Moderately unfortunate update concerning Shooting Stars

The fic is locked now, so you'll need an AO3 account to read it

Everything else I've written and posted is also locked, and this is because apparently our dear friend Elon is now mining AO3 with bots to train an AI how to write stories (that's the gist of what's happening, but yeah. I would rather not have my work be mined and used to train an AI)

Deepest apologies to anyone who was reading Shooting Stars, or any of my work really, anonymously ^^" if Elon could drop dead, that'd be great, but y'know. It is what it is, I guess

"But if college was free, then people would abuse that and get useless degrees" hell yeah I would! If I could go to college without debt I would make it my job to get a degree in every little thing that interested me. I'd get a doctorate in film studies. I'd have a bachelor's degree for every science I like. I'd try to learn at least 5 languages with varying results. I would learn something "useful" like coding and then follow it up with a ""useless"" degree like art history. I'd be the world record speed run holder for getting every degree possible.

But I can't afford college without going into massive debt, so instead I spent the last 5 years trying to figure out what I am passionate enough about to consider going into debt over, because unfortunately being passionate about everything is extremely expensive to pursue.

I've talked before about how the way people treat suicide can be unintentionally devastating to the suicidal person, but I don't think I really ever said how to avoid that.

Speaking about suicide in how selfish it "is" ("think about how you'll transfer your pain to your loved ones!") might seem like a way to put logical sense into the suicidal person, but, honestly? It runs the risk of massively increasing their shame and guilt about being suicidal. Suicide is not inherently a revenge fantasy or a way to "get back" at someone's loved ones, so when the suicidal person is treated like a criminal of a "crime" they haven't even committed yet, you can imagine how unhelpful that can become.

Instead, if you want to point out how cherished your person is, frame their relationships as something they can keep fostering.

"Your cat will miss you :(!!!!" becomes "you and your cat seem close, right? I'm sure it's beautiful having a close friend like that!" and maybe include ways that they and their cat are close and meaningful to each other, tailored to that relationship.

That's only one example, but when you shift the focus away from why that person should repent and feel guilty for being suicidal, you can instead focus on why they would live for that reason. See how you can frame that as a positive? Whatever is keeping that person tethered should never be used as a bludgeon, I think, because then you're taking away why they're living, the positivity of why they are here. Whatever they are here for should be remembered often and honoured.

pest control TWO!!!!! heres the first one

adn heres the obligatory bonus bc i can't help myself :')

Very important conferences.

The process is a bitch and I want to fight it

.

in case you were wondering where I went

Please, for the love of gods, allow yourself to consume content/media uncritically

You can be aware of issues a show/game/movie/etc has but you don't need to be aware of it *all* the time, you shouldn't have to justify yourself liking it every time you go to talk about it.

You shouldn't have to feel like you're the worst person in the world just because you like something that happens to have problematic stuff in it.

And you're setting yourself up for failure if you go into something immediately looking for all of the bad in it, you're setting yourself up to be unable to enjoy it! And if you do manage to enjoy it it'll likely just feel wrong because of that!

I'm begging y'all not to consume *everything* critically and to sometimes enjoy things uncritically.

Monkey’s Paw pages 121-125 ( START HERE || ao3 || previous || next ) AU after episode 62. The Omega Dads try a more desperate gambit, but   careful what you wish for. Our dads find alternate versions of themselves in a strange dreamscape. If you die in the dream, do you die in real life?

