Lover of Words

They're not like other dreams. There's no distortion to them, none of the instability that comes with most dreams. Everything is vivid, clear. Your mind is sharp, orderly.

Nonetheless, it is not a lucidity. You don't know you are in a dream, and you won't, not until you wake up. 

You'll be in a field, a forest, on the shore of some great ocean. Empty landscapes, all of them. There will always be something there for you -- a cup on the stump of a tree, a perfectly round pool of water, a series of leaves, constellations wheeling across the sky.

The vast majority of people will only ever have one of these dreams. Whatever their reaction to the objects, the signs, the trials, they don't pass whatever the unstated test is, and they never have another dream again. They carry on with their lives, those lucky masses.

To some, to people like you, the dreams continue. They become familiar over a month, two, three. You'll put the leaves in order, you'll stare into the depths of the pool, the cup will fill with sweet-tasting tea. You'll see the stars wheel in patterns overhead, you'll find patterns in their dance. You'll preform these tasks with a strange, natural intuition, though some will feel easier than others. It will surprise you to hear that most people have no such drive, no such innate understanding of what these visions require of you.

Of course, you can fail these tests, should you wish to. You don't have bend the motions of the stars to your will until they are set in the correct patterns, you don't need to look to something beyond the pool of water, to see into a place that is not where you stand, to arrange the plants according to what is within, not without. You don't need to. You can avoid the fate you don't yet know about.

You can, but you won't. This drive is buried too deep to be avoided.

The last dream will have no task for you, no challenge, no test. You will awake in another empty place, at night, made bright by the moon, the stars.

In front of you will be a path, stretching straight away to the horizon. 

This will be the last chance you have to avoid this fate. You can avoid this fate, if you wish to, if you can gather your wits and realize that this dream is no longer entirely a dream. 

All you must do is not walk forward. Do not follow the path. Stay exactly where you are, even if you do not wake up. Especially if you do not wake up.

You only have one other choice, and it is the path.

You're already walking, aren't you?

Something is pulling you forwards, the same bone-deep intuition that you felt about the tests. Something not that you need to do, but something that is so easy that it would be more difficult to not you.

And so you walk, along the path, under the moon. You've made your choice; you'll find, now, that there is no turning back.

You will walk towards the horizon, and the moon will spin through it's phases like rotoscope.

When you next wake, you will not be in the same place you fell asleep. You will be somewhere new. Somewhere else. You will say goodbye to your old life, whatever it was. However perfect or dismal it was, no matter if you longed to leave it behind or were content with your lot. You will not have a choice. There is no way home, not from here, not anymore.

cw: lots of head trauma/brain injury/recovery stuff.

Steve wakes up in the hospital with someone snoring loudly on his leg, mouth open, drool getting soaked up into the scratchy hospital blanket over him.

Steve just stares.

It’s… Freddie? No, that’s not right... Eddie! Eddie ‘the freak’ Munson, known delinquent and drug dealer… resting his head on Steve’s lap.

What the hell…?

Before the ghost even arrived, the blinding power flowing through his spell array nearly knocked him flat. It had felt like being swatted in the eyeballs by an eldritch god.

The ghost appeared in human form, fully alive, before being transformed by the summoning magic. John had only ever heard whispers of legends about a being who could do such a thing. The legends were vague and grandiose, but some epithets included The One Who Walks Between, He Who Straddles Life and Death, Twilight Walker, Shroud Danger Child, and The Halver. 

The ghost could not only see his soul at a glance, it could perceive all the damage he had done making deals with demons.

The ghost implied it was on casual, friendly terms with the Ancient of Time aka Chronos, Kala, Father Time, etc. And that it had altered the timeline at least once already.

It could age. Despite what the ghost said, only Neverborn should be able to age. The dead were static, and given the death that he could feel sustaining the portal, this ghost had definitely died.

It was brilliant enough to pinpoint a weakness and successfully distract Tim by transforming into a shape that could manipulate his protective instincts. John did not want to admit that he also felt protective of the cute little blighter.

It had hopped out of the summoning circle as if it were just chalk scribbles, despite John working in some of his most powerful containment spells as a matter of what he had thought was excessive precaution.

Shite, the list had already reached seven items. The tatzelwurm (had Drake really just named the thing Little Baby Man?) glared at him and called him “Gross!” 

“Seriously!? This cloaking spell should be more than sufficient.” John grumbled. “Did it really have no effect?” If so, that was gonna be item number eight.

