#I love that fucked up lil man

[achilleansapphic]

The ONE hill I will ABSOLUTELY DIE on is the fact that I have BEEEEEEEEN an Izzy hands defender since day one… yall fake hoes who started pining for him after s2… yeah side eye cos I’ve been sticking by him. I loved him since I first laid eyes on him with those two hot bears on that island. I knew I would defend him with my LIFE. Has he done wrong? Yeah but WHO HASNT. I love that insane little man and I’m super glad he got redemption so people came around but I need to make it known at every single opportunity that I have BEEN defending that man.

#ofmd #si tag #I love that fucked up lil man #and I need him carnally but that’s besides the point here… #izzy hands #cc tag

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

i love you, i love you (kill me in the morning) ; suguru geto

synopsis; everyone has a weakness. some are harder to get rid of. (or, alternatively; suguru geto befriends a non-sorcerer as a child.)

word count; 10.0k

contents; suguru geto/reader (not explicitly romantic but the subtext is there), gn!reader, geto-typical angst, childhood friends to [redacted], mild gore, suguru geto’s defection but with added angst, twisted depictions of love, depictions of stalking, depictions of death/murder, general bloodlust (geto wants to kill u soo bad but also not really), unresolved yearning, hurt/no comfort, curse user geto is his own warning tbh

a/n; ok so. this is kind of a mess. just my own take on geto’s childhood and defection + how i think he’d deal with a non-sorcerer reader after defecting……. so it turned out kinda. Dark. it’s entirely sfw to be clear!!! just sorta twisted. in conclusion i love my cult leader wife who wants me dead <3 (pls listen to ’kill me’ by indigo de souza it is SO geto)

suguru geto meets you in the afterglow of sunset, by a dusty summer creek.

it’s his special place, hidden in the outskirts of your tiny town; a place where the water glimmers with silver-hued fish, and all the biggest cicadas reside, singing softly and waiting to be caught.

a place where he can be himself. alone, with no one to curse him.

— except, this time, he isn’t alone.

your crying face is the first thing he sees. big, wet tears, cascading down your scrunched-up face, accompanied by little sniffles as you sit there. curled up into a ball, knees against your heaving chest.

the next thing he sees is the bruise on your leg. a scrape on your knee, gritty and a little bloody, but it’s not so awful. he can tell that it hurts, though — you bite your lip to stop yourself from trembling, like you’re trying to be brave. but you look pained. 

and it sends a tremor running through his very soul.

suguru was born with a bleeding heart, an empathy unusually developed for his age. always pushing him forward, coaxing him into taking action; this nagging desire to protect, to nurture. born with an inability to avert his gaze from the suffering of others.

so when the two of you lock eyes, he manages a smile. warm and soothing, even though deep down he’s alarmed. but he masks it, slathers over it with something kind, something comforting — and he can tell that it works, from the way your teary eyes seem to soften in the buttery hue of the afternoon glow.

you’re crying. and suguru finds himself wanting to wipe those tears away, more than anything. you look small, and you’re in pain.

(protect the weak, urges some voice in the back of his mind. insatiable. protect those who can’t protect themselves.)

he asks for your name, all while cleaning your wound. the wince that slips from your lips when the cold water of the creek licks at your knee makes his heart clench.

but you tell him. you tell him your name, as the sun sets in the horizon, and he tells you his. 

suguru. a sweet kid who sees you fall and patches you up. a cool kid who teases you a little for being so clumsy. who holds your hand tightly in his own, to make sure you won’t fall again.

the sun melts away beyond the cluster of trees that surround you, its burning glow breaking through the gaps between the branches and dyeing the summer creek a deep red. illuminating your blurry silhouettes, as you walk back home. hand in hand.

and that’s how it begins.

the two of you grow closer, in the same way flowers who share a stem learn to lean on each other, grow in the same direction, a mess of mingled roots. a natural connection, blooming out of nothing more than a sweet coincidence — that kind of blissful, innocent childhood friendship. the kind you never have to question.

you learn very quickly that suguru isn’t like the rest. that when compared to all the other kids you know, he’s mature, almost mystical, like he knows something they don’t.

you learn that there’s a gentleness to him, one he could never fully hide. one that shines through when he looks at you, when you play and laugh to fill the silence of the hills overlooking the small town you both live in.

you also learn that he can see ghosts.

curses, you’ll both come to learn, but that’s later. for a child in a remote town, isolated and alone, the familiarity of the ghost stories that adults tell you is the only kind of comfort suguru has to cling to. something lighthearted, to explain the predicament that haunts him — the flickers of black in his vision, that lingering taste of charcoal on his tongue.

suguru is different, you realize, different from the rest. and you eventually learn, from him, that you are far from alone in that belief.

in the town you both had the misfortune of being born into, suguru is the black sheep. his parents think there’s something wrong with him. the other kids think there’s something wrong with him. he isn’t right in the head, they whisper, he sees things that aren’t there.

(it’s a debilitating isolation that never truly leaves him.)

so suguru learns to stay silent, learns to keep his pretty little mouth shut, learns to lie. it’s easier that way. easier to survive, in the remoteness of your tiny town, with all the adults who scorn him and look at him like he doesn’t belong anywhere at all.

and suguru learns to be content, in that solitude. that heaven-granted isolation. a lone white chrysanthemum, in a sea of red and lavender; blossoming alone.

but then suguru meets you.

and, contrary to everyone else, you don’t think there’s anything wrong with him. when you tell him that he’s different from the rest, you mean it in the best possible way. you say it with starlight in your eyes, gleeful, giddy. like he’s special, not broken. like you’re also tired of those other kids, those sneering adults, the silence of a town so isolated it could crush a child’s heart.

like you have something in common. like you’re the same.

and you stay by his side. throughout the most difficult years of his early life, when he’s still growing accustomed to the duty he’ll have to bear for the rest of his life, you’re there. every single day. to smile at him, to speak to him like you’re both just normal kids — even though suguru is well aware that he’s anything but normal.

(when he’s with you, he feels like it, though. feels like he’s just a normal boy, like there isn’t something glued down wrong inside his brain. something twisted, something that needs to be plucked out.)

suguru finds comfort in you. in your presence, in the notes you pass him when classes get boring, in the way you cling to his sleeve while exploring the woods during recess. in the way you grin so brightly after managing to catch a firefly in the darkness of the summer night, all proud and toothy, a childlike innocence he wishes he still had.

you’re sweet, and understanding, and suguru thinks you might be the coolest person he knows. you’re his friend, his very best friend, his one and only.

and when he tells you what’s wrong with him — when he tells you what he can see — you ask him something that will forever rest in his subconscious. a flicker of precious, fleeting, genuine acceptance, one he won’t ever feel again. not until he meets a certain boy with blue eyes, but that comes later.

(a memory he’ll return to, over and over again. even after all the evil in the world has already descended upon him like a crackling hurricane.)

what do they look like?

there is no judgement in your voice, in the way the question slips from your lips. no mocking laughter, no silent rejection or whisper of crazy, evil, wrong. there’s only you, the way you’ve always been, curious and understanding and wise beyond your years.

suguru decides, right then and there, that he’ll protect you forever. no matter what.

you can’t see curses. you aren’t like him, in that regard, and he learns that quickly. and as suguru grows up, grows a little taller, a little wiser, he is glad that it’s true. he’s glad, because he already knows what kind of road lies ahead of him.

he already knows what kind of world you both live in, how unforgiving it can be. how many people die every day, every second, because of monsters only a select few can even see. he already knows that curses aren’t the eccentric, silly ghosts you were hoping for when you were kids — but pure, unadulterated evil.

(he already knows what they taste like.)

and suguru takes careful measures, day by day, to keep you away from it. as much as he can without lying outright. you’re curious, by nature, almost fascinated by curses and sorcery and everything you do not understand. an endearing trait, though it exasperates him to no end.

someone like you has no business sticking their nose into that kind of cruelty, he thinks, that kind of bloodshed.

and you’ve always been clumsy, a little scatterbrained. enough to make him worry instinctively when you’re out of his sight. like when you tripped and scraped your knee, by that tiny summer creek, all because you wanted to catch a dragonfly.

so he tries his best to keep you away from it, all of it, away from a darkness he knows would swallow you whole. away from the small, weak curses that sometimes litter the woods or the schoolyard; away from his cursed technique, the disgust of a power he never once asked for. 

(he never lets you see him swallow those things, never lets you witness the way he throws them right back up again before it happens so many times that he grows used to the disgust. you’re sharp, though, and he can’t hide the grimace that always lingers on his features.

you don’t ask — you only give him a packet of gum, to chew away the taste with, and suguru thinks to himself that he’ll love you forever.)

time passes by, slowly but surely, and the two of you stick together.

and as he grows into his teenage years, so much weight already resting on his tiny shoulders, suguru has already developed some sense of it all. of his ability, of the world of sorcerers. he’s already spoken to people like him, has already been made well aware of his potential. 

he’s already been given a choice, a choice that was never really a choice at all, but he decides that it doesn’t matter.

suguru decides to become a sorcerer. to train his abilities, to hone his skills. to eventually move away, from the stifling silence of that town, the silence that was only ever filled by you.

and suguru thinks to himself that he’s doing this for you. that in doing this, in being this, he’ll fulfill his promise to protect you.

(forever. no matter what. he echoes the words in his mind like a prayer.)

suguru wants to protect those who cannot protect themselves. those who are weak, those who are alone, people he has the power to help.

but more than anything, above all else, suguru wants to protect you. 

you are the most precious thing in his life. and if he can turn the world a little brighter for you, just a little bit kinder, then isn’t that enough? isn’t there enough meaning in that to give him the strength he needs?

there is. suguru decides that there is.

so when he tells you about his plans, under a pleasant, ephemeral starry sky, he does so with conviction. he knows that you will understand, because he knows you. you’re his best friend.

and he’s right. you do understand. you’re proud of him, and he’s your best friend, too.

i’ll support you, no matter what. 

the instantaneous answer makes suguru smile. not the kind of smile he plasters on to appease the adults around him, nor the smile he wears when he needs to lie convincingly. a full, genuine smile, that reaches his eyes and blossoms like a flower in the light of the moon; a warm, gentle smile, one you’ll always, always associate with him. 

