#but we are In It Now

[abronzeagegod]

ETS WIP Chapter 10: Everything Has Gone Wrong

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Lyta had been feeling good the last couple of weeks.

Actually, no, she'd been feeling amazing.

Alive, awake, and sure she'd been angry and testy and short-fused but that was a price she was willing to pay to feel this good, this consistently.

However, there was a big downside to this whole "everyone is angry all the time" thing, and that was that Aeth seemed to be mad at her all the time.

That, made Lyta feel worse than anything else.

She was concerned for her friend. They had gone through a lot, and things hadn't really been better for them since everything was more-or-less resolved.

For some reason, when Aeth started sending her lots and lots of videos on Swwarm, that put Lyta's hair on edge. There wasn't anything specific that Aeth was doing or not doing that made Lyta concerned, but there was a break in some hidden pattern, something was off and she couldn't tell exactly what it was.

Their days off didn't line up properly for a little bit, and with everything, Lyta had to fight against herself to offer Aeth some space. So it wasn't for a few days until Lyta saw Aeth.

And when she did see them she instantly knew something was wrong.

Aeth, like anyone, used their phone a fair amount.

But they were all but tied to it, barely looking up from the device as they walked into the office.

Lyta went over to talk to her friend and Aeth had a full conversation with her without looking up from their phone.

This was extremely unusual and not at all like Aeth.

"Are you ok?" Lyta asked, reaching out for her friend.

Aeth pulled away from the touch, very unlike them, and then responded. "I'm fine. Nothing to worry about."

Lyta was concerned at the answer, so unlike Aeth.

"What's happening?"

"Nothing. I've been practicing some meditation and mindfulness things I found on Swwarm. I can send them to you."

"No, that's fine," she said but she already felt her phone vibrating in her pocket as Aeth sent her several videos. "We'll talk after work."

"Sure."

The whole thing left a bad taste in Lyta's mouth, and that feeling carried her and fueled her through the rest of the day.

Lyta worked the phones for the rest of the day, biting back comments and angry reactions even though she desperately wanted to. Everything around her was pushing her buttons and pushing her to reaction.

She felt the itch at the back of her wrists, the clawing and itching for release and power, but she had long ago learned to push that down and away.

When she finally managed to clock out and leave, she found that Aeth had already left.

"They had some kind of personal emergency to take care of," one of her boss' heads told her as she looked for Aeth around the office.

That only put Lyta in a worse mood.

She grabbed her stuff from her locker, and stormed off back to her home. If it was a real emergency Aeth would have told her, Aeth would have come to her. Everything here was deeply and irrevocably fucked.

Once she was in her apartment, Lyta angrily poured herself a drink, and reluctantly started to make food. She was pissed and the last thing she wanted to do was keep having to do things, to put forth effort just to live in this stupid bullshit day. But objectively she knew that she needed to. That her anger was not her, that the rage she was feeling was only being perpetuated by the needs of her body.

After things started cooking and Lyta was feeling a little better, and also a little drunker, she checked her phone to see if there was any new content while she waited for things to cook.

She ignored the seventeen messages from Aeth about mindfulness and getting in touch with your inner master. If there was one thing she absolutely could not stand it was that bullshit. It meant nothing to her because she had already waded through that sea to find the few things that weren't scams and did help her, she didn't need any more of that Ascension crap.

The first video she saw was some religious-fascist crap about how there were too many faiths and gods to keep track of and it was the duty of every native born in Reakonfall to push out the gods by whatever means necessary.

Lyta hated that shit even more. She didn't respond she just hit the report and block button.

But the next video was even worse.

The algorithm saw that she had watched the entire video previously, and so it had queued up this next one. It never accounted for the fact that she reported it for enticing violence, it just saw the interaction.

The video was of an attractive looking man, with the kind of features that would place him on a daytime soap opera. Lyta started to watch the video and quickly started bristling with anger.

The man stated, "You know that there are certain people out there that can create new beings? New gods even! They can slip dangerous creatures like this one right behind our carefully constructed wards and gates." The video shifted to show some horror drawing of a terrible creature that Lyta was fairly certain was concept art for the failed game Twin Houses.

He continued talking about how these people could simply make dangerous creatures appear and there was nothing we could do to stop them. There was no defense against these terrorists. He even went to show a picture of someone who he claimed was one of these 'terroristic summoners'.

The anger that was clouding Lyta's vision saw Aeth in the video and she snapped.

It felt like she was putting a piece of cold wire from a broken bone in her arm. The feeling lasted forever and no time at all.

The hilt of frozen ash was in her hand, and the blade of fractal wildfires was brought down hard on to the phone screen.

