:3

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

“wake up,” she urged the dummy, pressing her hands to the pulse points on its wrists. “come on. what the fuck.”

“yeah, i don’t think that asking nicely is going to do the trick,” hank said, his eyebrows raised. his helmet, the special one they’d decorated for him with craft supplies from michael’s when he’d gotten promoted to firestation chief, sat askew on his head. “i can see now why they didn’t pass you.”

annabelle rolled her eyes. “it’s a psychological thing,” she said. “it’s like, you give the brain an instruction and it follows naturally. and the pulse-point thing always works. i don’t know why it’s not, like, in any of the books, but i swear to god it’s worked for me every time.”

it was true that annabelle had the best record on low body counts, which was good because she was the smallest person on the team not counting Georgie, who was a corgi. jake and lillian were always making fun of her for having been the shortest of their whole rookie class. but it hadn’t ever been a problem before; annabelle rarely had to carry anybody out, because she was good enough at getting them on their feet.

but none of that would matter if she couldn’t pass her stupid recertification exam, because they’d take her badge and she’d have to go be, like, a doctor or something.

hank blew out a long breath and sunk down to where she was kneeling on the station floor in full fire gear, giving CPR to the practice dummy, whom they called dierdre. there was a little light that went on when you’d saved its life. it had been a dull gray for an hour now.

“look, AB. i know you’re a good firefighter, and i know you know how to deliver CPR. just do it like you do it during an emergency. you’re overthinking it.”

“but this is what i do during an emergency!” annabelle cried, throwing her hands up. “i put my hands on their pulse points and i use psychological mumbo-jumbo and they just get up and walk!” 

hank blinked. “…really,” he said, voice flat. “people who’ve been inhaling smoke for half an hour just … get up and walk.”

“the brain is an incredibly powerful organ,” said annabelle, shrugging. “look man, i don’t know, okay? but it works. i haven’t had to actually do CPR in like a year and a half.”

he gave her a long, quiet look and said, “well….huh,” before pushing himself back up onto his feet and frowning off into the distance. “keep practicing,” he said after a minute, and left her there.

-

hank switched her team.

“what the fuck, man,” she said, sliding into the truck next to him as the sirens went on. “i can’t get CPR on one fucking dummy and suddenly you don’t trust me to do my job without supervision?”

carl and bethany very carefully did not meet her eyes in the rearview from the backseat. bethany pulled a magazine from beneath the seat and said loudly, “look, carl, jennifer aniston and brad pitt are getting back together.”

“thank christ,” said carl. “i’ve been really worried about jen.”

hank gave annabelle the flat look that had gotten him promoted to firestation chief in the first place, the one that said i’m your dad and you don’t want to disappoint me. as always, annabelle wilted underneath it, sliding down in her seat and crossing her arms over her chest. it was a difficult feat in full gear but she wanted him to know she was feeling sullen.

“i trust you completely,” hank told her, his voice a light scold. “i want to see you in action so i can help you figure out what’s going wrong with the dummies. sometimes it’s hard for the brain to accurately remember everything that happens during a crisis.”

annabelle rolled her eyes. “i told you,” she said. “it’s just – it’s the same thing every time, I’m not like, blacking out.”

“great, then i’m about to learn a cool new trick,” hank said serenely, and pulled the truck out of the lot. annabelle kept her gaze focused out of the window, watching the city pass as carl and bethany talked loudly about which celebrities were dating which other celebrities and who wore what better. she tried to swallow down the nerves that tightened her throat. maybe the dummy was right. maybe she was doing something else and didn’t remember it. maybe the last two years had been a fluke and she had no business being a firefighter. maybe she was about to get fired.

there wasn’t a fire, though the alarm was going off. instead they found a bag of smoking popcorn and the collapsed heap of a forty-five year old bachelor type, down to just his boxers and a pair of slippers with llamas on them. he had no pulse. 

hank held carl and bethany back, directing them to deal with the smoke from the popcorn; annabelle he pointed toward the resident with a jerk of his chin. 

she sighed, kneeling by his side. she pressed her hands flat to his heart and then dragged them across his chest and down each arm, to his wrists. with her thumbs on his pulse point, she hissed, “let’s go, man. up and at ’em. you’re not meant to die in your underwear while cooking popcorn, come on.”

she held her breath for a few moments, conscious of hank’s eyes on her, and let out a long sigh of relief when she felt his pulse jump beneath her, watched his eyes flicker. “what the fuck?” he asked, voice a croak. “what happened?”