(forever and ever. no matter what.)

and when suguru eventually has to leave, for a high school he’ll spend the next few years of his life living at, he carries that conviction with him. his choice is steadfast, unyielding, inevitable. the only one that matters.

the whistling of the wind breaches his ears, as you both stand on the platform and wait for his train to arrive. a spring breeze caresses your skin, and suguru’s bangs flutter in the wind. sunlight scatters across the train tracks and seagulls cry out in the distance, and the acute sensation of a parting lies heavy in the air.

it’s embarrassing. it’s childish. suguru wants to claim that he isn’t a child, anymore; that he wouldn’t give in to hesitation, at the sight of your meek expression. that he wouldn’t cry, at the thought of moving away from his best friend.

but the slight puffiness under his eyes is evidence enough. evidence of the tears he shed last night, when the reality of the situation finally dawned on him. 

suguru doesn’t want to part from you. he’s nervous, too — leaving you alone in that town, all by yourself, with no one around to protect you properly.

it's stupid. because deep down, he knows that you’ll escape too. that you’ll come after him, no matter how long it takes, that'll you'll both end up in tokyo. that you'll end up together, despite his duty as a sorcerer — eating soft serve ice cream cones, playing shooting games at the arcade, strolling around the big city aimlessly. doing all those things you always talked about doing.

because the two of you will always, always find your way back to each other. just like how he found you with that bruise on your leg, all those years ago, a fated encounter as natural as the glow of sunset. two lone dragonflies, who always meet somewhere in the middle of a dusty summer creek.

still, suguru can’t help but feel sad. a little lost. he can only hope you don’t notice the soft frown on his face, the faint redness of his eyes. 

(then again, when have you ever not noticed something he was trying to hide?)

there's no need to worry about it, suguru knows. he’s never had to worry about you judging him, looking down on him. never you.

and when his gaze falls on your face, after the train he’s supposed to board screeches to a halt behind him, your own tears are enough to make him realize how silly he’s being.

he laughs, from the bottom of his stomach, when you tackle him into a hug and tell him with teary eyes that you’ll come visit. he squeezes you especially tight, in a boyish fashion he can never quite hide from you, and murmurs into your ear that he’ll be waiting.

he asks you not to forget him. you laugh through your tears, and tell him that you never could.

before he has to let go and step into the train, you tell him that you love him, and his grin blooms with honeyed affection. he ruffles your hair, always gentle, always teasing, always the same suguru.

he tells you that he loves you, too.

— then he’s gone.

(you’ll forever regret not convincing him to stay.)

the two of you stay in contact, all throughout his first year. texting, calling — making sure neither of you get the chance to forget the other. suguru tells you about his life, his missions, his classmates, leaving out all the gritty details. and you listen; attentive, curious.

at one point, you even visit him. his friends tease him relentlessly, but all he does is roll his eyes and flick their foreheads, biting back a smile. that makes you laugh, and he’s relieved that the sound hasn’t changed in the slightest.

and suguru stays the same, throughout that one first year. he is steadfast, unyielding, decisive. he has a conviction he’ll never let go of, and people he's vowed to protect. people he needs to protect. 

(non-sorcerers, is what he tells satoru, and he means it. but suguru chooses to omit the fact that he specifically wants to protect one single non-sorcerer, above all else.)

and suguru is happy, with his choice. thoroughly and wholly. the road ahead of him will be long, full of obstacles and thorns, but he always knew that would be the case. and he knows that it’ll hurt, that it’ll be tough, but he also knows that this is what he sincerely wants to do. what he was meant to do. the only choice worth making.

suguru is content. suguru will not falter.

— then, his second year descends upon him.

riko amanai dies. toji fushiguro dies.

satoru gojo becomes the strongest sorcerer of the modern era.

(and suguru geto is left behind.)

it is a slow, sinking realization. one whole year to lose sight of his goal, lose sight of the conviction he held onto so tightly. one whole year to feel it slip through the gaps between his fingers, helpless to stop its course. everything grows muddled, molding, rotting before he has a chance to root it out — and all he can do is wait, as it festers like bile in the bottom of his gut.

suguru geto falters.

(he doesn’t quite know who he is, anymore.)

words he’s swallowed down like curses all his life keep flooding his subconscious, building up inside the back of his throat, spinning and spinning and spinning inside his brain until he feels sick enough to throw up. evil. crazy. protection. responsibility.

duty, duty, duty —

(what does that word even mean?)

suguru doesn’t remember. he can’t recall what made him step onto that train with such conviction, how he was able to smile so assuredly. how he was able to laugh, from the very bottom of his gut, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. he just can't remember.

who is he doing this for? what meaning lies in all this pain? 

suguru keeps watching, hoping for an answer that’ll save him just enough. waiting and watching. he’s always just watching, isn’t he? never changing anything. always too late, too weak, too fucking useless to stop even a single person from dying. 

he watches helplessly as a little girl gets shot in the head, for the crime of having been born different, for the sake of simple currency. watches helplessly as satoru carries her lifeless body in his arms, across a room full of people so vile that some deep, rotten, intrinsic part of suguru just wants to —

but there would be no meaning to it.

(does there really need to be one?)

suguru honestly doesn’t know, anymore.

riko dies.

(curses spring up like flies. he devours and devours.)

then haibara dies, too. 

(in the distance, he thinks he hears the sound of clapping.)

sorcerers. non-sorcerers. curses.

the words begin to rot inside his mouth, like wilted flowers, syrupy sweet and nauseating. crumbling on his tongue, numbing his senses until it’s all he can taste. a mouthful of honey, sticking to the walls of his throat, too sweet to stomach.

this is wrong, he thinks. everything is all wrong.

everything is wrong and i don’t know how to fix it.

— and then there’s you.

during your third year, both of you are busier than usual, but still find the time to talk when you can. the normalcy of your little stories is a comfort, to suguru — but also makes him burn with something he fears may be close to envy.

you tell him about your new school, your new town, your new beginning; bright and dazzling. one that suits you just fine.

the two of you are different, he realizes, all at once. some part of him always knew. you were born to be happy, kept away from the bloodshed, hands unsullied by the deep red that always dries beneath his fingernails. there was never a place for you in the world of curses. and he’s glad, that it’s true, he always has been, but —

(resentment festers in his gut. he can’t tell how long it’s been there, and he’s afraid to know the answer.)

these days, suguru takes a little longer to answer your texts. his voice comes out sounding a little more fatigued when he’s speaking to you through the phone, and he doesn’t talk as much as he used to. your voice soothes him, though, he thinks. just a tiny bit. but it’s enough.

(he’s doing this for you, too. he can’t forget that.)

and when you come to visit him, during his third year, suguru is surprised. surprised to see you, standing outside of his dorm, bags full of his favorite snacks in hand. smiling.

you look the same as always.

(he’s the only one who’s changed.)

it’s a pleasant surprise, though, despite everything. he really did miss you. in his life, your presence alone has been nothing but a comfort, for as long as he can remember. even now, when everything feels so blurry and uncertain, you appear to him as a flicker of starlight; shining through the darkness that’s been plaguing him for the past year.

so he tries to smile, tries to sound the same as always, but he knows you don’t buy it. you know because you know him, despite everything.

suguru wonders what you would think of him, if you could hear the thoughts he’s been having these past few weeks. he wonders what he looks like, reflected in your eyes. he wonders how much he’s changed since you last saw him.

(he hasn’t felt like himself in months.)

your presence is like a balm, to his soul, but it also seeks to hurt him further. because you’re still the same. still so understanding and wise and patient. you can tell that he’s fading, and he can tell that you can tell. but he doesn’t want to tell you why. he refuses to open up to you, because what would that accomplish? how could you possibly understand?

how could you understand his hatred, his resentment, towards the very people he’s supposed to protect? he told you that, himself. he decided to protect them, on his own accord. that’s his duty — steadfast, unyielding, inevitable. that’s all it was ever meant to be.

protect the weak. protect the ugly. protect everyone except his comrades, until all of them lie dead in a pile of maggots and tangly limbs and buzzing flies.

a bitter, heavy kind of vomit settles inside his chest, his throat. and somewhere deep inside suguru’s mind, in the very bottom of a drawer he vowed never to open, the image of non-sorcerers shifts, distorts, flickers on and off under the light.

protect those monkeys until his very last breath.

(what a fucking joke.)

you couldn’t understand. he doesn’t want you to. he promised himself that he would keep you away from that kind of darkness, no matter what, and —

and you’re the only good thing he has left.

not only that — you’re a non-sorcerer, too. and suguru knows what that means. if what his brain is telling him is true, if that’s really how it is, then you are no exception. then you’re just like the rest, something lesser, nothing but a —

(he thinks he might throw up.)

suguru does not tell you anything. despite everything, despite your pleading expression, despite the heavy bile at the bottom of his gut. he does not tell you what is truly wrong. he does not open up to you. 

and that is suguru’s first act of betrayal, to you. before he even betrays the jujutsu world.

(it is perhaps the only betrayal he’ll ever feel any kind of remorse over.)

you try, though. persistent in your affection. he loathes how little you’ve changed, how brightly you still shine when reflected in his eyes. you sit right next to him, under a pleasant, ephemeral starry sky, stars blurred by the light pollution, and tell him what you always have.

i’ll support you, no matter what. 

…

suddenly, all he can hear is the whooshing of the sea. as if he's been pulled underwater, a heavy weight tugging at his limbs, lungs gasping for air that doesn't exist. pure static, in his ears, a sharp crack of something. like a rib, or a train of thought. all he can taste is saltwater.

the dam begins to break. it cracks at the edges, like two giddy children poking a stick into a puddle layered with ice, giggling at their scattered reflections. memories resurfacing, images flashing in his subconscious. suguru looks at you like he’s lost. something inside of him breaks, disintegrates into a pile of despair. 

because you don’t understand what you’re telling him. you don’t understand what he thinks about doing, sometimes, when the nights are especially long and the school is especially empty and the taste of curses lies especially thick on his tongue.

you don’t understand. you never will. 

but you’re smiling at him, so very gentle. so accepting, so all-encompassing of everything that’s good, everything worth cherishing. just like always. 

suguru recalls your teary face; when you scraped your knee, when he left that town behind. he recalls all the ways you’ve soothed him, saved him, in all the years you’ve known him.

i’ll definitely come visit. i love you.

i’ll support you, no matter what.

what do they look like?

— suguru falters. these days, that’s all he ever seems to do.

how could he hate non-sorcerers, when you’re among them? how could he hate a world that has you in it?

(he can’t, he can’t, he can’t. he can’t hate you. not you.)

the words that spill so very easily from your lips break him. he can’t tell if you’ve mended the damage, or only worsened it. he can’t tell where the jagged hole inside his chest ends and begins. he can only tell that it’s extending, extending, extending.

suguru wants to fall apart. he wants to fall apart, for only you to see, because you’ve always been the only one who could ever understand. the only one who wouldn’t turn your eyes away from him, even back then. the only, only one. the only other white chrysanthemum.

he wants so desperately to be honest with you, to let every dark thought he’s ever had flow out from his lips. for you to hear, for you to scorn or to accept at your leisure, doom him or bless him, a bleeding dog at your feet. to get rid of the tangled mess of thoughts inside his muddled mind — to just let go of everything, even if it’s only for a minute or two. just a second would be fine.

suguru wants to drag you down with him. drag you down into the depths, into the abyss, to share the weight of his suffering. so that you can be together, just like you always have; through thick and thin. always and forever.

but he doesn’t.