The magic blade fueled entirely on Lyta's anger, pushed through the electronics and the stone counter-top with no resistance until the frozen ash handle met with stone.

A moment of deep breathing later, of feeling the cold biting at her lungs, Lyta snapped out of her blind rage.

"Fuck."

She couldn't banish the blade, she was stuck with it for a little while, at least until the temperature in the room returned to normal.

Drawing the blade, using her magic, almost always snap froze everything around her. And Lyta had been extremely angry for a while and so her entire kitchen was frozen solid, and there was a giant hole in her island.

Lyta opened some windows and tried to let the warm air circulate in so that the angry blizzard she'd caused would dissipate faster, but she knew that the only thing that would undo the snap freeze was time.

Dinner was ruined.

She could order food, though, but as she reached for her phone she realized that she had cut it in half.

"Fuck!"

Lyta knew herself well enough that now she recognized how wrong everything had been the last few weeks.

She was angry all the time, she had been worked up, but the anger wasn't truly her's. She didn't feel the all encompassing rage that covered and consumed everything like a blizzard, or the white-hot instant anger that snap froze everything around her like an instant wildfire but made cold.

Something had been manipulating her.

She also knew her magic well enough, for better or worse. It was something she'd had for years, before she even moved to this city.

It had been weeks of constant, building anger. She should have had enough magic bursting out of her to summon three swords, a halberd, two great clubs, and a morning star. Lyta should have encased the entire building in a snowstorm that lasted a week and reduced everything to a even, white, samey nothingness.

Something had been manipulating her. And something had been sucking away at her magic this entire time.

She looked at the phone, cut in half and frozen to the kitchen island.

It couldn't be, could it? Could it be that simple?

Could that stupid app be behind this?

The anger started really building when she was Swwarming. The entire thing stopped when she destroyed the phone.

Now that Lyta thought about it, the video she was being shown was terrible, it should have been banned. It seemed directly targeted at her for maximum outrage.

The face she saw at the end couldn't have been Aeth. There's no way that anyone knew anything about what Aeth had summoned, there was no way that there were any records or anything for anyone to even find.

It had to be that app.

Something bad was happening.

Lyta needed to call Aeth.

But she had cut her phone in half.

"FUCK!"

i have a kofi where you can read these early if you've supported me at any time

#eldritch tech support #more character work and less tech support #but we are In It Now #lyta's got magic all her own and it is not something that she particularly cares for #idk why but all my ideal magic users are in a love-hate relationship with their fonts #lyta hates what her rage and vengeance turns her into #and melthana wishes she could be the person she was before the magic changed her into someone else #aeth is just like i like my magic! it is just complicated symbols and math and has to be done very precisely or it won't work! #lyta's not jealous because that magic works perfect for aeth and it's not for her

[aesthetic-uni]

It’s that time of the year again

#uni talks about the universe #ides of march #julius caesar #is this anything #I’m too lazy to make anything else so #have at the #this man has been dead for 2068 slutty slutty years and we are STILL tormenting him #anyway happy holidays to those who celebrate it #more like resting in pieces haha #okay I’ll go now

[canisbeanz]

Silly doodle bc it was the first thing I thought of when I saw Pomni.

#ik the yellow things are probably pom poms but I love bells so here we are #i'm so happy the pilot is out #now i can stop rewatching the first teaser lmao #the blue hand may or may not be on the wrong side bc I am directionally challenged #the amazing digital circus #tadc #pomni #tadc caine #my art #canis art #artwork #digital art #glitch animation #the fool jingled miserably across the floor

[seenthisepisode]

no offence but the reason tumblr is “dying” is, well, yes, of course the cursed like/reblog ratio and the change in user behaviour (because of people being used to how instagram and tiktok work) BUT also the lack of weekly shows. i say it with my whole chest, they don't produce captivating and engaging stupid weekly tv shows anymore because streaming killed that so you have spikes of activity here when Something happens in general fandom or up to three days after a new season of whatever drops and then it's a wasteland. this is obviously an old woman yelling at a cloud missing supernatural and the vampire diaries and pretty little liars and all these other shows type of post but honestly give me back weekly tv shows where i have something to watch for 40 minutes almost every day of the week after work so then i can read and reblog it on tumblr give it back for the sake of my sanity

#we used to be a proper country #or something #this post is brought to you by me coming back from work and being like okay what now 🧍🏻‍♂️ #i mean obviously i have stuff to do but these are just chores and what i need what i have been programmed to need is a 40 minute long #episode of stupid cw show with a gay ship that's never gonna go canon... :((( #tumblr #fandom

[ladyshinga]

Watching how two dogs who love each other will sometimes still nip each other on the ear, bug them while they sleep, etc... watching how cats will snuggle with their buddy all day and then paw-smack 'em in the face, chase them, play-fight...

