faggot with a crossbow

thinking about when he leaves deadwood and goes missing, they find his mangled, rotting body at the bottom of that cliff, and the rest of the upp have to process him being dead

or, worse, see an au where he goes back to them. where he stays in deadwood and tries to pretend he never died, like nothing happened, and then months and months later his body his found.

see him running after that, and the upps trying to find out who they've been talking to for months if william's been dead in the woods.

tags from @ngc-5194

DONT JUST LEAVE TS IN THE TAGS??? THIS IS PEAK IM NORMAL AND CHILL

love the way you phrase all this OUGH him being cold and having to brush it off as just poor circulation, im so torn between "will has always had cold hands but they get worse" and "will used to be one of the warmer ones in the group and suddenly he's freezing to the touch" because it's like,, will being tan pre dying

also. "does he possess his own rotting falling apart corpse and try and dispose of it?" im going to set you on fire btw. im blowing you up.

EOUGH "and what then." im kersploding you

see them somehow not ever figuring it out, him hiding it, going through SO much fear (enough that he has to start avoiding them, because they keep talking about it and asking him why he's not more enthused/interested because this seems right up his alley, and it's making him unbelievably anxious and scared which is forcing his powers into wack all over again) and then it becomes a mystery they never solved so they just keep randomly bringing it up over the years

and every single time he freaks out

see additionally them solving it, and will has been avoiding them for the above reasons, they find the answer despite the body being hidden or buried or just thrown back out into the woods (the horror of william carrying or, worse, possessing his body back to that cliff...) but will isn't there to KNOW they solve it and just, out of nowhere, they stop bringing it up around him

which he's sus of asf. they all think he actually died long, long ago, like MONTHS back when the abrahams situation happened, and he's been a resurrected corpse this whole time, and theyre all fucking terrified that if they keep talking about it will is gonna find out its his body they found out there and turn on them

there's a comic somewhere where will returns after several years and talks to norah, who thinks he's like agnes and mr brooks, and then he brings up his own death and she freaks out about it and he's like "you thought i was one of them and you still came out here with me alone?!"

just that desperation of a teenager who's not ready to let their friend go, who doesnt want to believe their friend is dead/a monster because he's still there, he still acts like himself, and it's different when it's a loved one. they dont want him to die, so they decide to just not say anything, but they keep LOOKING at him and it's really freaking him out

idk how long it'd take him to say something, or slip up with his powers and show that he's not quite like agnes or mr brooks and all them, but once he does they all breathe a collective sigh of relief that he's not like them and isn't gonna tweak out if they remind him he's dead (well. not to that degree anyway. i like to think will is somewhat in denial about the whole actually being a ghost thing and sometimes he's reminded of it and it just sends him spiralling)

(see the potential of them getting into a fight somehow, or it's a really high stress situation, and it just comes out. blurts something like them not caring/noticing him dying the first time, or something fucking awful like that, and they all go quiet in horror)

and he's TERRIFIED about them finding out and theyre just relieved he's not going to kill them if they bring it up and eougheoguh. eough. see also william dying a second time while still with the uppies and coming back even worse than before (referencing a specific PD fic) and just. agh. being even less capable of pretending to be human and shit

william is so physically affectionate with his friends so to me the concept of him running warm, holding their hands or hugging them in the winter to warm them up, suffocating all of them with heat during sleepovers, etc etc etc to him suddenly being Freezing to the touch and deeply avoidant of any physical contact is sooooo tasty to me

i loveee the concepts of them realizing hes dead and assuming he's like the returned so much. maybe not in quite the same way as the others, since his body seems to be separate, but trying to keep that knowledge from him all the same. how far would he go to keep them from learning the dead body is his? how far would they go to keep him from learning the same?

and it always comes back to that conversation with lui about letting mr. abrahams follow through on bringing his son back. it won't really be him. it's a monster. a lie. if anyone finds out, they'll be in constant danger.

but now its not some kid they don't really know, brought back by a man who is actively endangering others with his actions. it's william. it's their friend. who is back, somehow, and doesn't seem to know he was ever gone.

But to prove that it wasn't a fluke, they continued to have the best ideas for every aspect of it. How does he transform? A cool watch you can also sell as a toy. That watch's name? Omnitrix. Say it. It's so satisfying. How many aliens? Ten. Nice round number. The kid's name? Ben. The show's name? Ben Ten. His full name is Benjamin Tennyson, a normal, plausible name, but he also turns into 10 aliens.

Bigger brands dream about this synergy. Better writers would kill for this coherence. So holistic. So intuitive. The identity alone!!! The retro alien sound motif? Chilling. The green? Any other color would be wrong. The kirby krackle pattern? It seems so obvious in retrospect. The roadtrip format? Genius. Lesser writers would've done the spider-man high school thing. His arch nemesis being Cthulhu darth vader? Inspired, iconic, intimidating!

link to the specific video from the screenshot above here:

it's part of their series "A People's History of Native America," playlist link here.

and while I'm here I'll plug some other channels because PBS does solid work. also, iirc they are (...were? I'm not actually sure what applies to them now that they've been defunded) legally required to include captions and they actually do that, so you won't run into auto-generated nonsense.

I haven't checked out PBS Documentaries yet, but they have some stuff tackling similar topics. (I am adding things to my watchlist as we speak.) channel link here.

PBS Terra doesn't pull punches on climate change. channel link here.

PBS Eons has some super cool videos on the history of life on Earth, channel here, and Storied does awesome work on linguistics and mythology, channel here.

aaand while we're talking about defunded USA public media that doesn't pull punches when critiquing our history and government, I am once again going to plug a couple NPR podcasts. Throughline does deep-dives on history, culture, laws, and so on (link here); I'm especially partial to their We the People miniseries, which covers our rights from the Amendments. Code Switch covers culture, focusing on race and minority groups, and has been doing some especially good coverage on what the Trump administration's fuckery means on a practical level (link here). (these aren't the only NPR podcasts that talk about this stuff, but they're the big ones afaik.)

thinking about when he leaves deadwood and goes missing, they find his mangled, rotting body at the bottom of that cliff, and the rest of the upp have to process him being dead

or, worse, see an au where he goes back to them. where he stays in deadwood and tries to pretend he never died, like nothing happened, and then months and months later his body his found.

see him running after that, and the upps trying to find out who they've been talking to for months if william's been dead in the woods.

RANDOM PICTURES ATTACJ GO