(and what a betrayal that is.)

suguru keeps his pretty little mouth shut, and he gives you a smile. a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, the kind he always wears when he needs to lie convincingly.

he could tell you so many things. could ruin you completely, take you down with him. hand in hand, staining your unsullied skin with the blood on his own. into the gaping maw.

but at the end of the day, he chooses not to.

suguru chooses your peace of mind over his, just like he always has, and feeds you a vague half-truth. not quite a lie, but something that ignores the underlying question of your statement, a silent plea for sincerity. something deep and true, but almost sorrowful.

i know, he says.

i know you will.

the moment does not save him. but suguru does feel just a little more hopeful, a little less like he’s slowly rotting from the inside out. a little less like he’s completely and utterly alone, isolated in his agony.

you are the same as always. and what a relief that is. 

(for you, he can wade through the hell for just a little longer.)

when it’s time to say your goodbyes, suguru can tell you aren’t satisfied. that you wish you could do more. but he also knows that you won’t push it, because you’ve always respected him in a way no one else ever cares enough to do. 

before you leave, you tell him that you love him. in a quiet voice, a whisper, as if trying to squeeze some sincerity from his chest — a last-ditch attempt at reaching him. he squeezes your hand, instead, and doesn’t say it back.

suguru just smiles, flimsy, a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

you look like you want to say something, but you don’t.

and he watches you go, with forlorn eyes, until the dot that is you gets too small to distinguish from the darkness of the night. until he can almost delude himself into thinking that you’ve turned into a star. he watches you go as if trying to burn the sight into his memory, as if this is the last time he’ll ever see you.

(the curse of i love you rots in his mouth, unspoken, unvoiced.)

two weeks later, suguru stands in front of a cage, covered in blood.

the girls in front of him, skinny, frail, crying — beaten and exhausted — look at him like he’s a god. him, pale, smiling, with blood staining his white uniform, bathed in moonlight —

like some kind of angel of death.

suguru soaks up the metallic scent of the room, basks in that sickeningly sweet feeling of release. he soothes the girls, as best he can. he leads them away, careful not to let them see the bodies. 

(there isn’t much left of them, anyhow.)

suguru geto makes his choice. the only choice that matters. 

he will twist himself into a curse. he will devour his ideal, until it’s all that’s left of him. he will embody it, become it, through and through. it’s fine if he dies in the process, it’s fine if everyone dies — just as long as it means something.

that is the conviction he will carry with him. the decision to only ever see the line between ends and means, the bright light at the end of a never-ending tunnel.

the blood of an entire village is on his hands.

(a part of him wants to throw up. another grins with ecstasy. every part agrees that it was inevitable.)

their screams weren’t beautiful. they were aggravating, revolting, the wretched buzzing of bugs ringing like static in his ears. but it felt good. it felt just. something in his bones settling into its rightful place, a spark of affirmation.

and suguru doesn’t stop there. as if desperate for the cup to finally run over, to make sure that there truly is no going back, his feet take him to a place he always hoped he’d never have to see again.

when suguru returns to that stiflingly silent town, to kill his parents, you are no longer there.

it’s not a surprise. he knows you escaped, long ago, just like him — just like you always said you would. not quite to tokyo, to your grave disappointment, but you managed to find some other town to live in. bigger, better. the new beginning he always hoped you’d get.

suguru does not want to think of you. he doesn't want to remember your face, the sound of your laughter, the way your eyes shone in the light. he wants to erase every single trace of your existence from his memory, if only to protect you from the person he will soon become. or perhaps only to spare himself the heartache of it all.

but when he passes by that one summer creek, forgetting you becomes an impossibility. 

his eyes gaze at the silver-hued fish, sparkling beneath the moonlight, the big cicadas singing sadly under the shadows of the trees. he closes his eyes, and breathes in the solitude, and recalls a child with teary eyes.

suguru knows what school you go to. he knows what your town is called, what your street looks like.

and it is far, far away from the town he’s in. far from tokyo, too. 

— and suguru is relieved.

(it gives him an excuse not to hunt you down just yet.)

the sight of his childhood home stirs no fondness in his heart. it is empty, it is silent, it is the same as always. and now it doesn’t even have you in it, anymore.

so it doesn’t matter.

suguru moves on with conviction, with bloodstains scattered across his clothes, seeping into the fabric. the screams of his parents don’t mean anything — they blur together with old echoes of evil, crazy, wrong. 

(there is something wrong with that child.)

their blood sticks to the soles of his shoes and he is repulsed by their fragility. their blood stains his shirt and he is elated by the irony of it all. all he sees is a blur of red. 

the road before him becomes clear.

finally, there truly is no turning back. that one sliver of good still left in him, crushed beneath the heel of his boot. at last. homicide, patricide — the more he adds, the easier it’ll be. easier to distance himself, easier to convince himself that his choice matters. that the blood of mere animals is a small price to pay for the future he envisions.

that he is right. that he is just.

(self-affirmation. what a holy thing it is.)

there is still much left for him to do. so suguru leaves the town behind.

he leaves that tiny summer creek behind.

it is a premature death; a resignation of identity. he isn’t an adult, not yet, but he has long since stopped being a child. he stopped being a child the moment he saw a bullet go through the skull of an innocent girl, the moment he saw haibara’s ghostly pale skin. no sorcerers stay children for very long.

none of it matters, anymore.

time passes with a speed that’s almost frightening. 

suguru disappears, almost entirely faded, leaving only geto in his wake. a new person, an entirely different human being — ten years of living in an echo chamber, ten years of forming his personality in the shape of something twisted.

(something almost divine.)

and geto is right. just. geto has conviction, and that’s all he needs. everything goes according to plan; geto has a goal, and a family to pursue that goal with, to pursue that goal for. everything finally feels just right. breathing feels a lot easier. living feels a lot easier. 

but everyone has a weakness.

and there is one thing, only one thing, that still acts as a thorn in his side. something that holds him back, a stain yet to be wiped away, a piece of gum stuck to the sole of his shoe. a tattered memory, clinging to his subconscious as if haunting him.

(i’ll support you, no matter what.)

if only you could see him now.

when geto left his old life behind, he did not contact you. he did not say goodbye. he threw away his phone, deleted every single thing that someone could use to locate him with, and left. he hasn’t heard from you in years, hasn’t spoken to you. 

but he has seen you.

geto knows where your town is. what your apartment looks like. he knows what university you go to, where your go-to café is located. 

so resisting the temptation eventually becomes impossible. 

he tries not to think of you, he really does. he tries to act like you are nothing, to him, because you aren’t. you are proof of weakness and a fragility that geto loathes, proof of his own foolishness, his young naivety. you are everything he hates and everything rotten and everything he’s vowed to cleanse from the earth.

but, despite that undeniable truth, geto cannot help but seek you out.

he tells himself that it means nothing. that he’s only doing it to make sure he knows where he’s got you, like a predator watching over their prey, preparing to lunge out of hiding when the moment is right. because geto knows that your death, at his hands, is inevitable. what you are is a weakness, a connection that lingers on his skin like a mold, one he still has to the creatures that disgust him so.

so it’s inevitable.

in reality, he should have killed you first. before his parents, before the village — he should have killed you, because that would have solidified his devotion in a way nothing else ever could. but he didn’t. 

geto likes to think of it as a symbol, of sorts. that he’ll save you for last. the same way children eat every last part of the cake, greedily, before gulping down the strawberry. every single non-sorcerer will be dead by the time he gets to you. you’ll be the one remaining obstacle, the one final stain to rinse away before his dream becomes reality, the one thing still standing between him and the divinity he seeks. 

it is an honour, geto thinks, an honour he would not bestow to anyone but you.

but until that time comes, all he can do is watch over you. silently, so you don’t notice. always from afar, sometimes through the eyes of the curses he’s bound to. just to make sure that you’re still alive. that you haven’t tripped over your shoelaces and gotten yourself into a car accident, or gulped down a mouthful of food too fast and choked to death, or anything similarly pathetic. he wouldn’t put it past you. really, he has no idea how you’ve survived this long without him.

weak, fragile, clumsy. soft enough to sink his teeth into. you are everything that geto hates. you are nothing, nothing at all.

(and you are the same as always, despite everything. what an aggravation that’s become.)

he watches you, anyway; like a god finding amusement in his creations, an omniscient overseer watching you stumble day to day. he watches as you live your life, as you talk to other people with that familiar smile on your face. it hasn’t changed in the slightest.

he watches you laugh, watches you grab a crêpe from a street vendor, watches you cry when you think nobody is there to see.

(the sight sends a tremor running through his soul, one he desperately wants to pretend not to feel.)

on melancholic summer days, when the sun paints the sky pink and golden, he watches you clutch onto his old sweater. one you always said you were going to return, but never did — never got the chance to. you used to tell him it was too comfortable not to steal. that it smelled like him, that it made you feel less lonely. geto so tenderly wishes he could have forgotten those words, by now.

but he watches you, in the solitude of your apartment, as you bury your face in the wool and inhale the fading tinge of his old cologne. then you cry and cry, like a child, until the moon rises in the sky; until you’re breathing softly, lulled to sleep by his scent.

(geto thinks to himself that you are a fool, to still miss him after all these years.)

it’s not an everyday occasion. most days, he does not think of you. there are many other monkeys to kill, many things to discuss. there’s money to be made, plans to be forged, wars to be brewed. geto is a busy man. a family man, no less.

but when boredom is all he can feel, he still finds himself seeking you out. just to make sure no one has gotten to you before him. just a god enjoying the struggles of a lesser being.

that’s all it is, geto tells himself. that’s all it’ll ever be, from now on.

no one needs to know if he spends the occasional morning checking up on you, curious if you did well on that exam you were studying for. no one needs to know if he absorbs the curses that sometimes cling to your fragile skin, gulping them down before they cause too much damage. no one needs to know if anyone who gives you a little too much trouble suddenly disappears off the face of the earth. 

no one needs to know if he reminisces, every once in a while, when the summer nostalgia is too much to bear. about your childhood, about that question you asked him — a million years ago, back when the center of his universe was a single summer creek. 

(no one needs to know if he finds comfort in your presence, even now.)

on days when the moon hangs low in the sky, and geto can’t choke back the longing in his chest, he sits by your bed and watches you sleep. a forlorn expression on his face, lips stuck in a tight line. it’s risky, careless, but he’s helpless to the temptation. 

most nights, you lie perfectly still. so still he can almost delude himself into thinking that it’s over, that you’ve passed on, that he won’t have to kill you after all. sometimes you twist and turn, mumble something unintelligible under your breath that he doesn’t catch.

he wonders what you dream about. he wonders if you ever have nightmares, if they’re ever about him. he wonders why he even cares at all.

geto resents you. resents you for existing, for smiling every day, for being a bridge between him and lesser creatures. he resents you, resents you, resents you.

(self-affirmation. what a holy thing, indeed.)

— he could kill you so easily. 

he wouldn’t even need a curse to do it. a flick of his pinkie would be more than enough. that’s how fragile you are; asleep, right in front of him, breathing softly while he watches you like how the fox watches the lamb.