Makes me, as a fellow social mammal, feel better about my urge to be incredibly annoying to another human sometimes. Like, yeah. Of course I wanna bug you. Of course it's fun to annoy you. We're social creatures and annoyance can be part of play, something we all need. And I watch these dogs who get their ears nipped, cats who get smacked out of a nap, and despite BEING annoyed, they don't stop loving their packmate. After they finish play-fighting, they're back to snuggling and grooming and sleeping together. BEING annoyed is also just part of being in a social group and having relationships... and that's okay. It doesn't erase love or necessarily make them mad or affect them in the long term... a loved one being annoyed with me is a temporary feeling that's normal for social creatures. An annoyance that wouldn't be possible WITHOUT that love

#and much like dogs and cats #we have ways of saying 'not right now i don't wanna play grr get away for real' #which is when the deescalation kicks in

[nonebinary-leftbeef]

DEVASTATING the lyric you've been mishearing is better than the real one

#i've been listening to icarus by bastille #and for some reason my brain fills in 'this is how it feels to take a fall' as 'this is how it feels to take off all your skin' #and like fuck man #and I KNOW that’s technically not a misheard lyric but my post my rules cope #anyway my line now #also probably phrased this poorly but its ok #im allowed to be incomprehensible #as a treat #and then fuckin #from we sink by of monsters and men #the original line was 'please look away dont look at me' #and i kept hearing it as 'please learn a way to look at me' #anyway #shoving this post in the queue but please be aware that i am writing it very late at night #q

[artkaninchenbau]

Crocodile finds a strange stray cat an 11-year old Nico Robin (AU where they met 13 years earlier. Robin's been on the run from the World Government for 3 years. Crocodile's 27 and has not set up base in Alabasta yet)

It seems like I have become possessed. By some sort of demon.

Bonus:

#My art #One Piece #Nico Robin #Sir Crocodile #Y'all the OP brainrot is BAD #According to an SBS Crocodile would absolutely spoil his child rotten if he had one. *We all know how Robin's childhood went* #Scary mofo who does not know how to parent a child but boy does he have the spirit + Child who has never had proper parent in her life #They'd make. An absolute disaster of a duo. This AU concept is so fucking funny to me okay #But also sad because I would fucking die for baby Robin she deserves the fucking world #This poor girl has never been spoiled in her entire life AND NOW PAPADILE IS HERE TO SPOIL HER #You know it's funny. I know 11 yo Robin should LOOK older than 8 year old Robin. But Crocodile is a fucking giant so she's still baby sized #Also I just had too much fun drawing Robin looking as pathetic as humanly possible lmao #She's a like a wet kitten in the rain 😭

[badolmen]

WARNING 18+

19

#ra speaks #it’s a silly joke/pun dw #we stay silly :3 #edit: #woahg. that’s a lot of notes. hi everybody o/ #10k. stop clenching your jaw and drink some water. #15k. eat some fresh fruit this week! I’m having kiwis tonight :] #20k. quit sitting like a shrimp it’s bad for your neck! sit up straight and do a little stretch every now and then #25k. I’m up at 2 AM but I’ll get to see the sunrise today :] if you can’t see that I hope you admire the sunset later today #30k. do something fun you haven’t done in a while. I haven’t drawn in months - I think I’ll paint a cat tomorrow :3

[qiinamii]

we'll do fine.

#fionna and cake spoilers #what hits me a little is how similar fionna and simon's stories are in the case of finding nuance in their lives #when both have gone through their separate but still valid pain no matter the extent it had been #and its that they met each other they get to see how it compares and they're no less worth of the peace and fun they dreamed of #even in the form of simplicity and just being normal #“i wouldn't have met THE fionna and cake” “we wouldn't have met THE simon petrikov” #it hits me harder that after the dandelion scene would've been their last time seeing each other physically #and how assuring simon sounded when fionna didn't know what to do with the literal world in her hands #tho im sure prismo isnt that much of a rule jerk lol i still drew out the revelation anyway with this tiniest addition #also the fact fionna's world is influenced by simon's thought processes and conditions so now things are a little better for both of them #fionna the human #fionna campbell #simon petrikov #qiiarts #the lil flashback of #betty grof #fionna and cake #adventure time

[carbonateds-oda]

fake ass idgafer. I saw you gazing off into the distance like you were looking at something far away, something no one else could see but you