Little Baby Man tilted his head. “It worked.” Then he huffed with amusement. 

Thank fuck for small blessings. 

A quickly muttered spell turned his burning cigarette into a makeshift sort of laser pointer, and Constantine distracted Little Baby Man while he tried to think of what to do next.

“Hey kid, this is a problem.” He kept his voice low, and watched to see if the tatzelwurm appeared to pay any attention to him. It dedicated all its attention to the glowing dot, and ignored the two men.

“I assume this isn’t the normal direction your interrogations go.” Drake wound his shoelace around his hand and pocketed it. “It’s certainly a first for me.”

“Ditto, in so many ways.”

“Any idea what to do now?”

“We should probably return him where he came from, and wait for Zatanna to get back from wherever she’s disappeared to now.” John would really like a second opinion. He would also like to dump this mess in someone else’s lap and be on his way. 

Although to be fair, watching the tatzelwurm careen around after his lazer dot was actually pretty fun. Not that he’d ever admit it. Still, the creature was done answering questions and John wasn’t prepared to bind the thing because he didn’t think he’d need to pack the tools to bind an eldritch god when Batman called him to do a “quick consult.”

Danny couldn’t remember the last time he had this much fun. The CEO person played with him! He did feel a bit bad for hurting his foot, but it was difficult to dwell on regrets or worries when he could attack the string instead. And now there was a red dot to chase! It was very fast and sneaky, but he was faster and sneakier.

Is this what Paulina felt like when she wished herself to be a giant chibi version of herself to be loved and worshipped by everyone? Because he felt adorable. And fierce. He was going to kill that red dot so hard when he finally sunk his claws in it!

Frustratingly, it seemed to also have intangibility powers. Well, Danny knew what to do about that! He concentrated ectoplasm into his paw and bapped it down hard on the dot. This scorched the floor a bit, but when he lifted his paw, the red dot was skewered on one of his claws. It tried to tug away, but he clung tight. Apparently its size belied its strength, because it started to drag him across the floor. 

Danny tried to release the dot, but his claw was firmly snagged, so he resigned himself to being dragged back into the chalk circle. He tingled a bit as he crossed the perimeter, but it wasn’t a bad sensation, just a little odd. Then a portal opened up and pulled him through the water filled tube snake toy sensation in reverse and ugh! Just as bad the second time, if not worse.

The spell spat him out in human form under the Specter Speeder. Or rather, it ejected him at speed so he smacked into the bottom of the Speeder before falling back to the ground with a heavy thud. Thankfully he didn’t crack his head against the concrete, but he still couldn’t stifle a pained groan.

A firm hand wrapped around Danny’s ankle and dragged him out, and he found himself staring up at Drake and Constantine for the third time that day.

“Uh, hi,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I suppose I have some explaining to do.”

Being able to create ghost portals would come in real handy right about now. Maybe he should just commit some arson and let these two deal with escaping the basement on their own.

Pt. 1 Pt. 2 Pt. 3 (you're here)

Full fic on Ao3

I woke up feeling groggy and disoriented, because that’s what happens when you’ve been at work until 2 AM, got home after three, and then some asshole wakes you up at DAWN. I sat up - on a bit of a tilt, I admit - and tried to glare.

The androgynous person with the wild curls, brilliant smile, and faint glow around them didn’t seem to care. “Hail, Jenna! I congratulate thee on thy elevation to godhood!”

I stared at them for a second, then managed a semi-comprehensible mumble. “Wha?”

“Thou art a newly ascended goddess, and I am sent to bid thee congratulations and well-wishing!” The smile got even brighter. Whoever… whatever… this person was, they were abso-fucking-lutely delighted about this wonderful news. “I must away, for I am a busy messenger, but we twain shall meet again!”

And then the bright figure was gone and I was left sitting there, still half asleep and fully bewildered. After a second, I tried speaking again. “… goddess of WHAT?”

There was no answer.

I lay back and tried to convince myself it was all just a dream, but… it wasn’t. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, but not this time. Some glowing, jolly … being… had woken me up at the asscrack of dawn, told me I was a goddess, and then left.

I mean… what the fuck?

I would have decided that it was a hallucination, I think, except that as I lay there, I realised slowly that even though I’d been asleep for maybe a couple of hours, I wasn’t tired. I really, genuinely wasn’t tired. It’s been so long since I wasn’t tired that it took me a while to even identify what was going on. And nothing hurt. Not my back, my shoulders, my knees, my hands… nothing.