IT'S BEEN MORE THAN A MONTH BUT i'M HERE, i'M ALIVE

me 6 months ago: I am ready to do more detailed backgrounds me now: I am not willing to do more detailed backgrounds

if i think too long about the ending making lloyd leave the home he worked so hard to save behind along with the new found family he sacrificed his life for so he can move to a place he has no emotional connection to where he only knows two people (one of which is actually following him from the aforementioned home) in order to make him get a standard "have a wife and children" 'happy' ending i start wanting to bite people not gonna lie

Not me idly rerererererererererewatching Gargoyles and realizing I didn't post the Gargoyles AU shit that took me and @amutantturtleenthusiast (18+ blog) by our throats for... what was it, almost a month????

shit was wild, i'm still unwell

so unwell we still babble over it every now and then

we definitely mangled a few concepts for maximum drama

we hit everything, forbidden love, clan politics, clan betrayal, curses that lasted a 1,000 years, reincarnated lovers, stolen family, unethical genetic research, we had Anton Sevarius and Jasper Barlow for ultra fuckery, enraged glowy eyed action, tender romance, figuring out how the new york subway system works, overseas travel shenanigans when half your party turns to stone in the day, the implications of half your crew turning to stone during the day, hilarious clan-to-clan misunderstandings, revenge quests... hoo.

we had them replace the tengu who taught humans ninjutsu

they big as fuck

sprinkled a little Abe no Seimei seasoning on my Venus

My Donnie was metaphorically born in the wrong century, he's fine now he has gears, wrenches, and WiFi

...we gave them hair

Barlow and Sevarius got to a couple people... unfortunately

fkkn love that funky li'l gecko i reused it for my Mondo

the Manhattan clan is ...just somewhere in the background, away

Building off of what I wrote in my fic "Sparks," I'm really compelled by the idea of Ford genuinely no longer being interested in sailing around in a boat with Stan by the time they were seniors in high school.

I like the idea of it not being just a symptom of the resentment that had been building between them, nor it being a dream of Ford's that only paled in comparison to west coast tech, but it being a genuine loss of interest on Ford's end. I think it complicates things even further in some really juicy ways.

Like, imagine going through high school slowly losing more and more interest in the dream you've shared with your twin and only friend ever since you were little kids. How do you break it to him? How do you explain it to him without making it sound like a rejection of him? Without it making him hate you?

How do you explain it without it feeling like a spit in the face to all the hard work he's put into a plan that started out as a way of him comforting you by telling you "it doesn't matter what people say about you, you're going to be an adventurer who sails away into the sunset and never has to hear their mockery ever again, and there will be babes and treasure and heroism, and then they'll all see how cool you really are!"

And all through high school you think to yourself, "he's going to move on to more realistic dreams any day now, and then I won't have to say anything about it!" But no matter how many times you mention something else he could do with his life that he seems interested in, or bring up the challenging logistics of traveling around long-term in a boat, he sounds just as committed to the childhood dream as ever, and completely oblivious to how apprehensive you sound.

So resentment grows, little by little. Because that's easier than confronting the soul-crushing levels of guilt that are building up inside of you, every time you don't take an opportunity to tell him you don't want to do the plan anymore. You don't have a single person in your life who modeled how to have difficult conversations for you. As far as you know, having this conversation with Stan would crush him into tiny little pieces and then he would hate you forever, and you can't stand the idea of losing the only friend you've ever had.

So tensions grow. A lack of interest turns into a bitter resentment that, if you were really being honest with yourself, is directed more at yourself than it is at Stan.

And then the falling-out happens, and it seems like you were proven right. Stan hates you now, and he's never going to forgive you for giving up on his dream. But two can play that game, so you try to hate him too. Because if you hate him too, then maybe it won't hurt as much that he never came back. That he never even turned up at school, or by the boat, or in through your bedroom window in the middle of the night. He knows what dad's like, and how he says impulsive exaggerated things when he's angry, and haven't you both dealt with his harsh words countless times before and been able to dust yourselves off and joke about it later? So why isn't he back at home, joking with you about how absurd your dad acted that night, being impossible and belligerent about ruining your dream, but at least now you're even, because you've ruined his dream too.

-

And now imagine you find out he risked the lives of everyone in existence to bring you back, right after you had accepted your fate was to die killing Bill. It would be terrifying and confusing and infuriating. If he cared so much, why didn't he do something to reconnect with you sooner? Why did he ignore you in favor of trying to make it big without you? Why didn't he take the infinitely safer and simpler action of reaching out to you without you having to track down his address and send a desperate plea for help? You were convinced that he didn't care enough to bother with you unless you had an important enough reason for him to come. But even then, he thought your plans were stupid. He didn't want anything to do with you, not even with the world at stake.