#that wan panel was lethal #like I thought we were being silly. I thought I was here to laugh. why is my vision blurry now #bsd #bungou stray dogs #dazai osamu #bsd wan #bsd wan manga

[transmutationisms]

using "drugs" as a moral category will have people saying shit like "adderall isn't a drug because i don't feel any effects from it except the effects i feel, which are why i take it"

#its 2023 we can stop this now

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

#due to the Great Data Decay academics write viciously argumentative articles on which episodes aired in what order #at conferences professors have known to engage in physically violent altercations whilst debating the air date number of household viewers #90% of the couch gags have been lost and there is a billion dollar trade in counterfeit “lost copies” #serious note: i'll be honest i always assumed it was english imperialism that made shakespeare so inescapable in the 19th/20th cent #like his writing should have become obscure at the same level of his contemporaries #but british imperialists needed an ENGLISH LANGUAGE (and BRITISH) writer to venerate #and shakespeare wrote so many damn things that there was a humongous body of work just sitting there waiting to be culturally exploited... #i know it didn't happen like this but i imagine a English Parliament House Committee Member For The Education Of The Masses or something #cartoonishly stumbling over a dusty cobwebbed crate labelled the Complete Works of Shakespeare #and going 'Eureka! this shall make excellent propoganda for fabricating a national identity in a time of great social unrest. #it will be a cornerstone of our elitist educational institutions for centuries to come! long live our decaying empire!' #'what good fortune that this used to be accessible and entertaining to mainstream illiterate audience members... #..but now we can strip that away and make it a difficult & alienating foundation of a Classical Education! just like the latin language :)' #anyway maybe there's no such thing as the 'greatest writer of x language' in ANY language? #maybe there are just different styles and yes levels of expertise and skill but also a high degree of subjectivity #and variance in the way that we as individuals and members of different cultures/time periods experience any work of media #and that's okay! and should be acknowledged!!! and allow us to give ourselves permission to broaden our horizons #and explore the stories of marginalized/underappreciated creators #instead of worshiping the List of Top 10 Best (aka Most Famous) Whatevers Of All Time/A Certain Time Period #anyways things are famous for a reason and that reason has little to do with innate “value” #and much more to do with how it plays into the interests of powerful institutions motivated to influence our shared cultural narratives #so i'm not saying 'stop teaching shakespeare'. but like...maybe classrooms should stop using it as busy work that (by accident or designs) #happens to alienate a large number of students who could otherwise be engaging critically with works that feel more relevant to their world #(by merit of not being 4 centuries old or lacking necessary historical context or requiring untaught translation skills) #and yeah...MAYBE our educational institutions could spend less time/money on shakespeare critical analysis and more on... #...any of thousands of underfunded areas of literary research i literally (pun!) don't know where to begin #oh and p.s. the modern publishing world is in shambles and it would be neat if schoolwork could include modern works? #beautiful complicated socially relevant works of literature are published every year. it's not just the 'classics' that have value #and actually modern publications are probably an easier way for students to learn the basics. since lesson plans don't have to include the #important historical/cultural context many teens need for 20+ year old media (which is older than their entire lived experience fyi)

[mellotronmkll]

This is so awesome

#The article makes it kinda sound like it's just for his sons but he's been obsessed with trains forever himself #Like Phil we know it's for you #psa to anyone coming here now this has notes yes this is from an old article and I know this already #It's from 2008 he's not releasing anything anytime soon I know

[foreskinniest]

him: I can't host

me: dont worry I know a spot

the spot:

#first inside the capitol now on moving trains #where we doin it next gaybois?

[siren-serotonin]

Anyone who reblogs this post will have their user written on a poster saying "We Stand With Palestine" that I hope to put up somewhere in the village I live in, or the town that the village is next to.

#free palestine #free gaza #gaza #palestine #israel is a terrorist state #freedom for palestine #freedom for gaza #ceasefire for palestine #ceasefire for gaza #ceasefire now #i stand with palestine #we stand with palestine #i stand with gaza #we stand with gaza #palestine genocide #gaza genocide #gazaunderattack #palestinian genocide #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #siren-serotonin

[nyttvera]

# well I think it's safe to say it's mutual

PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS EP 1.05

bonus EPISODE 1.08

#percy jackon and the olympians #pjo tv show #pjo spoilers #pjo #percy jackson #percyjacksonedit #annabeth chase #annabethchaseedit #grover underwood #groverunderwoodedit #pjosource #pjoedit #*mine #*my gifs: pjo #i thought this was hilarious ghfjdkh #tuserhidden #tusersilence #here we go now it's complete <3