I got out of bed and looked down at myself. I still looked the same, as far as I could tell. Medium build with a bit of middle-aged sag, scars on my hands from decades of kitchen work, the pallor of someone who spends all their time working nights, and the same ratty nightshirt I’d gone to sleep in. I went over to the mirror to check my face, and that was the same too. Lined, pale, with sharp eyes and a thin mouth, framed in slightly greyed brown hair. Ordinary. Not the face of a goddess.

But I wasn’t tired. Nothing hurt. In fact… I felt great.

Figuring I might as well ride the weird rush while I had it, I went to make myself an early breakfast… and a proper breakfast, too, with scrambled eggs and bacon as well as toast and coffee. I sat down to eat at my battered old kitchen table, and tried to think.

Obviously I wasn’t, like, capital G God, or anything. That would have presumably involved more fanfare than a single cryptic messenger. And they’d said ‘a’ goddess, not ‘the’ anything. And they’d used my name, so I wasn’t newly appointed as one of the gods anyone had heard of.

So… goddess of… something, I guess? One of those minor deities that accrued around stronger pantheons, or in isolated places. Like how little European villages in the middle of forests accumulated forest gods, or island countries picked up gods of seas and streams and stuff. I really hoped that was it. That level of godhood was something I could just about comprehend. Maybe I was the goddess of something really minor, like aglets, or deep-frying. I am really good at getting a balky deep-fryer to behave.

I really hoped that was it. I thought I could just about cope with becoming the goddess of deep-fryers, or pancakes, or something. That seemed like a… a manageable amount of divinity.

It felt strange being awake all day before work, and I did try to nap, but I just wasn’t sleepy. I tried, and ten minutes later I was standing in the kitchen again, mixing a batch of cookie dough. Baking helped - it kept me busy, at least.

It was a relief when I could head to work. I’ve worked six days out of seven at the Blue Plate Diner for the last fifteen years, and been part-owner for the last six. That kitchen was as much my home as my shabby apartment, if not more so.

I went in early, and sent Rio the day cook home. He looked exhausted, and was grateful to have his shift cut a little short, especially since I promised to pay him for the hour regardless. The day waitresses greeted me, though we don’t know each other well - I never work days - and Stanley the sous was there already.

I walked into my kitchen and immediately felt better. This was what I’d wanted, I realized, what my apartment kitchen hadn’t been able to give me. My kitchen, my domain… every inch familiar, every dish known by heart.

And then… I knew. I felt it.

I could feel the heat of a million grills. The bubble of a million fryers. And the prayers… oh, the prayers. A great silent roar of prayers that the orders would be right, that the rush would end, that the pizza wouldn’t burn and the fries would cook quickly. The pleas for endurance, for patience, for enough tips to get by, for a good smiting for a shitty customer.

Oh, I’m definitely going to be doing a lot of smiting when I figure out how.

I am a goddess.

I am the goddess of short-order cooking. And here in my kitchen, in the very seat of my power, I could do anything.

Stanley yelped and jumped back as my eyes snapped open, and I could see them glowing in my reflection on the grimy window. And then I did what every cook, whether they admit it or not, has always wanted to do. I raised my hands and I woke my kitchen up like a goddamn Disney magician.

Utensils flew on their own to their tasks. The fryer bubbled, blorped, and cleaned itself in one swift shudder, hocking out a lump of unknowable black ick into the nearest garbage can. The fridge opened itself so a dozen eggs could float out and over to the right station. I looked the other way, and the walk-in freezer popped open, spitting out two dozen rolls ready to be thawed. Sauces refilled themselves with a glance. A fry basket filled itself and put itself down in the cleanly gleaming oil. Oh, yeah. This is my domain. My temple. Here, my will is all.

Stanley was still staring, open-mouthed, and I grinned at him. “I became a goddess today.” He stared at me, eyes popping, and then he slowly grinned back. “If anyone was gonna be a kitchen goddess, you’re it. No doubt.”

I didn’t just stand there and watch the magic cooking. I’m a cook. I use my hands, always. But now it was like I had a hundred, a thousand more hands. Like I could see every inch of the kitchen, all the time.