(he could end all of this, right now, in the silence of the night. in your most vulnerable state.)

and yet, geto allows the opportunity to pass him by.

he can’t get too greedy. that’s what he tells himself, as he slips out of your window in the dead of night, leaving your sleeping figure behind him. it’s not the right time. he can let you sleep, for just a little while longer. the bags under your eyes have looked especially heavy, recently.

(he tries not to remember the sleepover you had as kids, when he stayed perfectly still as you dozed off on his shoulder. doing his best not to wake you, watching you fondly until the sun began to rise. back when all he wanted was to protect you.)

geto knows that you know he’s not dead. he knows because he’s almost certain that satoru spoke to you, back then, even if he probably didn’t let you in on any details. because he knows that you’re sharp, sharp enough to know that he’s alive.

and even if that were not the case, geto knows because he’s sent you gifts. letters. absentminded, almost taunting, cruel in their joviality — always anonymous, always mysterious and vague and impossible to trace back to him. but he knows that you know who they’re from.

a little dance, if you will. geto haunts you like a ghost. he never lets you see him, but he lets you know that he’s there, sometimes. just out of frame.

he can only hope it’ll eventually haunt you to death.

(if it ends up as a comfort to you, instead, then, well — it is what it is.)

all of it is a safety measure in disguise. a way to satisfy the yearning inside his chest, without coming too close. that doesn’t mean he never falters, though.

every once in a while, he feels strangely compelled to talk to you. to waltz into your home, in a lighthearted fashion, to soak up your shocked expression. to ask how you’ve been, casually, and watch you stammer, stumble over your words — he can imagine the face you’d make, the way the lilt of your voice would tremble. would you cry? he can’t help but wonder, sometimes.

yet he always resists the temptation. careful, cautious, with every move he makes. like a shadow. he deliberately leaves no traces of himself behind, no breadcrumbs for you to follow like the curious creature you are. geto lets you know that he’s there, but he doesn’t let you see him, because if he talks to you he knows that he’ll kill you. and he can’t have that, not just yet. 

eventually, he’ll do it. he’ll do it, and he’ll watch as your blood stains the silk of his robes like the inevitability it is. but not yet.

you’ll be the last one, the last one he’ll kill. the final proof of his devotion.

until then, he can have this. this sickeningly sweet scrutiny of your life, your life without him. the sound of your laughter, the reflection of untainted light in your iris.

(you are the same as always, and you are a weakness that geto is learning to live with.)

he can’t rest, won’t rest until it finally ends. until the curtain calls on your bloodied body, until he feels the cold skin of your palm against his lips.

only then will he finally know if it was all worth it. only then will he be free of this yearning. only then will he be able to say that the last remnants of suguru have been well and truly cleansed from his soul, that there is nothing left of the person he was.

only then will geto be able to call himself wholly divine. 

but until that time comes, he can do nothing but watch you. when the temptation begins to crawl under his skin again, when he needs to remind himself of what he’s fighting for. that one thing, at least, never once changed; suguru geto has always fought for you. for your protection, for your survival, for your demise.

for your happiness, in life or in death.

(geto hates you, loathes you, resents you for being what you are; but suguru will always, always love you. forever and ever. no matter what. 

and that will be their undoing.)

suguru geto dies without saying goodbye to you. 

if there are any regrets to speak of, any at all, then maybe that’d be it. he never got to see that shock on your face, never got to hear you stammer in the way you always used to when you were nervous.

in the golden hue of sunset, the last of his resentment finally fades away. the curse known as geto disappears, and what remains is no more than a ghost — the ghost of suguru, the person he was, the person he never quite stopped being.

and when geto disappears, when the last of his resentment fades away, suguru finally allows himself to think of you. fully, without interruption, without unspilled blood festering beneath his tongue. just one single touch of sincerity, one last indulgence before it all ends. he thinks of you, you as a person, not you as a non-sorcerer. he gives your memory the respect it deserves. something worth cherishing.

he wonders what you’re doing, right now. he wonders if you studied enough for that exam next week, if you found a good gift for your friend’s birthday party. he wonders if you still miss him, even though he'll never be deserving of it.

satoru stands in front of him, genuine, sincere. and suguru thinks that he is a fool, just like you; to still have any kind of affection left for someone like him. after he left you both behind, that summer.

satoru doesn’t curse him. suguru wishes he would.

a soft bout of laughter falls from his lips, as the sun sets behind him, and he knows you would have found the sight breathtaking. you always did love sunsets, didn't you? the sun was setting when he found you with that bruise on your leg, he recalls — such a miniscule detail. he wonders why he remembers only now.

suguru chokes back his tears, still smiling. it’s a smile of love. a smile of regret. he thinks of satoru. 

at least curse me a little at the very end.

those should be his final words. he should avert his gaze, follow the script, tear his eyes away from the only other person besides you who ever truly knew him —

but he doesn’t. he can’t. suguru looks straight at him, at satoru, into his eyes, so blue they seem to gleam in the orange hue of the melting sun. sparkling like little galaxies, like the crinkling of soda pops, like crystallized summer skies. he looks beautiful, as beautiful as he always was.

(i wish i had told you, suguru thinks. i wish i had told you everything.)

in a voice so small he barely hears it, so tender that geto would’ve felt disgusted to his very core, suguru asks his best friend for one last favour. he’s not sure why, not sure why it matters —

but maybe, just this once, it’s fine if it’s meaningless.

satoru listens, intently. he looks at his best friend with eyes so soft it makes suguru want to laugh and cry and go back to a time when they were all happy. but they can’t, that choice was lost ten years ago — he threw it away. smothered it beneath his boot heel. there was never any going back, from the very beginning. 

satoru answers his plea. one final favour, one best friend to another. 

of course.

a shaky breath. he can’t tell who it came from.

of course i will.

suguru smiles. a full, genuine smile, that reaches his eyes and blossoms like a flower in the light of the sun. it’s the last time anyone will see it.

satoru clenches his jaw. he crouches down, and presses his fingers against his best friend’s battered body, right over his bleeding heart. he will never, ever forgive himself for what he's about to do.

(suguru already has.)

and the moment before the last flicker of light leaves his eyes, suguru chooses to think of you.

he thinks of your smile, the way your lips curled up at even the smallest things. he thinks of your curiosity, how it always lead him back to you. he thinks of what could have been.

he thinks of that question you asked him, all those years ago — how accepted it made him feel. that sensation of being understood. suguru thinks you saved his life, that day.

(he never got to thank you for it.)

you were his childhood friend. his nearest, dearest, oldest one. 

suguru doesn't believe the world he lives in is kind enough to allow him a second chance. and he doesn't think he really deserves one, either way.

but if there is a next life, if he’s lucky enough to be reborn —

then suguru hopes he’ll be born as a dragonfly, so he can find his way back to you.

he’ll meet you, again; in the afterglow of sunset, by that dusty, forgotten, tiny summer creek. framed by silver-hued fish and cicadas, and the silence of a town that glimmered while you were both in it.

he won’t be able to wipe your tears away, won’t be able to clean the bruise on your knee — but he can be with you. and maybe, in your next lives, that’ll be enough.

(what a lovely thought.)

suguru smiles, and lets a final breath of air course through his burning lungs.

— it tastes like summer.

there is a silent understanding, between the two of you.

it’s been ten years since you last spoke to satoru gojo. it wasn’t a very pleasant conversation, and somehow, you doubt this will be an exception. an acute awareness lies heavy in the air — and deep down, some part of you knows what he’s about to tell you.

(as if it was an inevitability.)

gojo doesn’t smile. his voice has no masked amusement to it, no sense of joviality. if you strain your ears, you think it may even be wavering, slightly, so faint it’s hard to tell for sure. just that one low shiver of his lips, saying more than words ever could.

he doesn’t beat around the bush. and you see that for the kindness that it is, despite the ice cold chill that creeps into your veins when his words spill out into the air, a full body shiver traveling down your spine.

he tells you that suguru is dead, and you don’t flinch. you don’t even cry. that comes later.

in the moment, all you can do is nod, a little pitiful, teeth digging into the flesh of your bottom lip to stop it from wobbling. like you’re trying to be brave. 

truthfully, you had a feeling that was the case.

sometimes, it was as if you could feel him. just barely out of reach, a certain cologne lingering on your windowsill, a box of cookies you’ve liked since you were little delivered to your doorstep. a sudden feeling of being watched. a note wishing you luck on whatever exam or driver’s test or job interview you had the next day, accompanied by a silly smiley face so distinctly suguru it made you want to cry.

— how cruel of him.

but you couldn’t help but feel comforted by it, all the same. it made you feel like he was still with you, somehow, like he still cared. even though he disappeared from your life without saying anything. even though gojo told you explicitly all those years ago to stay away, if you ever saw him, as if he was suddenly dangerous —

but you could never be afraid of him. you don’t think you have it in you. 

to you, suguru will always just be the boy who helped you up when you scraped your knee, all those years ago. a sweet, cool kid, who held your hand firmly and gently wiped the blood off your skin.

(he’ll always be your nearest, dearest, oldest friend. even if you aren’t his.)

but lately, there’s been nothing. you haven't felt any traces of him at all, no lingering gazes boring into your back. so you knew. deep down, maybe you always kind of knew.

gojo looks at you with compassion, understanding. and without him having to say it, you know he loved suguru too. you know because his breathing is shaky, because his eyes look puffy from hours of crying; you know because grief is like a stench, thick and heavy, overwhelming, one that clings to your skin and haunts your very being. just like love.

and you can smell it on the both of you.

(you both loved the boy who died for his ideals, the man who was so moral it killed him.)

the news will sink in, later. you are sure that you will crumble, and you are sure that you will cry. you’re sure that the road ahead will be a long one, full of obstacles and thorns. but that’s fine. you’ll deal with it when the time comes. suguru was always a little mystical, a little too good to be true.

maybe you always sort of assumed things would end like this; that he’d walk ahead without you, with all his whispered secrets and gentle lies. 

(asshole.

he could have given you a call, at least. even just once.)

for now, all you can do is try to keep your trembling skin intact. and you assume that gojo will leave, now that you know, that this was all he came here for. just a messenger of death, coated in a grief so strong you doubt he’ll ever be rid of it.

but gojo doesn’t leave. 

he hands you something, instead.

a polaroid, you quickly realize. a photograph, of three kids — one with white hair, one with brown hair, and one with black hair. the black haired boy is trying hard not to smile, you can tell. the other two have got their arms around him, squeezing his body tightly with matching grins, throwing up peace signs. he looks at them with exasperation in his eyes, but you can tell that there’s a love there. you can tell, you know, because despite everything, you still know him.

a lump forms in your throat.

it’s not the original copy, is what gojo tells you, apologetic. you’re almost certain that he kept it for himself, and you don’t blame him. i’m sorry. but i wanted to… you know.

