten. the audience seems to be accepting him as such because that's how he was written, but doing so really undercut a lot of what made the tenth doctor my doctor.

fourteen is not ten, he and donna have not seen each other in years - millions for him, fifteen for her - they are different people. or they SHOULD be. and of course he still loves her, of course of course but it doesn't ring true to me for them to barely address how long they've been apart and act like it's s4 again so rtd can give ten a "happy ending."

i don't even know where to start cause it's all so upsetting. listen, i don't like donna getting her memories back and i know that is unpopular but i feel like that tragedy was so well done that reversing it with a wave of the hand is a travesty. but even if donna had kept her memories, fine! show me her family, show me how she has grown and changed in the life without him and show me how she has grown to love herself and is ready to let ten go so he can let go of the guilt of what he had to do to her. why does donna need to have her own doctor?

in russell's book "the writer's tale" he was ADAMANT about donna NEVER getting her memories back. he was proud, as he should have been, of how painfully he ended s4 because tragedy has value.

the key difference between this and journeys end and giving rose her own doctor is that while rose gets a happy ending, it's tinged with pain and with sacrifice for them all. it comes with a price and that makes it all the more precious. ten and tentoo have always been the same guy with different opportunities and how that affects who we become to me. you remove the tragedy from it and the core falls out and it feels soulless.

sure, rose would be happy that the doctor is happy but i'm sorry this is rose's storyline repackaged and handed to donna and done in a way the audience accepts as "real." which is so fucking mindnumbingly unfair and lazy. to take the doomsday, "one adventure i can never have," which is about rose and giving it to donna is so god damn insulting. it's like donna's popularity as a platonic soulmate to ten has completely overpowered the power of nine and ten's relationship with rose, her family and what they represented for him and that doesn't sit right with me and i'm not ashamed to say it.

and it doesn't even work overall because the doctor settled down with river for 24 years already. like... he already had that adventure in various ways! it's like rtd thought he could pick up in 2008.

this is what he originally wanted to do with journeys end and instead of using what he already had and expanding on it, instead of using how tentoo has been thinking of donna for fifteen years too bc he cost her everything, instead of using their metacrisis to have him absorb his mind, instead of using how they are biologically related he makes a THIRD david tennant doctor? it's perplexing. he could have easily brought tentoo over to the main universe and if he REALLY wanted to had donna and her fam move to pete's world and seal them all away for his soft reboot that way.

now we have two timelord doctors in the main dw verse. why? what's gonna happen to him! what about when donna die? does he become the valeyard? what was the point? HOW does this celebrate 60 years?

but my biggest pain of all has been how this neuters ten and the audience perception of him. i love how rude he was. i love how repressed he was. i love his pain and his sillness. i love how he went mad. i love i don't want to go. i LOVE how hard it was for him because it fucking Meant something. like julie gardner said, the doctor is his most compelling when he has to sacrifice something. i love a happy ending, but i worry we are forgetting the value or something ending painfully and just... ending.

tldr; i have more to say but at the moment i feel like my favorite doctor got erased, like they took all the depth from him and made him happier and easier to digest for comforts sake and it sacrificed his arc and that makes me unhappy.

#dw spoilers #negativity

[dragelton]

the ghosts finale was literally the worst finale of any show i have ever seen and i fully mean it

youre gonna take THE gay person found family show, add a fucking baby into the mix, have alison leave the ghosts so she can focus on the baby???

and like yeah. she has to. of course she has to. but like the baby isnt REAL. they wrote that thing in. they had her look at her found family and go sorry guys, this was fun but i need to focus on my real family, me and my DH and our lovely baby girl.

and see like. everyones posting analysis about how its actually even more family that they left because you also have to move out of your home when you grow up and only see your family for holidays yadda yadda and its like. well. yeah thats true. you live with your family until youre older and you love them but you outgrow them, who as much as you might like them are a part of you as your family and not as people you have independently grown to bond with. so you eventually leave them and surround yourself with a friend group or something such. one might even call it. a found family. and the reason why this sucks shit is because it betrays that this whole time the people writing this found family have been thinking “well yeah friendship is awesome but its nothing like REAL family where when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much-”

and then with that perspective you think back to the core of these characters who resonated so much and realize that their tragedies have always been a lack of family. julian was a serial cheater and workaholic who never told his daughter he loved her. pat will never get to see his kids grow up. thomas died before he could marry his beloved. fanny was robbed of a marriage with a man who loves her. kitty never grew up and got the dream wedding she desperately wants to have and her daddy never loved her. and then you get to cap who by all rights should be the exception to this and realize that when they teased him coming out the whole show but at the end subverted it to make it about his lost love it was not a radical portrayal of love between two men it was actually about them having the most cishet perspective on gay identity. it was them looking at a man who spent his entire life repressing his sexuality and going my, what a tragedy, he never got to get married.

of course you can say this has always been what the show is, that its not the shows fault i thought i was watching something else. fair enough. but appearently i’ve been watching something that is just not that good. like im going to be honest maybe it was just kind of bad.