And not just mine, either. While I grilled steaks and burgers, made salads and fixed milkshakes, my awareness expanded out further and further. Blocks away, a nervous kid at McDonalds stumbled and tried to catch himself, and I steadied him before his hand went into the deep-fryer. A woman at a food cart, out of napkins, prayed and found a package that hadn’t been there a moment before. An over-worked pizza chef got their second wind and three simple orders in a row. Food didn’t burn, orders didn’t go wrong, soft-serve machines unclogged and coffee-machines purred obediently. I was aware of all of it, doing all of it, and yet I was still fully aware of my own kitchen, my own diner, of every order going out in record time and the food being better than anything than even I’d ever managed before. I didn’t get tired… in fact, the longer I was in my kitchen, the better I felt.

By the end of the night, Stanley was a fervent believer, as were both the waitresses. I couldn’t hear their prayers quite as clearly as those of actual cooks, but counter staff and wait staff seem to come under my protection too, if they’re in one of ‘my’ restaurants. I tested my limits… anything that could be called short-order cooking seemed to be it. Fast-food, diners, and the like, mostly. Food carts that served hot food were mine, but dessert places of all descriptions weren’t. Bakeries and cafes were both off my list, and I could feel - I can’t explain how - that they belonged to different gods. Fine dining restaurants were outside my purview, and most delis, but anywhere with a deep-fryer or a grill lit up in my mind’s eye.

Closing up was a lot easier when the kitchen had become self-cleaning, so Stanley helped out in the front of the diner. Then we headed home. When I got back to the apartment, I wasn’t tired at all… I felt better than I ever have, charged by contact with my temple and my mostly unknowing believers. Turns out that gods - even minor ones - don’t need sleep to recharge, which is certainly a nice perk.

Broken bodies, limbs askew like a marionette, with white handkerchiefs tied around their wrists - the polymer fibres were warped from the heat of a small bonfire of children’s toys. In the wind’s cool caress, like kisses from a widow or the clutch of a grieving mother, the fabric thrashed like a flag. They were surrendering. Promise. They had come into the city with empty hands and left with them crossed over their chest. 

A flower grew amongst the rubble, weaving itself through the mélange of stone and shattered picture frames. It was crushed under the heel of a soldier’s boot.

Can you help?

Reacting to Death

I don't like writing reaction beats myself, I'd usually keep the inititial "reaction scene" short, but show how the character slips into thining about the dead person time to time.

Another reason why your scene may sound "cringey" might be because the overall personality of your character doesn't match the kind of reaction they would have. Not everyone has to break down sobbing the second they get the news.

The Initial Reaction

There can be so many reactions to the news that someone is dead:

immediately breaking down and sobbing

Freezing on the spot + being unable to hear/react to others around them

Feeling like the ground below them has opened up

Complete disbelief + asking the same question over and over again

Calmly noting down what they should be doing next because they feel like they'll break if they don't keep moving forward

Being angry at others around them + the world in general

Taking quick, shallow breaths / forgetting to breathe

Feeling cold all over

You can try picking 1-2 of these and keep the scene powerful and short. If this is a POV character, you can:

Subsequent Path of Recovery (or not)

Arguably, I would say that how you choose to take your character back to the death after the initial realization is more important.

Show how everyday things like a certain object, people with similar hairstyles, certain places and even weather, makes the character think about the dead.

Describe how the character eats less/ finds things less funny, etc.

Describe the character's internal desire to talk about the dead person, or wish to avoid any conversation that even remotely reminds them of the dead person.

"If [dead person] were here, they would've [done this]"

"I could still feel her smile at the back of my mind."

no one saw him arrive and he has no car.

he’s never bought anything from the store, and a few locals said they saw him simply cooking and eating the fish he catches on the spot.

the only belongings he seems to own are his fishing gear.

when asked where he lives, he points to the cliff. there is a tiny blue house there, balancing precariously on wooden stilts. the house has never been there and no one’s seen it before, but the local gas attendant pulled up a 40 year old photo of her grandma on the beach, and sure enough, the tiny house is there, a wee speck of color hanging like a barnacle on the cold, wet bluff.

the age of his mysterious little home aside, no one’s sure when he visits it. he’s at his little dock before the earliest ships cast out, and the sickly glow of his lantern can be seen long into the coldest of nights.

the man has pulled the strangest things from the ocean. fish, to be sure, but other, stranger things. lily pads, far from their native biomes. fishing poles, tattered and worn, of various makes and styles- some look positively ancient. boots. giant shells with twisted patterns to match no living thing. a genuine horse saddle once. bowls. a bone that looked just a bit like a human femur.

and books. perfect, unblemished books, nearly glowing with some kind of energy and filled with a script both unfamiliar and unsettling to see.

he opens them each with a breathless anticipation that tastes like brine or maybe tears.