Did he save your life out of guilt? Does he pity you that much? It doesn't add up with what he did in the decade leading up to shoving you into the portal. And the dissonance between the version of him in your head that hates you, and the man who held out his arms to welcome you back to your home dimension, is so strong that you feel like you're being lied to again, like you're back in the depths of gaslighting and manipulation that Bill put you through, even though there's no way that's what Stan is trying to do... right? You can't figure it out, so you run away from it. You don't want to know the answer to whether or not Stan hates you, because you don't know which answer would hurt more, so you try to make him hate you more than ever, because at least then you would know for sure how he feels.

And in the end, after he sacrifices his memories for you, and for the world, things seem clearer. The layers upon layers of confusion and anger and hurt seem to have washed away like drawings in the sand, leaving behind the simple truth: that you two had an argument, and didn't move past it for forty years, and despite everything you put each other through, you both still want to re-connect.

So you sail away in a boat together.

And at first, it's wonderful. It's exactly what you want. It feels like an apology to Stan, and a thank-you for saving the world, and a once-in-a-lifetime chance to heal the rift between you two, and it's good to be back on earth, and you wonder why you ever doubted the dream you two once had.

But then, after the first long journey you spend on the sea together, when you get back home to dry land, Stan is already talking about planning your next adventure out on the open sea. He recaps every adventure you had on the first trip, over and over again, and he wants to chat with you all through the morning and long into the night, and you don't have the words to explain to yourself that you don't have enough social battery for this, and suddenly you're slipping back into the horrifyingly familiar feeling of Stan being overbearing and needing space from him and how could you think that? How could you think that about him after everything he's done for you and everything he's forgiven you for? But the longer this goes on, the more you realize that you still don't want to spend the rest of your life sailing around with Stan. It's great fun in moderation, but the idea of your whole life revolving around Stan and going on adventures with Stan and being in a boat with Stan with no time to be by yourself thinking about your own things and figuring out your own dreams makes your skin crawl with a claustrophobic kind of panic that you still don't know how to put into words forty years after the first time this feeling grabbed you by the throat and ruined your friendship with Stanley.

But the first time this happened, it nearly ruined his life forever. You can't let yourself feel this. You don't feel this. You're happy to spend the rest of your life fulfilling Stan's lifelong dream, and making up for the time you crushed his dream, and sure, maybe he crushed your dream once too, and maybe it would be nice for him to support your dreams like you're now doing for him, but you can't say that. He saved the universe, and it would be horrible and ungrateful and cruel for you to try to voice these feelings, especially when you don't know how to voice your feelings without it making other people feel like you twisted a knife into their gut. So you try to pretend the feeling isn't there.

You go out on a boat with Stan again. You planned out another incredible journey together, and this should be fun, and you should be happy about this, but the unspoken feeling you shoved as far down in yourself as it could possibly go is eating you alive. The worst part? Stan is starting to notice. You have never been good at hiding your emotions. The trick to it has always been to convince yourself you don't feel it at all, and not think about it, and that has always worked like a charm. But whenever the emotion claws its way back up to the forefront of your mind, you can tell Stan knows something is wrong. So you can't even give him the happy ending he deserves. You can't even convince him that you want to be here on the open seas forever with him, like he deserves. And you keep trying and trying to hide it, but Stan keeps asking in roundabout ways, like "You're being awfully quiet, sixer," and "whats that look on your face?" and eventually it comes exploding out of you like a shaken-up soda bottle dropped on its cap.

And then it's like you're back at home in New Jersey again, standing in the living room while dad grabs Stanley by the shirt. It all comes pouring out of you, in the worst possible way, with the worst possible phrasing, like a pandora's box of monstrousness, and Stan tries to fight back against the sting of your words, but you're made out of acid and you're burning through him and you can see it on his face, and there's never any coming back from this, not this time, you'll just have to either jump into the ocean or become a monster forever, so Stan can hate you more easily again, and-

-and at the end of the outburst, you're still on a boat in the middle of nowhere in the ocean with your brother, in dangerous waters, and you have things to do to keep the boat running smoothly.