#bbc ghosts #six idiots #bbc ghosts spoilers

[dsudis]

A Dreamling story I am not writing (today)

Hob makes a flirtatious little advance to Dream--something kind of plausibly deniable, testing whether Dream even thinks of him that way enough to notice a pass, and Dream busts out the "we cannot, it is forbidden for any of my kind to love a mortal, it can only end in tragedy and horror for all involved."

Hob Gadling, who has faked his death 73 times to exit a relationship before the otherwise-unavoidable Sad Ending could play out including twice before he became immortal, and furthermore can parse it's not you, it's me in several languages: "Oh! Wow, that must make dating difficult for you."

Dream: "I simply do not."

Hob: "Yeah! Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't. You know what would put you off the whole idea? Love Island. Have you seen--"

And then Hob just fucking drops the whole idea.

It's not like he thought it was possible, and wow, okay, turns out is definitively not possible, whether the whole "forbidden" thing is strictly true or just Dream putting a very firm kibosh on the whole notion. And Hob, outside a few limited cases which he's taken as Important Lessons in Surviving Immortality, is pretty good at not dwelling on what he can't have, so he just moves the fuck on with his life, goes on some dates, and it's fine! More new people in his life! Sometimes he gets to tell his oldest friend about them!

Meanwhile Dream is losing his fucking mind.

This is not! how! this story is supposed to go!! His old true friend who suddenly after 632 years finally makes a move is not supposed to just LET IT GO when Dream says they can't possibly be together!!! Dream wasn't actually invested in or possibly even aware of the possibility either, before that conversation, but now he is full speed ahead PINING while also being increasingly irritated with Hob for just TAKING HIS WORD FOR IT when he said it could never happen. Why isn't Hob willing to fight for him??? For THEM??????

So obviously at some point this all spills out and Hob is like "...I could? If you... wanted me to? Are we... just not going to worry about the inevitable tragedy at this time?"

And Dream, all sulky, is like, "I don't see why you should believe that would apply to you when you defied the inevitability of death just fine."

And Hob smiles, real slowly, and says, "You've got me there."

#dreamling #the sandman #tumblr fic #fic #hob takes no for an answer

[therainscene]

Will Byers: Be gay do crime, amirite?

Growing up means putting away childish things, choosing between marrying a woman or remaining celibate, becoming a wage slave with no free time, and accepting that this is how life works.

Fuck that!

Will would rather spend his time doing things he actually enjoys with the people he loves, and if he has to break some of society’s rules to do so... well, clearly the rules were bullshit to begin with and deserve to be broken.

But the spark of defiance we see in the van is a smoldering ember compared to the fire of S3.

Will jokes about Vegas and D&D, but that’s all it is -- a joke. Getting to spend the rest of his life with Mike has begun to feel like a silly fantasy, akin to using superpowers to commit fraud as a minor.

It doesn’t occur to him that Mike’s cries for help could be because he wants to escape comphet, not be pushed further into it. He weeps quietly over his self-inflicted heartache, back turned and mouth smothered, like there’s something unreasonable about his feelings.

What happened to the brazenly authentic boy who openly admitted that he expected to spend his life with Mike? Where’s the offended boy who called Mike out on his performative heterosexuality? The furious boy who screamed and sobbed and swore as he felt society’s homophobic standards closing in on him with all the inevitability of growing older?

Will is authentic and headstrong, but even he is getting slowly crushed under the boot of forced conformity.

Some of the GA think this is an acceptable outcome; just an inevitable part of growing up gay in the 80s. It’s realistic and relatable. Great queer rep!

Others decide that Will should become a villain -- after all, hasn’t he earned the right? The narrative has done nothing but torture him, so doesn’t he deserve to go a little apeshit? As a treat?

Henry Creel: Be gay do crime, amirite?

Henry is scathingly critical of society’s rules. He refuses to compromise his true nature by playing along, and no amount of punishment can force him to change.