I couldn’t muster any emotion as I met his gaze. In retrospect, I would call it apathy, a certain detachedness as I regarded his pale face and unreadable eyes.

In a sense, it was fitting I would be so blasé, after all, he and I were cut from the same cloth, were we not? In another world I may even have called him father.

I didn’t reply. Why should I? Alone in my cell, he could easily have been an imagining. I did this sometimes. Conjured up visions to keep my company in my desolation.

“Chimaera,” he said, after my silence. “They are to hang you at dawn. It was my decree. It is because you are a witch.”

“I-“ Reluctantly, I addressed the imagining.

“What was that?”

“I have another name. You gave it to me.” This time, as I stared insolently at my enemy, my emotionless mask began to waver, allowing accusation and a sharp, stinging intensity to build up in my eyes.

“Won’t you accept me?” I continued, voice barely above a whisper. “I am your blood.”

The man, the monster, my father, took a step back and laughed. A tinny, ringing, artificial sound. Staged, but then, I no longer trusted my senses. Distortion affected the edges of all I perceived.

As he walked away, footsteps echoing on the stone, I smiled an ugly, twisted smile. I never knew, until the last moment. Whether what I had seen was real. Any acknowledgement- and it easily could have been a fiction.

some days your body feels 

like whispering morning fog lingering

brushing, sliding fingertips across 

windowpanes, leaving frost cold

breath(e in)

some days your head feels

like spun-sugar soap bubbles drifting

past your coral-spiked thoughts jumbled 

darting silver into bones bleached white

breath(e out)

some days your heart feels

like barnacle-encrusted anchors weighing

down jewelled daggers in rusted shut

groaning chest with seawater they

breath(e in)

some days the pressure 

like the whole ocean rests atop

is the tension in elastic bands 

stretched to saltwater taffy lengths you can

touch lines knotting nothing weighty

breath(e out)

some days the sting

like the sharp salty tang clogging your

fingertips is the beading

paper-cut welling rubies 

adorning labyrinth whorls you can

touch the red-thread tethering

macabre line-art to your wrists

B R E A T H E

today my body feels

like the boarding gate in a foreign country

faintly i hear

at the end of a tunnel i see, 

for a moment, watery weak sunlight

and burbling voices

echo

and i am not here

and i am not here.

B R E A T H E

I want to talk about two arcs today, one pretty much everybody loves, and one most every fan complained about before the fandom died. Both have to do with having characters completely fail to accomplish an objective, something they’ve been working toward for chapters or episodes or maybe the whole season.

Honorable mention to Infinity War’s “did we just lose.” IW and Endgame had meta reasons for happening the way they did, not just in-story. Books don’t have to contend with actor contracts and box office sales. Personally I don’t think Tony had to die at all the way it happened in the movie, but they killed him because of ~symbolism~ and everyone knew it would be coming and, well, he can’t play the character forever. Don’t love Endgame.

More to the point, both movies were more concerned with the legacy of the MCU over the best choices they could have made for the characters.

Failure in fiction is tricky to pull off in the best stories with the best of intentions, too. You don’t want the audience to feel bait-and-switched, like they invested all this time and effort into your book, only to have catharsis ripped away for ~subversion~ *cough*Star Wars*cough*

What was the point of all the nonsense if it all amounted to nothing? Why should we care?

So!

—

The Sophia Arc (The Walking Dead)

Almost the entire second season of this show has the characters stuck in one location, a remote Georgia farm, looking for a missing character, Sophia. Not every single episode is spent searching, but the continued excuse to not move on and to not get kicked out by the farm’s owner is that they haven’t found her yet.

Compared to season 1, which was constantly moving, constantly giving the characters new challenges and new locations and had very high stakes, season 2 was much more character focused, with more personal, low-stakes problems. I like character drama, so I didn’t mind, but if you came to The Walking Dead expecting a repeat of season 1, you were understandably disappointed.

The arc ends rather infamously with the revelation that Sophia had died and turned a long time ago, and was right under their noses in a barn. All that searching, all their effort, all that hope of finding her, was for nothing.

This arc had many issues, but some I think about after the fact include:

Sophia was reduced to a macguffin. She was barely a character in season 1 and disappeared too early in season 2 for anyone to care about her as more than just “she’s a little girl, you should care”. So audiences can only really empathize with her mother, who herself doesn’t go searching for her daughter, and who we also don’t really care about compared to the more present characters.