(he wanted to give you something to hold onto.)

the gesture is a little bit awkward, just a tad clumsy. but it’s a genuine concern, a sincere kindness. you aren’t really surprised that suguru spent his last moments with this man instead of you.

gojo continues to speak, and you continue to listen, attentive — hungry for anything to mend the hole in your heart. but your eyes never once stray from the photograph.

(suguru looks so, so happy.)

he tells you that suguru talked about you a lot, back then. and without him having to say it, you know what he really means is he loved you a lot. the words of consolation ring like static, in your ears. it hurts. the hole in your heart just keeps extending, extending, extending.

gojo notices. so he gets to the point, the final point, the only one that matters. this is his duty, too — granting suguru’s last request. the only one he ever asked of him in words.

(it’s the least he could do, for the man he loved so dearly, the one who left him behind in the shadow of summer.)

he tells you that there’s one more thing. that suguru asked him to tell you something, that it was the last thing he ever said. words that he wanted you to hear, more than anything.

gojo’s voice does not waver. it is not his place.

you listen. you listen as if it will bring him back. you listen as if it is the last thing you will ever do.

and gojo speaks.

the words mean everything, and also nothing at all. how very like him. they bounce off the walls of your apartment, spilling into the suffocating air, echoing inside your mind. cutting into your bloodstream, rooting themselves in a particularly soft spot deep within your ribcage, chrysanthemums blooming from your flesh. petals filling up your stomach until you can scarcely breathe.

the final words of your childhood friend. your nearest, dearest, oldest one; suguru geto, who you will always love, in the same way the sun loves the moon, as naturally as breathing.

the dam breaks. the sky shatters. the sob you choke on tastes salty, and gojo looks remorseful, his figure blurred by your tears. everything comes crashing down around you — an inevitability you were hoping to put off, in the same way suguru put off talking to you all those years.

and now, finally, he tells you his honest feelings. when it’s already far too late. how very, very like him.

(tell them i’m sorry. and that i hope their exam goes well.)

— honestly. what a fucking asshole.

not once did you ask for an apology. you never wanted one, never thought to even wish for it. you didn’t need one.

all you wanted was for him to come back to you. to find you, again, the way he always did.

tears cascade down your scrunched-up face, big and childlike, but no one’s there to wipe them away anymore. you cradle the photograph in your hands, savouring every single memory you have of him. all the love your heart can muster.

the tears never seem to end. they continue to run down your cheeks, until all you can smell is sea salt, until the sun has set in the horizon, until the moon has hanged itself in the sky. a silent comfort, but it’s not enough. it never will be.

a sniffle pushes past your lips, and you hear yourself laugh — bitter, raspy, gentle all the same. what a moron, you whisper, a soft lull of your tongue. didn’t he know?

(you forgave him long ago.)

bonus 👀

#get u a man who loves you so deeply it causes him cognitive dissonance #im a lil unsure abt this piece pshshs but it has a rly special place in my heart!! #i just like the idea of geto being so desperately in denial about his love for u that he forces himself to hate u. self-affirmation yknow? #subconsciously putting u on a pedastal above the rest… being unable to let go of the connection between u even though he wants to sever it #having this evident fondness for you but its constantly battling with the part of him that hates what your existence means for him #telling himself that he’ll ’save u for last’ but its more of a measure to keep himself from killing u bc he knows his ideal is unattainable #so he’ll never have to kill you. it'll never get to that point. he wants to so badly though. but does he really? #yeahhh. im normal abt fucked up curse user geto <3 soft canon divergent sugu is still my fave to write for tho #geto suguru x reader #geto x reader #geto x you #geto suguru x you #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk #geto angst #jjk angst #jjk x you #jujutsu kaisen x you #geto x y/n #jjk x y/n

[sweetest-honeybee]

Getting into something bc it came up on your TikTok fyp and then realizing it only came up bc it got trendy and a bunch of other people were getting into it at the exact same time is the worst betrayal

#glances at I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream #like I thought it was some neat lil thing that popped up yesteday for me #cool book from the fuckin….70s I think #my type of stuff! I fucking love dark and horrifying things like that #complex layers of storytelling that are just so gruesome 🤤 #but MAN #ofc I only saw it bc it was getting popular out of the blue #TikTok isn’t ever that nice to me. I should’ve known 😂 #I do really love AM as a character tho #that kind of gutteral hatred for humanity almost tangible #every time I listen to those voice lines like ugh #it almost ignites a similar feeling while you’re listening #ya get me? #welp

[luck-of-the-drawings]

"I think this is the most inhuman; and human, that I've ever felt.." MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN A YEAR. IN FIVE YEARS. A DECADE. imagine how much can happen in a century. just ONE (1). How will you grow? what phases do you find? even in 5 years, you will find patterns.

#jrwi fanart #jrwi show #jrwi suckening #jrwi suckening spoilers #jrwi the suckening #arthur bennett #HEY SO THE REALLY FUNNY THING THAT THE CHARACTER DID THAT SEEMED RLY SILLY N GOOFY IN THE MOMENT? #LIKE THE WHIPLASH BETWEEN SERIOUS N SILLY ALMOST PISSED YOU OFF? WHAT IF I FOUND A WAY TO MAKE YOU SAD ABOUT IT #this was meant to be a scribble that would be a bigger part of a bigger page.might leave it on that page. #but still. bc o that i nearly posted it onto my wacky side blog.BUT NAYY I SPENT TOO MUCH TIME N ENERGY N YOU GOTTA SEE IT #ARTHUR BENNETT DRIVES ME CRAZY. I FEEL LIKE ITS ODD FOR HIM TO BE SO TECHNOLOGICALLY OUT OF TOUCH #WHERE HAS HE BEEN. HAS HE BEEN IN WAR? IS THAT WHERE MAGNUS CAME FROM? WHERE WAS HE WHEN HE WAS WITH EDWARDS CREW? #ARTHURRR I HAVE QUESTIONS ARTTHUUURR!! HEY CAN I ALSO ASK; WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU BECOME #DO YOU THINK HE HAD ANY IDEA HE WOULD VEER CLOSER AND CLOSER TO THE MONSTER HE DESPISES. ALL BC HE DESERVES IT. OR WATEVER #HE FASCINATES ME SO MUCH. TO LOOK AT THE STONE COLD STOIC FOOL FROM THE START OF THE SHOW #AND TO FIND OUT THAT HE USED TO BE A BAD BOY.. A DELINQUENT... A LIL PRANKSTER.... MY GODDD THATS ADORABLE #I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW MORE.... BUT I DOUBT THE LAST EPISODE IS GONNA ANSWER THOSE QUESTIONS..i love arthur bennett so much.... #AS FOR THE ART!! i mostly used the fire alpaca watercolor brush. tbh im not a brush guy. anti aliased default pen tends to be my main game #but LATELY IM SQQQUIRMIN OUT OF AN ARTBLOCK so expirimenting like this is helping #DONT LOOK TOO HARD AT IT!! im still proud tho. colors are fun :3 im also very proud of the backgrounds #I LOVE THE CARTOON THING where the background looks all fancy n painted but the characters are solid colors #what else can i ramble abt. OH YEAH. i looked up the bikes to make sure they were time accurate tehehehe. 1913 to 2012. #almost a century apart!! isnt that neat? ALSO FUUUCK CAN I JUST MAKE A QUICK CONFESSION. DOWN HERE IN MY TAGS. #only the strongest can read my tags anwyay. SO I REALIZED WHY I LOVE ARTHUR SO MUCH. TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE #while arthur is a Stoic and Cool vampire w a knack for being playful/silly; who alsos been alive fora century thus witnessing HORRORs #THERE HAPPENS TO BE A ROBOT FROM A BAND W A TITANIUM ALLOY SPINAL COLLUMN #WHOS A Stoic and Cool ROBOT w a knack for being playful/silly; who alsos been alive fora century thus witnessing HORRORS #the fuckkkiiinnngggnn The Spine from steam powered giraffe. WHATEVER. i cant escape from my heart. i guess. #i think The Spine and Arthur could be friends. Arthur saw the band perform back when they were the Steam Man Band #EDIT: WOOPS I DIDNT REALIZE THIS WOULD END UP IN THE SPG TAG. HI GUYS DIDNT KNOW U WERE STILL ALIVE SORREE 4 THE CROSS CONTAMINATION

[batsplat]

Chad reed on always the entourages creating the drama. I cannot believe that is what caused rosquez downfall but also given the level of Vale's celebrity and the way he carried himself, I can totally believe that it was the entourage (iPad stand I'm looking at you) that brought the end

(about reed's 2020 quotes in this) yeahhh I mean the downfall was caused by a whole bunch of factors, not just any one thing... like all great tragic narratives, it feels inevitable from a global perspective and yet thoroughly preventable in its specifics, with loads of points where you think, 'oh, if things had just gone a little bit differently'... there's this tension in how, in the end, maybe it would've always gone wrong, but a lot had to come together for it to go wrong in quite such a spectacular fashion

reed's definitely correctly identified one of the factors - the entourages, and valentino's entourage specifically. though fwiw, I did cut off the article before reed predicted the marc/fabio rivalry was headed a similar way (this was from 2020, obviously before the arm injury):

for better or for worse, fabio has skipped the villain arc to head straight to the depressed frenchie arc

regardless of whether this rift would have happened or not, the idea that marc would have gotten a new appreciation for the situation valentino found himself in is at least an interesting one. though if anything, the rivalry with fabio would have more closely paralleled valentino's with the other aliens (new talent coming through, but with the previously dominant rider still a regular winner). now is the time marc's learning what it feels like to come back from a prolonged absence from being competitive at the highest level - and of course with a new superstar simultaneously making his debut

so yeah, anyway, tragedy, you can point to all sorts of strains and pressures and tension inherent to professional sport that were exacerbated by the personalities involved and the influence of the media and the passage of time etc etc. but never mind all that, let's get back to entourages! I know you mention everybody's favourite b-list shakespeare villain, but I'm going to basically mostly ignore him because it's well-trodden ground. yeah, it does help to have one guy who's whispering poison into your ear for a prolonged stretch of time before showing up at your motorhome doorstep with a bunch of telemetry and a dream. and yeah, there were people in valentino's entourage definitely encouraging this path to doom. but what I'm also interested in is the flip side - why nobody stopped him