His backstory is presented in a way that makes it difficult to sympathize with him -- I mean, ok, maybe he didn’t deserve to be jailed and tortured when he was just a child, but surely the Soteria was necessary, right? He’s dangerous.

But the real threat that Henry poses isn’t his willingness to kill -- it’s the power he has to rewrite the rules. And both he and his oppressors know it.

By locking him up (forcing him into the closet), torturing him (subjecting him to homophobia), and implanting him with Soteria (castrating him), they stripped him of agency and reduced his options to a rock and a hard place:

Continue suffering in obedient silence.

Go apeshit and commit whatever atrocities are necessary to escape. Embrace his role as the villain in a story where people like him aren’t allowed to be the heroes anyway.

(Hmm, those are same options that Will is expected to choose from. What an interesting yet surely meaningless coincidence.)

The tragedy of Henry’s story is that he did end up conforming to the rules in the end.

He didn’t choose the option his oppressors would have preferred, but he did choose an acceptable one -- he became the monster they’d already branded him as. Once upon a time his fellow outcasts might have gladly allied with him, but now they’re forced to stop him.

I love the symbolism of this shot. El’s rainbow is larger and pushes Henry back, while his is upside down, foreshadowing how the battle is going to end -- but more than that, it symbolizes their approaches in battle.

The motivation that Henry is using comes from the same place as El’s -- a desire for self-preservation, to defy authority, to fight for the rights of fellow outcasts -- but his has been twisted. He advises her to use a memory of injustice that makes her feel angry and sad...

...and while it’s very effective, it’s not enough. It isn’t until she thinks of a memory that makes her feel loved that she’s able to gain the upper hand.

Interestingly, the lights surge around her as she does this, bathing her in an ethereal white glow:

It fits the symbolism of the rainbow room perfectly -- after all, what is white light if not a focused rainbow?

But more importantly: where have we seen this before?

Will Byers carries the light with him wherever he goes, because he has the benefit of something Henry was cruelly robbed of: the unconditional love and acceptance of his family and friends, which helped hinder society’s efforts to crush the authenticity out of him.

So why should Will suffer the same fate as Henry? What’s stopping him from being the hero and earning the happy ending he wants, instead of the tragic ending homophobes expect him to settle for?

Like Henry, Will has the power to rewrite the rules -- and this time, they’re actually going to be rewritten.

#stranger things #will has powers #byler #will byers #henry creel #el hopper #my analysis

[welivetodream]

How much do you think Richard lied about the story?

Because I think he was lying about a LOT of stuff. I do not trust words that come from this man. He is sus.

Since he is talking about the past, it could all be misunderstandings and blurry memories (he was high half of the time) Or it could be just lies.

My favourite headcanon is that Richard was writing a book about his college life. He is a bit delusional and grandiose so when he went to college, he expected to have this main character vibe going on. But his college life was as normal as any of ours and he was disappointed. So, he tried to live vicariously through a book, which he wrote as an "autobiography" (he literally starts the book with "this is a story of my follies"). Richard is telling us, the reader, "his" story. He is acknowledging it as a "real" story. But that too is a lie. Richard made it all up. All the characters were written by him.

That's why Camilla was portrayed as an angel, she is the heroine, his damsel in distress, love interest. Henry was the mythical Jay Gatsby to Richard's Nick Carraway. Henry was someone he could obsess over and idolise. Francis is the gay one, he is another 'kind of' love interest, he is always making passes at Richard, he is snarky and a bit grumpy, that's his entire character. Charles is the mean villain, he is abusing Camilla and committing incest, his existence makes all of them appear better than they are. Bunny was homophobic to a degree that didn't make any sense, he was in a fucking Greek class and was friends with all these people with major gay vibes, what did he expect? If Bunny was sympathetic, we wouldn't have accepted the murder so quickly. And Julian is Julian, he is so out of reach and ethereal; depicted as a type of teacher we would love to have, the story's John Keating.

Now when we come to the ending. The only one who gets to live a "normal" life and has any success (at least graduating college) was Richard. Yeah, Camilla turned him down and all but, he doesn't seem that mad about it (he admitted he loved Henry too, which gives major Nick Carraway vibes) He doesn't really face any consequences of what they all did (he is an accomplice to murder after all)

Camilla is traumatised, she is still in love with Henry and he fucking died in front of her. Her relationship with Charles is ruined and that would be traumatising as well.

Francis is forced to stay in the closet with no choice in the person he dates. And he almost dies of a suicide because of that. He is done with life.