Sophia’s arc itself made no impact on the plot at large. The barn full of walkers did, but Sophia herself was just a consequence. The plot would have been the same had she not been in the barn, because 'you’ve been keeping them like pets' was the big reveal of the episode, the crux of the debate between the Group and their hosts is “walkers aren’t people you need to adapt to the new world”.

The refusal to leave the farm because they were tied to the Sophia search, on top of having many more episodes than season 1, drastically reduced the pacing audiences were used to. One overarching goal that never got any closer is exhausting. They were never close to finding her, even when they thought they were.

Above all, though, I think what damned this arc the most was that it just didn’t matter. The Walking Dead suffered its entire runtime from redundancy and stagnation. The heroes were never allowed to build a community and grow and make any progress against the walker plague before the writers forced a reset, burned it down, and moved them to the next location. Sophia’s death was the start of it all (though it was good for seasons 3 through 5ish).

She didn’t plague the plot after she was gone. Carol (her mother) mentioned her a few times in passing. The only depth the arc had was “life sucks and this show is grimdark hope is for chumps”. It having no point and no resolution was the point.

—

The Day of Black Sun (ATLA)

Between seasons 2 and 3, the hype for the invasion of the Fire Nation took up a whole season’s worth of episodes. Once Sokka learned of the eclipse, beyond finding Appa, his priority one was reaching the Earth King to get the Earth Kingdom in on a massive invasion that could decide the war before Sozin’s comet.

They brought so many characters back for this, spared no expense in the budget for the rendering of the air fleet and the sub squad, had Aang finally back in his Air Nomad colors and shaved his new hair….

And they lost.

They lost so badly, only the kids could escape with their lives, everyone else got captured as prisoners of war.

And that’s not even mentioning how season 2 ended with “The Earth Kingdom has fallen”. Which I’m not talking about here because that’s not quite fitting the trope here. The threat was always there, but the heroes weren’t fighting all season to protect the Earth Kingdom, only to lose. We only knew about it because we got Azula POV working in the background.

But anyway—Day of Black Sun. Why it worked:

We knew it was doomed from the moment the Earth King told Azula, thinking she was an ally. It did not come out of nowhere. The shock just came from a kids show actually going through with it and not having them triumph despite the odds.

The cost was severe, and felt through the rest of the show (which did not go on for 8 more seasons unlike TWD), and the new stakes were felt immediately. Zuko changed sides, the last real chance to stage a rebellion just died, the Fire Nation has confirmation that the Avatar isn’t dead, and now they have a terrorism incident to propagandize, probably making it easier for Ozai to push his “Phoenix King” vision on his war council and his country.

Failure was imminent from the moment they arrived at the Gates of Azulon. The Fire Nation forces were competent and highly skilled, as they should be, so nothing came out of nowhere or felt like manipulative writing. They were simply an army prepared for their adversaries, fighting for their home, on their homeland.

But they did still fail epically. When you were a kid, you weren’t thinking “but wait the season must have more episodes after this, something must go wrong”. Even knowing what’s about to happen during rewatches, it doesn’t diminish the impact of this arc.

—

Last honorable mentions to the season 4 finale of Supernatural. Where Team Free Will's quest to stop the rise of the Devil became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Due to... a lot of things, namely cope and a CW budget that made the visualisation of the whole world ending a bit too ambitious. But honorable mention nonetheless.

—

So if you’re going to have characters blow it, and this is your plan from day one, you should have consequences, good and bad, coming out of it, otherwise it’s meaningless and the audience will feel duped.

“Did we just lose” was a fantastic twist, don’t get me wrong, but, to me, at least, the setup for Endgame and the execution of Endgame was just a little too polished in too many areas, sacrificing meaningful character development *cough*Natasha*cough* for satisfying the giant MCU machine.

Because the dusting certainly didn’t have lasting consequences equal to the impact in the moment. It was just a blip, mentioned a few times and not mattering at all in one show, and then mattering a whole lot in a different one, but largely the status quo returned. Such is the nature of comics, I guess.

Sophia, too, was a great twist, in isolation executed very well, in the grand scheme of things it just didn’t matter. Had she been a Maes Hughes type, haunting show for four more seasons as some symbol of the loss of innocence or humanity or the better days gone by, then maybe.