You can't run away from him. He can't run away from you. You're stuck here for at least a couple more weeks, even if you turned around and sailed back towards shore right away.

-

And the thing that compels me so much here, despite how unbelievably angsty it all is, is that it sets up a situation wherein the Stans might end up forced to actually address the decades of resentment and confusion and wanting-to-reconnect-throughout-it-all that they thought they could gloss over and heal with enough time spent adventuring together on a boat. They might end up forced to actually address the crux of the issue that drove them apart in the first place: Ford wanting a little more space to feel like his own person, and to feel like he's able to have his own dreams, too.

It wouldn't happen easily, nor right away, but if they were stuck together on a little boat in the middle of nowhere surrounded by magical creatures they have to protect each other from in order to make it back home alive, then after they had one fight where they brought up all the things they silently agreed to never bring up again, it would probably happen many more times, and each time it would leave them both angrier at each other than ever, until eventually something honest slipped through amidst all the saying-anything-except-what-they-mean bickering. And once enough of these honest moments slipped through, then they would have a thread to tug on to start to unravel the gargantuan knot of their decades of unresolved conflicts.

And then, eventually, maybe Stan could learn that he can have a good friendship with his brother without needing to be glued to him at the hip, and Ford needing a certain amount of alone time doesn't mean he dislikes him or wants to abandon him, and Ford could learn that he can be honest and have a meaningful connection with someone without it driving them away and making them hate him.

Asterix yelling at Obelix and going to Panoramix immediately after to talk to him about it and look smol and defeated like this will never not get to me

In the "a day in the life of eclipse" it wasn't the first time Solar's Moon treated him badly. Remember when Lunar first showed up in Solar's dimension, Solar told Moon that there's a dimensional traveler and he'll deal with it. And his Moon responded with "good because I don't care!" it looks like his Moon has been aggressive/treated him badly to him from the start. Sorry, I just didn't understand what you meant by you ignoring the lore from a day in the life of eclipse because it is part of the lore now

You're new on my blog which i frequently ignore things in my headcanons from time to time. And that canon changes from how its interpreted. Anyway, stems from Solar's explaining his moons situation. The lore SLIGHTLY changed. In terms of Moon, being slightly Glitched due to killcodes removal/memory loss. He never mentioned Moon being mean before that (at least not on the terms before he left his dimension). Not unlike things to be slightly aggressive from Moon tho, just it wasnt PERCIEVED moon was a jerk to Solar UNTIL Solar reveals this later on (after Lunars death). They didn't really develop his story until later a little more. So I'm sticking to my previous headcanon of Moon having a glitch, which is canon to s degree? SOLAR himself has mentioned he wanted to fix his MOON AND SUN. Which was forgotten/changed and turned into just sun then into Solar leaving forever.

I noticed that in all the ffs Ezra and Reader are already in an established relationship (and that's something I love, don't get me wrong! I'm always soft for the two of them together)

BUT

I can suggest: Ezra and Reader pining for each other?

Ezra and Reader who are emotionally close, giggly and happy whenever they are near each other.

The whole Ghost crew knows there's something between them, but neither Ezra nor Reader want to say something because "they're just friends, and he/they don't see me that way."

Then Ezra disappears, sending Thrawn into exile.

And the relationship between Ezra and Reader remains stuck in what "could have been" and "what will never be"

When Reader, along with Sabine and Ahsoka, finally finds Ezra, the meeting is all tight, endlessly long hugs and radiant smiles.

Obviously not a meeting between "just friends".

But at the same time it's obviously not a meeting between lovers. How could it be, when they didn't have the opportunity to be more than they were?

But at least, for the first time in years, Reader feels completely at peace, despite any imminent threat. They has finally found Ezra, and maybe that's enough.