Charles tried rehab but then ran away with a woman in her 30s that was married. His life is a complete mess and he has no contact with his old friends or sister.

Henry commited suicide and Bunny was murdered by his own friends.

Out of all these situations, Richard was the lucky one. He still has ties to Camilla and Francis and they still are kind of friends. He graduated and got a job. He dates one of the most popular girls at college and moves in with her for some time. He is doing something in his life.

In the end, Richard got the best of all of them. Maybe because that's just his real life. He doesn't have a crazy backstory. He doesn't have a huge personality. He doesn't have many connections to these characters. He gets the best ending. He is always the outsider. He is the narrator. He is a liar. He is a storyteller.

It's Richard's world, we are all just living in it.

(I know this theory is not at all true. Donna Tartt was not going for it to be like this. But I find the idea of Richard faking the entire book for his own entertainment and delusion, fascinating. And it's even plausible because of his personality)

Just imagine if TSH happened in the present day. The afterward would be just Richard going to his desk job with four hours of sleep and revealing he was writing an OC self-insert fanfiction about a modern Greek tragedy in AO3.

(okay, this turned out so funny. I get Richard, I want to escape from my boring life with writing too)

#dark academia #chaotic academia #the secret history #donna tartt #tsh #henry winter #richard papen #charles macaulay #camilla macaulay #franics abernathy #bunny concoran #julian morrow #tsh memes

[forlornkiller]

I think this ending was so good for this show because it keeps everybody in a state of motion. We’re able to almost picture or envision what the future is going to be like for them because some cycles are destined to repeat but each character has such different destinies you know? this show is so amazing every scene has so much to unpack…. im only gonna choose a couple moments but I hope they resonate

comparing Kendall and roman……. I think we all knew that roman was abused by Kendall growing up but in previous contexts, it seemed like he had changed…. at least yelling at Logan for his direct abuse but to see Kendall do that to Rome was fucking heartbreaking man . tears in my fucking eyes like he does not. deserve this. nobody fucking deserves this and fuck Logan Roy and every fucking abuser that willingly and even gleefully chooses fucking abuse. kendall seemed resigned to his fate to abuse his brother but it’s just not true man. maybe there was more sorrow than glee in his abuse but only maybe. and either way it’s not fucking right. The acceptance of their nothingness is different yet the same…… so many things are different but the same do u know what I mean ?

Kendall, with protection, but never able to do anything again is a fate i can accept for him. It was really interesting to see how their relationships with other people were again and may I just say. I think it’s quite incredibly clear what Kendall and Stewy had and currently flirt with…… i love that but I hate that for them. As delulu it might be for Stewy to think he can save Kendall, he totally thinks that and who knows . maybe some cool fuck shit happens and Kendall’s able to keep one relationship in his life he cares about. but I guess we won’t see .

Oof going back to Roman’s dig about Rava and her kids…….. i think his relationship with them is so fucked and there isn’t enough time for repentance. He spent so long holding onto a dream that was never real and not even worth having in the end, and knowing that so much of his life was around this one thing. seven years old to now….. maybe some intense psychotherapy and retrospection for years is what he needs. it’s probably the only thing he’s gonna get

,, and in this sense I almost wonder if Connor and Kendall are closer than ever as eldest boys. Connor was never offered the dream, and he never became anything. Kendall is what happens when you offer it and it disappears, making u realize it was never really there in the first place. Might’ve been something, but definitely isn’t now. I also think reducing Connor to nothing is not a fair characterization but he’s not really something either.

Shiv……… i wish there was a way free for her. I’m not the greatest at imagining shiv futures but I somehow see purgatory yet nothing at all. She got the deal, she didn’t get CEO and her reputation got a bit fucked but she’s still married to the CEO. whose baby she’s pregnant with. And who she doesn’t like, i don’t think. Because hurting her has been the way she understands love, i think she’s more into Tom than ever and i think she needs him. He holds a lot of power but in the end he offers love one way, she doesn’t respond that way and they stay together but apart. I can’t tell anymore if it’s real or fake. I think Shiv believes what she said, that once you say all the worst shit to each other you can still be together but part of that is WANTING to be together. If you say all the worst shit and at the end don’t know if you want to come back, then I think you shouldn’t get back together. They just keep making bad decisions. Sometimes relationships are best when both people realize how close they are is not how close they actually want to be or should be. Tom offering his hand in the car…….. she called him a phony and I think I agree. There might’ve been love there.. an opportunity to win love but Shiv doesn’t fight for those things, she takes them as givens. A lot of the tragedy in succession is about timing. Bad things happening right when things were getting good, maybe. The consequences of their actions meet later actions and become perfectly destructive. Okay i got distracted back to shiv and Tom i can’t tell who is trapping who with this baby. I am incredibly sad for this future child and wish that Tom got out now, fuck waystar royco and take his piece of shit and go!!!! but they’re in too deep now.