I would like to submit into evidence this passage detailing the thoughts of vale's mechanic alex briggs. now briggs in this excerpt blames two groups for how things went down in 2015:

the yamaha side (specifically the press group) for not talking him down from the ledge before the presser

the crew chief and other assorted italians on the team for being too "yessy" and not standing up to him

let's briefly (for a given value of the word) focus on the first one. if you're a random yamaha pr person and you see the valentino rossi run to a press conference (given he was late) with a bunch of papers in his hands (well, he's not actually holding the papers in those gifs, but presumably somebody's got them), it's probably a tough ask to expect you to hold up the valentino rossi and ask him what exactly he's intending to do with those papers. also, is he really going to back off because you, random yamaha pr person, have asked him to please not accuse the competition of sabotage? added context is that some at yamaha were aware of what valentino thought about the race at phillip island (which we'll get to in a sec), but god knows if the pr people did. unless he confided in anyone on the yamaha side what the plan was, a lot of them would have been blindsided too - which does come back to the problem of how big a deal valentino is and how maybe you're a little more cautious about questioning what he's about to do with those papers than you would be with somebody else. it does feel like perhaps a bit too much to expect for them to have launched some last-minute intervention, or to even know what kind of intervention they could have gone for beyond low-level comedy hijinks to stop him from even getting to that room. why did nobody from yamaha place a banana skin in his path

but we do know that at least some in yamaha were aware of valentino's great big phillip island sabotage theory, because lin jarvis has very helpfully told us as much (from the post-sepang media scrum):

Q: Do you think it was a mistake for Valentino to [provoke?] Marc so much on Thursday with a very personal and hard attack? Jarvis: There are always many different ways of addressing different problems - Valentino chose to do it in that way. Perhaps that is what provoked Marc into being quite aggressive on the track. I really don't know, you need to ask Marc not me about that. Every action has a consequence. That's life. Q: And did you know before that Valentino was going to be so aggressive with Marc in the press conference? Did you know before? Did you discuss with Valentino about this decision or you didn't know until it happened? Jarvis: Personally, I was not aware of that. I was aware of Valentino's opinion of the race in Australia, but I was not aware... but I was not aware that he would - Q: Don't you think because Valentino at the end of the day is an employee of Yamaha he should discuss before with you about such an important decision, to attack a rider of another factory in such a heavy way [...]? Jarvis: You can't control every incident, everything that happens and you know, generally we have a very good [...] relation, connection with our riders, we talk to them before about things before, but anyway I think this is something Valentino felt strongly about and it was his decision and that's it.

note the use of the word "personally", which does leave the door open to others within yamaha (outside of valentino's inner circle) knowing what was going to happen. jarvis, unsurprisingly, comes down pretty firmly on the side of 'well what were we supposed to do'. given that jarvis admits he knew valentino's theory and is hardly a stranger to valentino's modus operandi - after all, he was already team boss at the time of another tense press conference in sepang eleven years prior that took place in the wake of valentino accusing a competitor of messing with him - you do have to wonder whether yamaha could not have tried a little harder to stop valentino. but again, accounting for the power of valentino's status and the power of his character, I'm personally unconvinced yamaha could've done much to convince valentino to change his mind

so then: the italians. a little bit of context - briggs started working with crew chief jerry burgess in 1994 and both of them were on mick doohan's team for all of his five 500cc titles. when doohan's injuries forced his retirement, valentino inherited his championship-winning team upon moving up to 500cc. jb was vale's very first crew chief in the premier class, and him as well as briggs have been working with vale since december 1999. understandably, this is a very tightly-knit group. it is one that made the jump to yamaha with valentino - here's just a quick excerpt (also from oxley's valentino rossi: all his races) about briggs' thoughts on that move:

When Valentino decided to defect to Yamaha, he was determined to have his crew go with him. Only one stayed at HRC. "We first got to know about the Yamaha deal in Portugal, I think [September 2003]," Briggs continues. "I wanted to stay with JB, because I hadn't finished learning what I wanted to learn. "I remember a clandestine meeting in the car park at Phillip Island, about salaries and how everything was going to work. It was really exciting. When I very first started working with Honda the whole group was very much a team. Towards the end we felt like it started to become a bit us and them: the engineers and management, then the mechanics and the riders. They'd sort of got too big for their boots - they'd designed this wonderful bike, so it was like it had nothing to do with us. That made it easier to leave.

and also about the move to yamaha, from the 2020 barker biography of valentino:

But with his trusted crew chief Jerry Burgess and most of his other team members from the Honda garage agreeing to defect with him, Rossi had the crew he needed, not only to win but also to enjoy his racing. It was a heartening display of loyalty and something of a risk for all involved. ‘When I announced to the mechanics that I was going with Valentino they said, “I’m coming too,”’ Burgess later explained. ‘Some of those guys were leaving very secure jobs and taking a big gamble.’

the group also survived the move to ducati (obviously a deeply frustrating two years not just for the guy riding the bike) and the move back to yamaha. but then, valencia 2013, valentino announced his decision to fire jb in a press conference organised for the pair of them. his 2013 season had been deeply frustrating - yes, he had gotten a podium in his first race beating both marc and dani, but after that generally speaking he couldn't come close to matching the other aliens when healthy. he was comfortably the fourth best rider that year, scrapping and clawing his way through midfield battles and having to rely on misfortunes befalling the three title contenders to achieve his podiums and his sole victory at assen. he was considering retiring at the end of the 2014 season once his current contract expired, but wanted to try everything he could to see whether he could be competitive again against the world's very best. and so, he made the decision to roll the dice and get himself a new crew chief, the italian silvano galbusera

now I have to say, personally I have a lot of time for this decision (even if it was maybe not... uh, enacted in the most graceful of manners, given how sudden it was). I come from a sports background where a certain ruthlessness in personnel decisions is encouraged and generally praised - if something isn't working, you should have the courage to make a change, even if it's deeply uncomfortable (including on an interpersonal level). also, while it was a sudden departure, it's not like burgess was that keen on sticking around much longer (again from the same oxley book):

Valentino ended his collaboration very suddenly at the end of 2013. Burgess was shocked but not too much, because he already knew that he was coming to the end of his own career. "When it ended for me I'd already been doing it 30-odd years and I'd told Valentino a few weeks earlier that I wasn't going to sign any more multi-year contracts. I was 60 by then, so I'd go year by year. I'd already signed a contract for 2014, but I would've thought if we hadn't had any more success by then that there wasn't much point in continuing. I felt we would win more races but I was more doubtful about championships. "I'd read enough sporting biographies to know that sportsmen change their coaches towards the end of their careers. It can give them a spike in results but it doesn't change the overall story. Looking back, Valentino's career went on longer than I expected. He enjoyed some success but no more championships and that's what you race for. Of course he was in the unique position of being able to get a factory bike until he retired. He was very special and deserved everything he got."

which, look. again, personal bias, but to me it's reasonable to part ways with somebody who doesn't think any more titles are plausible, because at that point it's just somebody who has a very different view on your career than you do and may well not stick around for much longer anyway. also, at the end of the day, jb was wrong! valentino came extremely close to winning another title, and just because he didn't, doesn't change the fact he could have. if it had rained on the 8th of november 2015 in valencia, we might be having a very different conversation. (or if they hadn't changed the bloody qualifying format post-2012.) honestly, if the 2016 and to a lesser extent the 2017 season had gone just a little differently - a working bike in mugello here and an unbroken leg there - he could have been a genuine title threat in two more seasons. in any case, what it does show is that valentino even at the end of 2013 was still as determined as ever, was ready to engage in what was a huge gamble (given how almost all his success had come with the highly decorated jb) on the off chance he might find what it took to win again. this will not have been an easy decision for valentino. here's a write-up of the presser at valencia, that stresses how uncomfortable the occasion was, how surprising a decision it was to jb, but how publicly at least there was a lack of recriminations (which, to be fair, wouldn't be much fun to do in a shared presser):

(you'll note that the phrasing in the presser about athletes attempting to extend their carrers by changing things up is echoed in what he says in that book interview where he adds that it doesn't change the overall story, again suggesting he didn't really believe valentino would be competitive. he also uses the same phrasing in ANOTHER interview that confirms as much, but I think you get the point.) valentino said at the time, "it was a very difficult decision for me because I have a great history with jeremy. he is not just my chief mechanic. he is like part of my family. my father in racing". this is somebody he'd been working with since age 21, somebody who is not only revered within the paddock for his work with several of the sport's greats but is also a man who valentino obviously has a close personal connection to. meeting for the first time when vale snuck into the honda pit to check out the bike he might ride next season, hitting it off immediately, countless rowdy dinners together, parties, jb and another older colleague sitting back when food fights started, watching valentino grow up, working with him throughout all his big manufacturer switches, all his successes and all his failures... as much as anything else, it's evidence of how strong vale's desire to win was, how determined he continued to be, to make this choice at this stage of his career. and jb was open to the idea (at least publicly) that it might end up being a smart call:

the 'dirtiest' part of the whole affair is how it was actually carried out - it's not great form to tell your crew chief the day before you end up doing a press conference together to announce your choice. for whatever it's worth, this is how valentino justified the timeline:

and lastly, which I think is the most key part, is valentino's belief. because at the end of the day, the only reason why he's doing any of this, and the only reason why what was to come was possible at all, is that he himself still thought that he could challenge for another title - as much as that belief had come under strain:

now what this piece also goes on to say is that nobody believes this will work. nobody believes that firing jb will lead to better results. people expect that this is going to lead to his retirement, quite possibly at the end of 2014. it's worth just remembering sometimes how extraordinary valentino's return to the top of the game post-2013 really was, how it went against how we expect a rider's competitive lifecycle to work, went far beyond the longevity exhibited by any top rider before or since - all while going up against riders who are widely believed to be some of the best to ever do it. valentino beat jorge in both 2014 and 2016, and remains one of two people to outscore prime marc marquez over the course of a season. not to engage in too much rossi prop here, but sepang 2015 can't really be understood without all the frustration that led up to it, to this one golden chance, this miracle that everybody had believed to be impossible (sometimes even valentino). this wasn't supposed to be happening. it was happening. and then, so so close to the finish line, valentino could feel it slipping, slipping, slipping away

but of course, we still don't know whether changing crew chiefs is the key factor that made him competitive again. maybe he just needed a bit longer to get back into the swing of things post-ducati disaster. maybe the bikes just started to suit him better. hey, maybe it was that nifty exercise regime he'd engaged in a wee spot of espionage for so that he could pinch it off his teammate. what we can say, however, is that valentino's choice both tells us a lot about his mindset, as well as (to finally bring us back to the actual point of this post) representing a massive shift in his 'entourage'. this is what briggs is referring to in his quote - the italians. the new crew chief. the people who couldn't stand up to valentino. now obviously, as mentioned above briggs had worked with jb for the better part of twenty years and can hardly be considered a neutral party. here were briggs' feelings on the matter (yeah it's from the same oxley book again, I got it new for eighteen quid which is a very generous price, would recommend):

When JB was out at the end of 2013 it was like losing my mechanic dad. I remember being in the garage when we found out about it. Then they arranged a kind of farewell, a kind of hodgepodge farewell. It was terrible, I didn't like any of it. I was just hiding behind one of the bikes in the garage, crying, going, what's going on here? It didn't seem right to me. I think maybe Valentino thought he would get faster again sooner, but I think it took at least a year to get the taste of the Ducati out of his mouth. I think if he'd stayed with JB we would've won the championship in 2015.

which. look. we don't have time to unpack all that. but. the point is that obviously briggs wasn't exactly a massive fan of the change within valentino's team, and his comments about the 2015 season do have to be read with that in mind. as to whether vale really would have done better in 2015 with jb at his side, your guess is as good as mine. all that being said, a part of me wonders how much losing that grounding presence enabled valentino's late-2015 spiral. maybe not in terms of talking valentino out of the great big fluctuating lap times treachery theory - to state the obvious, valentino got himself involved in plenty of drama during jb's time as a crew chief. jb himself occasionally helped add fuel to the fire in those feuds, like his infamous comment about how he would be able to fix the ducati's issues in 80 seconds that casey still brings up every three business days (the comments were poorly phrased but also somewhat taken out of context, in that jb was talking about a specific set-up problem). he's generally been pretty happy to be forthright about valentino's rivals, for instance this about casey:

My feeling at the time was that Casey probably only had one game plan, and having watched Casey over the years, he doesn't have a plan B. If it doesn't go his way from the outset, it's probably one of the weaknesses that he had through the youth that he had, through the lack of experience that he had. That's not a criticism of him per se, he was still only 22 at the time.