“you gotta eat more vegetables, bud,” annabelle told him, and looped his arm over her shoulders to help him get to his feet. she was so relieved she could have wept, but instead met hank’s eyes with a challenging glare. see? she thought. i told you. “let’s get you to the ambulance.”

-

“the bad news is that you have a lot of practicing to do if you want to pass your recert,” hank said without preamble, showing up at her apartment. she didn’t think she’d ever seen him in jeans before. it was weird. “the good news is i understand your problem now.”

annabelle stepped aside, beckoning him in. “what problem?” she demanded. “it worked! you saw it work. that’s the opposite of a problem.”

hank shrugged. he handed her a trifold that he’d clearly printed off at home. it said so you think you’re a necromancer. annabelle blinked down at it, and then up at hank, and then down at the trifold again. “i … don’t understand what’s happening here,” she told him honestly. 

“i’m not in the community and they’re kind of cagey, so i can’t really tell you a lot,” hank told her, stilted and visibly uncomfortable. “but i have a cousin who is, and um, i just want you to know that this doesn’t change anything. you’re still who you’ve always been and you have my complete support. we’ll figure out how to get around the recert. maybe i’ll – i can put you on admin duty to give you time to study. we’ll say it’s because of an injury.”

“hank,” annabelle said, with some urgency. “hank, this flier says the word necromancer.”

“yes,” agreed hank, looking relieved. “oh, good, you’ve heard of it already. i thought i was going to have to have the whole your body is changing talk.”

annabelle shook her head. “no, i – hank. you know that … um, you know that necromancy isn’t real, right? people can’t bring other people back from the dead. that’s crazy.”

“annabelle, not four hours ago you instructed a dead man to stand up and he did.”

“okay, he wasn’t dead, obviously. he was almost dead, at best.”

“no. he was dead.”

“i felt his pulse! it was very faint!”

“you called his pulse. no one else would have felt it, because it wasn’t there except in response to you.”

“hank, what the fuck.”

he shrugged. “read the flier,” he instructed. “and bring dierdre home with you. you’re going to have to practice a lot if you want to get recertified, considering you haven’t one time had to use any of the skills you learned the first go around.”

he bussed her temple as he went by, letting himself out of her apartment with a friendly wave. annabelle looked down at the flier in her hand with a frown. when she unfolded it, the first page said, everyone’s necromancy journey is different, but most people discover their gift by accident. have you ever brought a pet back to life? touched an elderly relatives hand and seen some of the color flood back into their face? or perhaps, more subtly, been able to keep cut flowers alive long past their purchase date?

annabelle looked at her kitchen table. she’d had the same vase of tulips on it since she moved in, three years ago. it was true they periodically started to wilt, but she usually just changed their water and they were fine, popping back up one after the other as she slid them into the fresh vase. 

sometimes I think about a version where the King/Atlas didn't essentially go insane, where he didn't make the decision to lock Siffrin away. Where he didn't become paranoid of people hurting them, because stars has Siffrin been hurt before, and didn't cut off Siffrin's mental recovery journey in favor of a caging them. Where he remembered that the people who have hurt them so badly had done the exact same thing he did when Atlas took a crown.

Where they found a different way to protect Vaugarde, and maybe, just maybe, did bring back their homeland after all.

and sometimes I think about the version where Siffrin chose safety over freedom, and accepted the cage. A version where the cage had a door because Siffrin wouldn't leave, where on the march across Vaugarde the cage swung empty in the King's hand because Siffrin was perched on his shoulder singing a song that lulled time itself to sleep. Because they weren't leaving, they were safe right here, and when the day broke he returned to the cage without a second thought.

and sometimes I think about the version where the cage was chosen and rejected, and Euphrasie won the fight at the top of Dormont's House rather than defeated and the normal plotline continued.