Switching to tomgreg 🤩 sucking the dick of white supremacy, but maybe making changes internally about how things are done. Tom is better than Logan on most levels I think, and great at his fucking job. Will he be able to counter Logan’s legacy with his own consider his part in advancing Logan’s? Wash his hands free from sins?? i don’t really think so but I think he might want to…….. i always have hope like a dumbass hehe but yea I have been wanting Tom and Gerri team up since the beginning on season 4 and while it’s sad to not see that in action, im glad it’s a definite future. I think she’ll see that Tom can actually be competent. Okay sandwiching Tom and Gerri with Tom and Greg, that sticker shit was fucking cute and I totally thought they were gonna kiss before that. Their fight was so fucking funny LOL i did genuinely enjoy watching that. Fed my tomgreg soul for sure 😌

In regards to mattson (and then I’m going back to Gerri and then I’m gonna SLEEP!!) i think what he wanted with his numbers happened, them getting lost in the deal dazzle? It went through and now everybody’s fucking rich. The thing is idk all the legal business stuff so is this gonna fuck everybody over in a couple weeks to months? No clue but for now Mattson’s kinda on top of the world. I really don’t like him tho hehe i hope he gets smashed to death by a pile of his own blood bricks. I wonder if Tom will actually be his front man, or try to kill him at some point too? The urge to serve is so strong in him…… but do I firmly believe that with a healthy kinky relationship with somebody PERHAPS GREG. he would be able to fulfill that and also rule the world? Absolutely man it’s just abt balance 😌 my belief that the acceptance of bdsm would fix so many things in our society & in succession is unshakable okay don’t question me. ANYWAYS

Gerri….. a queen as always. Roman pining from afar is so sad so tragic reminding himself of her with every drink he drinks and thought he thinks. One of THE biggest regrets and him saying that he’s nothing, that all the sibs are nothing? I think in this moment it’s true. I can feel how that is truth for him. With Gerri’s brief flashes of emotion during the funeral ….. i have hope. Succession aside, i really believe have faith in love and its power to save lives & transcend death. I think what they had bw them was real, and with the scripts as well I don’t think that connection was faked. What makes my heart hurt is that in the past it seemed like Gerri was the only one in the room who cared if he was hurt. She can’t necessarily protect him but she sees him. He doesn’t have that, the three sibs don’t have anybody that really loves & knows them enough to be able to deal with this trauma but I don’t think hope is totally gone. I’m an optimist in the end

God this is fucking long I’m a wordy person but overall? GOD i love this show!!! I really think they ended it at a great spot in this way where things keep going. Nobody’s story ever really ends, it feels like it does and to the person living their story it might but being able to watch their lives? You realize that it doesn’t end. I think Jesse’s commentary on the fear behind ending Succession here is super valid though, because there is a message here that is ultimately anti capitalist. If we were able to really see, at length the way we’ve seen the first cycles, how their cycles continue I think it would really wake a lot of people up to how things operate in this society. The longer this nation goes on, the longer the abuse this nation was founded from goes on. I’m going to end here but wow this show has given me so much to think about when it comes to love, abuse, capitalism, society & American culture as a whole like goddamn. What a show man what a show

#succession finale #LONG ASS FUCKING POST OKAY #kendall roy #roman roy #logan roy #tw abuse #stewy hosseini #kenstewy #rava succession #connor roy #shiv roy #tom wambsgans #tomshiv #greg hirsch #tomgreg #lukas matsson #gerri kellman #romangerri #succession thoughts #thanks for reading my essay :)

[vulto-cor-de-rosa]

Agnes Montague is such a tragic character if you stop to think about her for more than 5 seconds.

She grow up in a cult, with no parents, and was raised by people who really didn't know what they where doing. She wasn't allowed near other children or left alone for any length of time, completely isolating her from anyone with her age until she went to Hill Top Road, which, not a great place to grow up either. She wasn't raised as a child but as a fucked up chosen one. Even the relationships that she had with other people where tainted with her status as the Messiah, I mean look at this quote from MAG 139:

["Jude had only just joined at the time, and was – besotted with Agnes, though I couldn’t tell you if she loved her as a god, or as a woman"]

She couldn't have any normal relationship with anyone around her because everyone worshiped her.