(this is about laguna seca 2008 and how he helped valentino win that race, including in plotting out vale's rather ruthless tactics - which casey was of course not exactly a fan of.) or these. uh. harsh comments about dani from spring 2010:

Q: Is that atmosphere or track knowledge? Is it like the Spanish finding something extra at the racetracks in Spain? JB: Well, therein we show the weakness, don't we? If you can get up on that weekend, on the technical racetracks of Spain, why can't you get up on the technical racetracks like Australia, where the Italians do? Lorenzo is a guy who will and does. Stoner has been able to get up on tracks all over the world. Unfortunately, Dani Pedrosa's into his 6th year in MotoGP, and he's won 8 races, Jorge Lorenzo's two months into his 3rd and he's won 6. It's night and day between those two, is the way I see it. Dani's an extremely fast rider, but a shockingly poor racer. Q: Were you surprised at Jerez [2010] when Pedrosa fought back when Lorenzo passed him? JB: When did Dani fight back? With two laps to go, and he didn't even get close enough to try to come back. Dani has never been a fighter in races, he's a lovely kid, don't get me wrong, but you can see that Lorenzo, having Pedrosa in front of him, it was never going to be the way he was going to finish that race. He was going to finish on the ground or he was going to finish in front of Pedrosa. That's the sort of race that we want, we had that with Biaggi and Valentino, and from history with Schwantz and Rainey. All the good riders have always had somebody they have had to put the target on the back of. It was Doohan and Gardner, and Doohan won that battle hands down, and I think Jorge Lorenzo's going to win this battle [with Pedrosa] hands down.

kind of a dick! so his attitude to valentino being valentino has generally been a) well having enemies is good, actually, with an added slice of b) good luck to his enemies :) - see also this quote (from the barker biography) in the context of the gibernau rivalry:

And that made Rossi even more dangerous, as Jerry Burgess pointed out: ‘Valentino is the sort of rider I wouldn’t want to get angry. He can take you apart on the track.’

so yes, jb is also perfectly brutal in his own right, as you presumably have to be to work alongside valentino so closely for so long. he is, however, also somebody valentino has a massive amount of respect for, somebody who helped turn him into a legend and is responsible for a lot of vale's success - not least, of course, in the pivotal move to yamaha. he was replaced by a man of a far far lesser stature in the sport, one who presumably would have been grateful to valentino for the biggest job he was ever going to get. if briggs is right and there was a shift in valentino in 2015, surrounded as he was by italians (derogatory) who could not stand up to him, who allowed valentino to insist on war and peace on the pit boards, to focus more and more on things that had nothing to do with riding... it would be going a little too far to say that valentino was missing an adult in the room given he was, in fact, in his thirties and should have been capable of being that adult. and who knows what jb would have said or thought or done about the great big childhood hero deception theory. but sepang 2015 was the culmination of a lot of things, including a pressure cooker of a season that grew more and more tense and put more and more stress on everyone involved - perhaps for none more so than valentino. maybe, just maybe, if he'd had somebody around him with fifteen years of experience in handling him, who could have just occasionally told him to knock it off, to concentrate on the racing, to keep things simple (always jb's defining philosophy), to maybe not get so wrapped up in the great big spanish collusion theory...

or maybe it wouldn't have mattered! maybe we're getting cause and effect all wrong here; maybe valentino was deliberately fashioning his entourage into one that was only going to give him positive feedback. maybe he would have just stopped listening to jb, maybe the very decision to fire jb makes it clear he was no longer interested in what jb had to say. it's a tragedy, after all! maybe it was always going to go like this. maybe it was always going to end like this

speaking of entourages, marc's manager played a bit of a cameo role in fanning the flames just a little further (article from marca, 26/10/2015):

alzamora obviously will be somebody valentino is familiar with, having raced him in 125cc and also having just coexisted in the paddock over the years. valentino could of course be lying, but idk, why would he? he's already made his case by this point, and what if alzamora were to contradict him? if it's true and this conversation did happen, you do have to say it's a spectacularly unhelpful intervention from alzamora. even if marc was mad at valentino, why the hell are you telling valentino this AFTER sepang 2015? what's the plan here buddy

^ 1999 world champions: alzamora in 125cc, vale in 250cc and alex criville in 500cc. people think motogp lore is complicated but if you know like, five guys, you're set for about twenty years of drama

which does get to the heart of the matter - a lot of these people have big egos and their own agendas and they love to run their mouths. they like talking a big game and getting involved in things they really shouldn't be getting involved in. is reed right that these people in the riders' entourages 'created the drama'? well, no, I think the two men at the centre of this particular tragedy were plenty capable of doing that themselves. nevertheless, you can point to how professional sports (and motogp in particular) forces you to rely heavily on a small group of people to keep you sane at the centre of the storm, and the risks that can emerge when that small group collectively unmoors itself from reality. you can point to the perils of fame, both in making your reliance on your inner circle so unnegotiable as well as in providing you with the status and power and ego to ignore anyone who might wish to change your mind. you can point to specific figures in this story who managed to incite the conflict between the two of them, as well as how the pressure cooker competitive environment they were operating within helped set up the ultimate catastrophe. you can point to how valentino lacked anyone with the power to stop him - both in the direct sense of forcing him to reconsider and the indirect sense of commanding his respect enough to make him see sense. maybe, just like in 2004, valentino had simply been "looking for an excuse" and he was always headed down this path. or maybe if somebody had just held him back a little that year, kept him focused on his riding, maybe if the right person had intervened at the right time...

maybe, maybe, maybe. that's why it's a tragedy

#valentino rossi #rosquez #// #4693 #i get the sense he's unpopular on here but EYE will miss lin jarvis. i think he's funny sorry. him and his certifiably insane employees #i loveeee that media scrum love his very dry lil summary of events acting like we're not so so far down the rabbit hole #anon: man fuck that ipad stand #me: lemme tell you a tale about a man called jerry burgess and the daddy issues he inspired in multiple grown men #and yes the fact that valentino unceremoniously dumped his 'paddock father' is. interesting :) i get him ughhh #also on the flip side i am curious what kind of conversations were going on in the marc camp during that sepang weekend #alzamora's two big contributions to the rosquez saga: 1) trying to stop marc from going to the ranch #and 2) telling vale that marc was mad at him for argentina and assen and in doing so helping back up vale's theory #what was he cooking

[dropped-their-sniper]

KÖNIG - EXPEDITION

#userdroppedtheirsniper #cod mw2 könig #mw2 könig #cod könig #könig #cod mw2 konig #mw2 konig #cod konig #konig #call of duty modern warfare #call of duty modern warfare 2 #call of duty season 2 #cod könig x reader #cod konig x reader #wake up babes bucket hat könig is out!! #i fucking LOVE his one knee pad #and his lil dishwashing gloves???? #this man has ULTIMATE head protection #a sniper veil paired with a bucket hat with a mosquito net ON TOP of everything else

[gxlden-angels]

I love getting validated on small things that I didn't even consider like it's always a treat and this time it's Gender

The Fundie Baby Voice™️ has been popping up a lot in ex-christian spaces lately and I actually had one in middle school and part of high school! I learned when and where to use it and how to turn up my southern accent just enough. I can still do it but it sounds weird after 3 years on T. The main place I used it was at church cause it made me sound sweet and polite. I used it for old ladies when I worked at a grocery store too. My family didn't like it when we were just all together cause they said it sounded like baby talk, but loved it when I used it at church cause everyone would tell them how sweet and soft-spoken I was

My therapist said it actively made him feel uncomfortable when I used that voice. He couldn't quite put his finger on why it made him uncomfortable (other than him only knowing me on T) but he very much did not like it and he's so so right for that

#he's a cishet white jewish man so it's always a treat when I talk about something like this #cause it started off about how I felt like my gender is a performance and I will use it to my advantage #I usually talk fairly neutrally and monotone so people find it uncanny when I change it up #especially if it's the way I talk to my family and the church folks that ask about me #Now that I'm on T and had top surgery I love fucking with ppl via my gender presentation #I like the chaos of not correcting ppl and watching them fight amongst themselves over what my gender is #My previous gender was Weird Little Girl #and now i'm Just Some Guy #I don't feel like I was always a guy I feel like my gender at the time was Weird Little Girl #and it changed over time but I loved the performance of being a weird little girl #I was not a girl I was specifically a WLG #And well I still know how to use my old performances even if I'm no longer a weird little girl #I consider myself a guy but not a man and a girlie but not a woman #my gender is whatever is funniest at the moment #My gender is whatever you project onto me. My gender is a mirror to your childhood trauma #anyways I kinda lost the plot but yea I can kinda still use the fundie baby voice but it sounds a lil off #cause I've been on T for over 3 years now #ex christian #religious trauma

[shapeshiftershenaniganary]

my knee-jerk response to horror (specifically jumpscare horror) is to just check out emotionally for a while, so the Nightmare path for Slay the Princess was a lot of just

"uhuh. uhuh. yeah thats great sweetie. heart lungs liver nerves"

#oh ok i sorta get how that all led up to this. #feels a lil weird tho #thats my new live laugh love btw #Slay the Princess #“and theres that fear again” yeah sure thing. whatever you say. heart lungs liver nerves #chattering #stp spoilers #loved that inbetween bit tho thats so good in the greater context of the story #like I didnt get Nightmare first run through and the ending did kinda feel a lil like #Nightmare ending its like. oh no ok yeah 100% #totally got you man no notes here #edit: yo what the fuck scrambled my tags I didn't even know that was a thing that could happen whadda hell

[dootznbootz]

Odypen definitely and equivalently adore each other BUT I weirdly can't see them as the type to actually say "I Love you".

They still definitely vocalize their love for each other but it's more so in "My Joy", and "Extraordinary Woman", "Strange Woman/Man", etc. And very cheesy lines (both say some cheesy shit in the Odyssey, and he definitely does in the Iliad as well. "Joy like a drowning sailor seeing land" bit???)