I do actually have writing for that one somewhere hang on- plopped it under the cut. I wrote it as a what-if blurb for some friends.

hi this is Ray after reading/fixing formatting for that blurb. Wow they talk differently in this one, why the fuck do they refer to CG as the Ever-Shifting God. That's cool as fuck, actually. Damn, now my options are to either mourn that or go into ICAF and manually change all instances of the change god in their pov

...

I'll mourn it I think. writings hella interesting though, big fan of the vibes.

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...or I could be lazy and just link it on the masterpost and it can be a fun surprise for anyone who goes through the effort of checking out my tumblr

my gf and I are a black wlw couple who are trying to make it to mid August when my job starts and we need help until then. my gf needs money for her estrogen, I need money for my psych meds, and we need groceries to feed an 8 person household + a cat, and our phone bill

because of the heatwave and following storms, we haven’t been able to go out to the food bank, and while we no longer live in a food desert, the car has been in the shop for about a month now so it’s basically just been cup noodles since june, but we’ve run out.

I get that things are hard for everyone, and I hate having to make this post but we really have no other options rn as my gfs potential clients are leaving her on read and my job doesn’t start for another month.

my cashapp is $silvertheestallion

my gfs cashapp is $Santanajammn

my Venmo is cherryadventure2

hers is sidiosquiere

Like. IT WORKS SO WELL WITH MIRABELLE’S STORY!!! Mirabelle has religious guilt and thinks she is just broken, because she has absolutely no idea that ‘aroace’ exists, and that fucking SUCKS. I like that exclusion of labels CAN affect others, it points out the negatives of a scenario where no labels is the norm. I like that even the religion considered to be ‘inclusive’ can still make a person feel alienated. I like that despite everything, the Change belief is still a religion, Vaugarde is still a country very very heavily TIED to said religion, and because of that its rules can be detrimental to its followers.

The perspective shifts from first to third as the Aro/Ace wears a different expression that they've never wore doing the entire course of the story: the audience is never told nor shown what the expression looks like as they walk through various locations, each location referring back to a major scene as each location has the most prominent individual of said scene (not including the Aro/Ace) with the Aro/Ace asking a single question "Where is (insert the name of the one who give them the potion)" each person giving some kind of clue of where they seen them last before commenting on the Aro/Ace's expression.

one person says "so you finally came to terms with your feelings?" with a cocky smile and the Aro/Ace simply says "yes" the cocky one replies with "with an smile like that you didn't even have to-" as the Aro/Ace walks off without another word, the next person maybe their sibling gives a clue and ask "never seen you with a smile THAT big are they really important to you?" and the Aro/Ace simply says "yes" the sibling replys with "if you say so, also do you want-" without another word the Aro/Ace is already gone and they approach the last person their closest friend and ask the question once more and the friend starts to give their answer before stopping midway through and asking their question early "hey, are you ok?" once more the Aro/Ace simply says "yes" the friend levels their gaze, disbelief written on their face and says "yeah no, I don't- HEY WAIT" but it's too late they already said too much (also maybe have the scenes happen in reverse of the counterpart like they try to convince their closest friend first, then the sibling or something like that)

reblog if you believe anon is wrong and writers are writers, no matter what they write about. no matter how they portray these taboo topics.

reblog if you believe art can be about topics that are controversial, taboo or outright disturbing, and artists who create controversial, taboo or outright disturbing art are as valid as artists who create art of conservative values.

This will in fact encourage and feed your fanwriter way more than any number of "extra kudos" could.

been fucking around with the watercolor brush in krita and backgrounds the past couple of days. texture is the name of the game when you're me babyyy. also color I will die without color, green may not be canon to the actual au but I will never stop color-coding my aus. ever.

(watch me find a way to put green in this au. I will Find A Way.)

ily Loop <3 my wonderful fae Loop <3 they/them more like they/slay...I need to give you a bigger wardrobe in canon and have you and Mira trade dresses for fun and sillies.

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