We don't know much about Agnes as an individual. Most we know about her is second hand knowledge or from people from her cult or from the people that ended up crossing paths with her, and none of it is about who she was as a person, only about what they thought of her. We never got to know Agnes, we never got her statement or anything really. The closest thing we ever got to know what was going on inside her head is from this part from MAG 67, the statement of Jack Barnabas regarding a short-lived courtship with Agnes Montague in the Autumn of 2006:

["We sat on a bench as the sun went down, watching the sky redden, and Agnes asked me a question. It was the first time she’d said anything more than a few words since we left my flat. She asked me if I had a destiny.

I don’t need to tell you the question caught me off guard. I don’t know if I’ve given the impression clearly enough yet, being a single guy in my early thirties still working the till at a Sheffield cafe, but I don’t really see myself as having much of a destiny. Hell, I’m not even sure I believe in destiny. I certainly don’t believe in God, and I feel that’s kind of linked.

So I told her this. She looked at me, with the same sadness I’d seen on her face before. “That must be nice,” she said and went back to staring into the sunset."]

This is the only time we get to see what's going on inside Agnes head and it's so important, because it's not a stretch to come to the conclusion that she didn't want this. She never asked to be born into a cult, she never asked to have a destiny and she never asked to be the chosen one! She was raised into the believe that she had a destiny to follow, that she was the Messiah that was going to bring The Desolation into the world, but she didn't want that. I can't say that she never did, because we don't know that. Maybe she did. Maybe, after she met Jack, she changed her mind. Maybe she realized what actual real love felt like, what a normal life felt like, and she wanted more. But these are all maybes because we will never know, and that is the true tragedy! We will never know what Agnes thought about all of this. As Arthur Nolan in MAG 145 puts it:

["Never really knew what she (Agnes) felt ‘bout any of it, not really. Not in her own words. Guess that’s the thing about being the… chosen one, [...] you’re always just the point of someone else’s story, everyone clamoring to say what you were, what you meant, and your thoughts on it all don’t mean nothing."]

Agnes "Messiah" Montague is on the other side of the same coin that Jonathan "The Archivist" Sims is.

#I love her SO MUCH #I NEED MORE AGNES APPRECIATION IN THIS HOUSE #rosa's garden #tma #tma podcast #the magnus archives #agnes montague #agnes tma

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

Was reading an article about how to write a realistic romance and avoid common poorly-done tropes. Seemed like a pretty decent post. Then immediately noped out and closed the tab when they listed Zuko and Katara as an example of a well-written romance 🤡

"Here's how you write a good romance" *points to a dynamic that was not romantic and didn't have much screentime or any real development until the very end of the story*

Seems like the level of quality one can expect from the typical internet think-piece - just bullshit and a pretencious way of saying "my headcanon is better."

Also, fuck being "realistic", stories have to be GOOD and ENTERTAINING. Game Of Thrones would have been a worse show if Ned Stark had been saved at the last second, but the movie Snow White would have been completely ruined if prince charming had not saved her with true love's kiss. Jack dying at the end of Titanic fits the tone of "this was a tragedy in which lots of good, innocent people were killed and those who loved them will always grieve them", but Cinderella never being freed from her abusive family would have been a fundamental betrayal to the message it's trying to send to the audience.

You should ALWAYS focus on what makes sense for the specific story you're trying to tell. Would "love at first sight" fit the magical, wholesome vibe, or would it look corny and forced compared to the more down to earth plot? If you're not gonna have the characters live happilly ever after, did you properly set up the reasons for it, or are you just doing so because "happy endings are cliche"? If the romance between the two characters is toxic, you need to be writing either cautionary tale or a story in which the protagonist being "moral" isn't that important, you can NOT be trying to use them as an exemple of what love is supposed to be.

It all depends on the context. Realism is not inherently better than wish-fulfilment.

#anti zutara

[ladykailitha]

Can Anybody See Me? Part 17

Fuck, guys, I don’t even know what this story is even doing at this point. I’m on part 18 and it does NOT want to wrap up. Like at all. It wants to go on forever and I don’t know how to stop it. It MIGHT be 20 parts. It might be 50 at this point. Who the hell knows? Not this poor belabored author that’s for sure.