I could see "I adore you" but even then, that's probably during very specific moments but the actual "I love you"??? I just typed it just now for fic shit and... It weirdly just didn't feel right and I don't know why. 😅

Idk maybe it's kind of because I see them as over the top in ways, they love wordplay and riddles and I think they'd almost think "...That's not good enough >:( " about it??? I don't know???😂

#I wrote this last night. I'll do the asks I got later. don't worry! :D #I am the cheese god remember?😅 #I think these two would try to “out-cheese” each other and whoever is left speechless first loses #“I would forget my own name before I would ever forget you” bullshit. CHEESY #And yes. “I sleep in our nest with you or outside on the dirt” stupidity >:D #I plan for Odysseus as a beggar to ask why she waits so long. As he's been gone a longer amount of time than the time they had together #(Simply asking as reassurance. He knows his answer. Calypso asked him. but what about Penelope?) but she gets mad at the #“Beggar” and pities him as he must be telling the truth about having a miserable life if he never got the chance to know such devotion #How what they have could never be sullied by #something as trivial as distance and years. How the years with him were the best in her life. Only made better by their son. #'My dear Joy made songs and poems about love a reality as that was simply the life we shared. Even separated our 'song' will always echo #no matter how long it's been. I'LL make sure it always does. And I know he's doing the same... That strange man used to say that #even if he died his corpse would drag itself back to us before he'd ever give up.' #...I'm not one for 'odyssey zombie au' but when I first heard it yeah. :'D Came up with this back then #“His eyes as hard as flint or horn-” Bullshit! The sad lil fuck is hiding sobs with coughs and telling her to keep away for fear of her #catching whatever “illness” he has. The nice thing about being disguised as old means sickly old man works. #... #I'm noticing that Odysseus has a lot of silly oneliners while I write Penelope with a shit ton of set up :'D #They are so silly and I love them so much #...I wrote a lot :'D #Mad rambles #shot by odysseus #my headcanons #odypen #yahoo!!! #sometimes I wonder if I should tag this with more things but I don't want to taint the regular tags with my bullshit :'D I KNOW I'm insane

[sobselpop]

Irrational attachment

+ 1 sketch of that old slippery sexy man

#I just love their lil fucked up relationship #rest and ricklaxation #i absolutely ADORE this episode #they’re just so pathetic and slimy #rick and morty #rick and morty fanart #toxic rick #toxic morty #rick sanchez #anyway as soon as I typed the words ‘slippery old sexy man’ I knew this account would never be shown to ppl I know irl

[mostlymaudlin]

was starting to hijack in the tags of that post i just reblogged but ohhhhh it is so juicy to me that the end of TKM is just part of the rising action of andrew's character arcs. and yet the way the novel leaves off, you can have so much hope in the ways its going to continue -- especially because neil proves to us on the last page that he's going to fight like hell to hold onto him whatever comes next.

it's just !!!! all andrew's deals are done. neil's big happy moment of relationship security comes from the fact that andrew didn't deny its existence lol. BUT neils correct to be happy about this, because he knows andrew is a black & white thinker, and he's entering unchartered territory! all his lil lies he uses to duct tape his sanity together are coming apart, and that break is going to be FASCINATING. i doubt it'll be explosive or anything -- andrew's more the "quietly self-destruct climax" type than the "defeat the mafia thru the power of sports climax" type -- but it'll sure be something interesting. and then once it all breaks, we know he'll have neil and kevin and his family and the foxes to help him heal -- and he'll have to believe it when they show they care about him, because he literally doesn't owe anyone anything

#i think thats why all my aus put andrew in his Self Destruct Era #because im just so positive that he well on his way to that at the end of tkm #actually im amending the tags a bit bc i think what i sometimes end up doing w him in aus is a product of the fact that my stories rarely #have extreme external plot elements #like andrew never thinks neil DIES lol #baltimore is so fucking integral to andrews development #he did not have time to do the full self destruct 'oh no can i live without him' era because #he literally got tested on that and he FAILED HAHAHA #so he def knows that he needs neil #the crux of the conflict still is -- can he accept this without hating himself? #because if THATS not addressed then eventually his logic is going to warp #and hes going to do stupid shit #and yeah :) i love when he does stupid shit and then ppl are like #NOPE. unfortuantely you have fucked up severely #and in order to get back what you cant live without #you must board the Self Love Express !!!! #its a journey lil man!!!!! #youre gonna hate it!!!!!!!! youre gonna go on it anyway!!!! #SCRMEEEEAMMMM i love andrew minyard

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OOH YEAH BABY! PARTY TIME BABY! MUSIC! DRINKS! SOCIAL PRESSURE & A PSYCHEDELIC BREAK DOWN! WELCOME TO VAMPIRE SOCIETY MOTHERFUCKER! ARE YOU SCARED? DO YOU UNDERSTAND YET? ITS OKAY IF NOT. FIRE DISSOLVED IT! ITS ALL GONE NOW. HAVE FUN!

#jrwi fanart #jrwi show #jrwi suckening #jrwi suckening spoilers #RRAAHH IM IN LOVE WITH THIS SHOW SOOO GOODDAMN MUCH!! each o these characters has STOLEN my HEART!!! #LIKE EMIZEEELLL i love emizel so much.. runnin around announcing that HE isa PRINCE while shiloh FINALLY quietly clicks the pieces together #nathan hanover you MADMAN!!! that slow dramatic guitar riff as emizel makes that announcement was so fuckin COOL UGHHHH #MR HANOVER DOES IT AGAIN just creating tracks that absoultely WORM into my MIND and HHEAARRT UUGHHGHH #emizel is so cool and so funny and so adorable UUGHH ill gush abt him more when i finally post my emizel n soda doodle page #ARTHUR FUCKING BENNET. i totally get why grizz has a hard time playing him. hes cool and stoic n its not easy to play a man o little words #BUT BBOOOY DOES HE DO IT WELL!! arthur DOES come off as so stoic n cool & it just makes his lil misfortunes all the more charming #like falling into the red fear or confrontin edward twilight or accidentally doing lsd. I LOVE THATS HES THE BAD LUCK GUY. #okay uhhu uhh i have limited room here what else should i say uhh. THE NPCS. MY GOD THE NPCS. CHARLIE U WONDERFUL MADMAN #edward twilight is SUCH a funny fucking antagonist. and supposedly his magic stuff is super scary?? SO EXCITED TO SEE MORE OF THAT #ill ramble abt mr deacon keller later eheh i have a. uh. a doodle page in the works. so in the meantime DAYBRINGER SOLOMON!! #“HERE COMES THE SUN MOTHERFUCKER!” “ILL SEE YOU IN HELL. NOT. IM GOING TO HEAVEN. BITCH.” like come on now. oh my god. i need him #BIG POWERFUL BEAST AND EVERY WORD HE SAYS HAS ME CRACKING UP. THE MUFFLED VOICE IN THE DARK BROKEN BY “LIGHT!” #TRULY HILARIOUS AND YET TRULY HORRIFYING. I FUCKIN LOVE CHARLIE NPCS SO MUCH. I HOPE WE SEE HIM AGAIN OHH MY GOOOODDD #OKAYokay. im normal now. ill talk abt the piece. if u read my tags this far then u get special secret knowledge abt the artistic process #IM VERY HAPPY WITH MY COLORS! i know they were hallucinating on drugs so i just recalled the times i did drugs & used that as my influence #REMEMBER KIDS! acid is totally fine if ur safe and responsible about it. do acid and then stare at my art for a bit trrruuust me. IT MOVES! #anyway i think thats all my thoughts here. thank you for looking at my art n thanku if ur one o the ppl that says nice things in the tags #U are LITERLY my life blood i pick up each of u n kiss u so sweetly on the head. remember to try acid!!!!

[vanyafresita]

practicing how to draw holm... he is sooooo cute.....

#holm kranom #dungeon meshi #he is SOOOO round and love shaped im going to bite him #left pose is weird as fuck cuz i didnt look at a reference can u tell #noticing a lot of errors now too i made and some stuff i should change for next time i draw him #his left arm holding the book...... what is up with the shoulder oh noooo i rlly needed a reference huh #his head is not as round... gotta make it a lil longer.... #legs should be way thicker..... #hair not as curly ? ive been looking at different references and sometimes its pretty curly and sometimes its straight af idk man #i gotta make him more fat in general but thats just my preference lol #my art #dunmeshi #vanya strawberry flavored #edit: okay im making this unrebloggable bcs i realised this SUCKS and its ugly af i need to draw him again lol

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

To bring up your mood a bit here's a question about you! What's your favorite sweet treat?

hm... good question im not much of a Sweets guy... i would say... either kettle corn or black forest cake! or maybe mochi... i do love me some mochi!

#those are my top three we'll just say that! in no particular order! #i need to get my hands on some ~glutinous rice flour~ and make myself a mochi cake #man. now im just thinking about this queer bakery i used to frequent #where they'd put the excess cake trimmings and such in a little bowl #and their black forest cake??? holy SHIT. i went there nearly every day hoping that they'd have the lil bowl of it #sitting in their little garden patio with bowl-cake and a spoon... watching the harbor... take me BACK #rambles from the bog #and i can and will fuck up a whole thing of kettle corn #i love fairs and i love carnivals AND GUESS WHAT BOTH HAVE!!!!

[rainymoodlet]

alsace dieudonné is the name on my grave, boy. that does not make it mine. 🦇

#ts4 #ts4 screenshots #ts4 cas #ts4 edit #ts4 vampires #sim: alsace #there are so many spoilers i could give abt this guy but him appearing before he's supposed to is ENOUGH (bites cheek) #i've been spendin time on his pinterest board and lil baby gen 3 was just born and ooOOOO i am so excited!! #tjol gen 3 is going to be more story-based!!! bc i am just all abuzz with ideas for lil baby krueger :') #here is all i will give abt this man for now: he is older than vlad #much older - he's always Been. he existed before written history and now he is just Fucking Tired. forgotten hollow is hidden by magic and #veils of amnesia spells in my universe and he's decided to shack up there (at vlad's allowance - tho he's older than and technically outran #s* the old fart - think greg vs kristopher) to hide from the upstart vamps who'd kill him just for the honor #alsace dieudonne is not his real name :)))) #anyway dfkjhsfkj i love you all i'm so excited for more kmik and for my tjol updates :'))) #i hope you're all doing welll ~ #also his voice claim is 30000% kratos i'm sorry but i'm not rly #also i guess spoilers but baby gen 3 is a BOYYYYYY AHHHH IM SO EXCITEDDD

[a-through-l]

ms carole stanley Im ur no1 fan

#carole and tuesday #carole stanley #art through l #listened to the entire cat ost while drawing these #wanted to throw up cos I was so overwhelmed by emotion because Man I Fucking Love Carole #was havin a lil fun with lighting too cos I love the lighting for her reference sheet