I like this trope not just because it's subversive, but because once you decide your hero's going to lose, you have a lot more room to write a conflict designed to fail. More competent villains, more desperate heroes, more 11th hour decisions.

I am made of invisible stitches From all the years I’ve spent Putting myself back together

Now and then new pieces fall off But my time is mostly used Fixing the stitches of an old piece  When they fray

And they fray often

I wonder if it’s the stitch itself Not strong enough Or if it’s me Not skilled enough

Maybe it’s both Weak stitches Sewn by sloppy hands

Sewing And resewing And resewing And resewing

It’s neverending But if I stop I crumble And I refuse

To break down now Would be a tragedy All my hard work Gone in the blink of an eye

You may not see  The stitches that hold me together The scars that have formed But they are there

For the Dreaming Bingo FREE SPACE

Rating: Gen

Ship: Dream/Hob- featuring past Dream/Thessaly

Warnings: none

Additional Tags: Human au, self-esteem issues, body image issues, past toxic relationships

Summary: Dream is well aware of his flaws. The one thing he has going for him that everyone loves to remind him is that he's "lucky he's pretty". So if he wants Hob to stay, he has to make sure he never sees him looking less than perfect.

This is just a snippet because I have zero chance of finishing this before the month is over but I want at least one bingo line 🥺. This is one of the flashbacks of how Dream developed his habits :')

Dream is 24, and he’s a little out of breath when he gets to the bar, but at least he isn’t late. Thessaly is strict about punctuality, and this is the first time she has agreed to introduce Dream to her friends. But when he approaches her by the entrance, she simply looks at him and sneers.

“God, you look awful.”

Dream looks down at himself. He is dressed in his nicest jeans and a black button up rolled up to his elbows, nice but still casual. But when he looks back at Thessaly, she’s not looking at his outfit. She’s looking at his face.

“I…” he touches his bare cheek nervously, “I did not put any makeup on. I was running late and-“

“I’d rather you show up late than show up looking like a corpse,” she snaps, “God, you look like you haven’t slept in a year.” 

He is tired. But she doesn’t sound concerned. She just sounds mad.

“I’ll fix it,” Dream blurts out, desperate, “Just, just tell them I’ll be a little late, I won’t be longer than fifteen minutes-“

“You better not be,” Thessaly huffs, turning away to walk into the bar, “If you’re later than that don’t bother coming at all.”

Dream runs. He sprints like the devil is on his heels, bursting into a convenience store and grabbing handfuls of makeup. His hands shake as he stands in the public restroom and layers foundation onto his face to try to fix it. To fix himself.

Ten minutes later he is kissing Thessaly on the cheek and greeting her friends.

“That’s more like it,” she says to him tersely under her breath, “now you just need to not be a freak for an hour. Try to stay seen and not heard, okay sweetie?” Her voice drips with condescension. But Dream knows she’s right.

He keeps quiet. He sits on his hands. He makes sure to always keep spare makeup in his coat after that. Thessaly still breaks up with him on their six month anniversary.

Example (less than five minutes but just an example of free writing for this prompt):

Willis grew up admiring his father, an executive at Herbst Chemical Company, but all this changes after going to the Bray All Boys school where he meets the generally nice but nuclear reactive Hunter. Hunter reveals facts about the Herbst Chemical plants and plant accidents that Willis had been shielded from all his life. This challenges Willis’s view of his own life and his friendships with other boys, some of whose families have strong ties to the chemical, pharmaceutical, oil, and weapons industries. During fall break, Willis’s parents come to visit, and Willis feels discomfort when he runs into Hunter while touring his parents around campus…

“No.” James scoffed, pulling on his joggers. “No, it’s just happened more recently, that’s it.”

“You know,” Sirius drawled out, rolling on his stomach and stretching like a cat, cigarette between his fingers, “I think I’m growing on you.”

“Well, yes,” James agreed, “but not like this.”

He clicked his tongue. “Okay, whatever you say. Still, your shirt is on the floor of my bedroom, so.” He shrugged nonchalantly, smirking at James as he looked up. “If you consider that to be true, do be it. Just to let you know, though, I’ve hooked up with guys fewer times than with you and they said differently.”

“Ah, yes, the irresistible,” He chuckled, “I’m not other guys, though.”

“Certainly not.” Sirius snickered, exhaling the smoke. “Still, you come back more. You need me, whether you want to admit that or not.”

James choked. “Right. Whatever you say.”