Anyway...so this part is a little on the sad side. We get more of Eddie’s backstory. And a little bit of bitchy Steve to lighten it up at the end.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16

*

It wasn’t until Steve was getting ready for school the next morning that he found he had left the comic at Eddie’s.

He was throwing homework in his bag when he realized it felt lighter than it should.

He unpacked it slowly and set everything out on his bed. He stood there looking at his stuff, hands on his hips for a moment before it dawned on him.

Shit.

The comic book. After he had finished all the pages he had painstakingly put them together in comic book form. He even designed the cover. Then took them to copying store and got it bound like a real comic book.

The kid at the shop was impressed with how well the pages were mapped out.

But it wasn’t in his stuff he had pulled from his bag. Which meant one thing. Eddie had it.

It was fine. No need to panic. He had written for Eddie. He was meant to read it.

So why was he freaking out?

Oh, only because Steve didn’t want him to read it until after the school play. Hell Steve’s nerves were already shot with the three additional performances Steve wasn’t planning on having to do. But adding Eddie knowing about the Upside Down? It made him vaguely ill.

Fuck what if he did throw up from nerves? He’d never done it before, but then again, he’d never performed in front other people before either. He was a literal mess.

He packed away all his things carefully and prayed to whatever supreme being that was out there for a merciful death on his way to school.

*

Eddie had stayed up the whole night reading Steve’s comic. Personally, he thought that the story was good, the characters were interesting and the monsters were frightening enough.

It wasn’t until he got the final page of the comic where Steve’s afterword was.

Unlike the rest of it where it was professionally done, the last page had a carefully glued on piece of paper. So this was clearly something that Steve didn’t want other people to see.

And Eddie would have respected that if it hadn’t been addressed to him directly.

“Eddie-

So there you have it. The start of my trauma. And yes this is only the start. The real story began with a missing boy and a cover up so large it frightens me. But that was never my story to tell. This is my story. This is where it truly began for me.

Well. That’s not quite true. It started with a girl and a swimming pool. A tragedy that should have been mine. But that night I was so intent on getting laid that I let it happen. Barb deserved better than me. She should have lived and I died.

I don’t know why I lived. Maybe it was because I was needed to protect those closest to me. That’s all I thought I was good for. Dying in a blaze of glory protecting those I hold most dear. And then I met you.

God, Eddie, you make me want to live. For the first time in my miserable existence I found people who like me for me. And not just because I was needed. To protect. To defend. To die. For them.

And then you came along and protected me. Defended me. I don’t think anyone has ever done that for me before.

Just do me one favor. Peel out this insert. Throw it away. Burn it. I don’t care. Just as long as you are the only one that sees it. I don’t want you in danger. But I needed you know this side of me.

The boy with the bat. The boy who never knew what love really was until he met you.

-Love Steve”

Eddie choked back tears and place a hand to his trembling lips. If Steve had really gone through all that. If even a fraction of it was true. Even if none of it was. That was still the most beautiful love letter he had ever seen. And it was addressed to him.

Shit.

Tears rolled down his face as he read the letter again and again. After the seventh or eighth read he finally did what Steve requested and peeled the letter out of the last page of the comic. He folded it carefully and crawled under his bed.

Buried underneath of the mess was a simple black lockbox. He set it gently on his bed and then went to his dresser. He slid out the bottom drawer and jiggled the bottom until a small key fell out onto the floor.

He picked the key up and sat on his bed. He unlocked the box and placed the key between his lips for safe keeping.

Inside the box were all the things Eddie didn’t want other people to see. The couple of birthday cards his dad had sent him from prison. His mom’s suicide note.

Not even Wayne had seen that one. No one knew but Eddie that she had taken her own life. He had seen her life insurance policy and knew it wouldn’t pay out if they thought it was intentional. So accidental overdose was what was on her death certificate.

Eddie had been her sole beneficiary and it was placed in trust until he turned twenty-one. He was going to use it fund the band and get the hell out of Hawkins. He just had to make that far.

The paperwork for the trust was in there too. Wayne had offered to hold on to it for him but at the time Eddie didn’t trust anyone and giving that up felt like too much.

His birth certificate was in here too. Well a copy of it anyway. Wayne had the original, but Eddie liked knowing he had a copy too. In case he needed to get away fast.

Also in here was a portion of the money he had made from dealing drugs. He told Reefer Rick, no meth and no cocaine. Mainly weed and mushrooms, with a small smattering of the harder drugs. He had set aside ten percent of his earnings as an emergency fund. In case he needed it.

The last thing that was in there was a picture of his mom. She’s sitting on the swings next to Eddie and smiling into the camera as Eddie laughs gleefully. Just out of frame was his dad who had been pushing him on the swing. It was the last moment of happiness Eddie had before Lawrence Munson got into selling and doing drugs. Had got his wife, Edie addicted. Before Larry had got himself arrested in Texas and Eddie was sent to go live with Wayne.

He placed the love letter on top and closed the box. He locked it back up and set everything to rights. He looked at the alarm clock and groaned when the bright red numbers glared back him. It was 4:57am.

Fuck.

Eddie was supposed to be up in an hour for school. Yeah. That wasn’t happening today. He flopped on the bed and threw his arms out. He thought about the comic and what was inside it. He remembered Steve telling him that he had changed it so unless you were there that day you wouldn’t recognize the events. But even with that it felt...well, it felt like he was being let in on secret if he was honest. A big one.

He looked over at the clock again and it was almost six. He sighed and got up. He grabbed the stuff he needed for his shower and ducked into the bathroom. The last thing he needed this morning was Wayne seeing him still in the clothes he wore the night before.

He showered quickly and got out before Wayne had even turned on the coffee pot. He was dressed and ready for school before the pot had finished brewing.

Wayne handed him a cup of coffee and raised an eyebrow at him.

“What do you want, old man?” Eddie groused. He wasn’t in the mood for small talk considering he was running on fumes.

“You were up all night reading that comic, weren’t you?” Wayne said and took a long sip of his coffee.

Eddie sighed. He should have known better than to think that Wayne wouldn’t catch him at it. After all this was the man who had been catching him reading books at three o’clock in the morning since he was twelve.

“It’s Steve’s.”

“I didn’t know he read comic books,” Wayne said almost an echo of what he said the night before.

“As in he wrote and drew it,” Eddie clarified.

Wayne’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s a pretty talented boy you got there, Eddie.”

Eddie blushed. “I know. This was the story he was originally going to tell for his art class. Seniors in ART 4 had to do an eight page comic book for their winter finale. Steve started doing this one, but the teacher flipped out and threatened to call his parents because it was ‘too scary’ or some other dumb shit.”

“So he completed it anyway and turned in something else?” Wayne supposed.

Eddie nodded. “He told me he was going to finish it so that I could read it.”

Wayne hummed. “Do you think he left it here on purpose? So that you would read it without having to physically hand it to you?”

Eddie tilted his head and looked up thoughtfully. He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think Steve would have wanted to explain it to me.” He hung his head. “I shouldn’t have read it without that permission, but you know me.”

“I don’t think I would have been able to resist reading something that was meant for me either,” Wayne said, nodding.

Eddie drank the rest of his coffee and kissed his uncle on the cheek. “I’ll see you after school.”

“Bring that boy yours with you,” Wayne said. “I’m making my lasagna tonight, and I want him over for dinner.”

Eddie grinned. “You got it, old man.”

He was out the door and driving off before Wayne could even shake his head. Wayne loved that boy and if he was really lucky he would get another sweet boy out of this deal.

*

Steve was standing nervously at the door to the math hall because it was closest to the parking lot, chewing on his thumb nail. He knew he shouldn’t chew on his nails, but his nerves were shot to hell.

But the bell rang and there was still no sign of Eddie. So after a moment or so of indecision Steve gave up and went to class.

He spent this first class of the day fidgeting with his pencil, tapping against whatever surface was in reach. The desk, his book, his lips, his hand.

Finally the teacher had enough.

“Mr Harrington!” she barked.

Steve looked up at her in shock. “Yes, Miss Davis?”

“Do you have some hot date tonight that you’re nervous about or something?” she asked, folding her arms over her chest as she stared him down.

Steve looked at her blankly.

“Your pencil, Mr Harrington,” she explained tersely.

He looked down at the pencil. “No, Miss Davis. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I’ll stop.”

Miss Davis pursed her lips. “See that you do.”

Steve tried finding less obvious ways to work through his nerves and then it hit him. He pulled out his drawing pad and began to doodle.

“Mr Harrington,” Miss Davis called out again some time later. “Would you please pay attention in my class?”

Steve blinked up at her. “You were talking about the Spanish forced colonization of South America, weren’t you?”

A couple of the kids in the class giggled.

Miss Davis turned red from the embarrassment. “Carry on.”

Steve gave her his lop-sided goofy grin.

Part 18  Part 19  Part 20  Part 21

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