Space-cadet-25 - Spaced Out...

There is something about the idea of sharing a health bar - sharing pain - that I can't stop thinking about. Because obviously, there's the big things that they share, like deaths, or near death experiences, or attacks, but there's also the mundane, mild occurences of pain too.

Grian can feel the strike of an axe that hits Scar way too hard, but he can also feel the way Scar's muscles ache when he overexerts himself.

Bdubs can feel it when a skeleton gets a lucky shot past Impulse's shield, but he can also feel the thrum of Impulse's headache when the others keep blowing those horns.

Cleo can feel the fire eating away at Martyn when he abandons her for the Nether, but she can also feel it when he accidentally stubs his toe when stepping out of the portal.

Ren can feel the burn of poison through BigB's veins, but he can also feel the sparks that bite his skin when he stokes the flames in the furnace.

Scott can feel it when Pearl is sharply headbutted by a charging hoglin, but he can also feel the dig of her nails when she hugs herself, muted by her sleeves.

Joel can feel himself choking when Etho starts drowning, but he can also feel the gentle hunger pangs when Etho forgets to eat, even though Joel himself had just eaten.

Jimmy can feel the flash of heat from a creeper explosion when Tango dies and takes him with him, but he can also feel the sharp pecks at Tango's hand when he goes to feed the chickens.

They know when their other is exhausted, because they can feel the sting in their eyes. They know when their other is building, because they can feel the pinch of splinters. They know when their other is sewing, because they can feel the prick of the needle along their fingertips.

Even if they aren't physically with their soulmate, they are never alone, because they can feel their presence through their day-to-day activities. Some are more present than others, clumsy as they are, but none can ever truly be ignored. It's to be expected - the whole concept of soulmates is that they are intrinsically tied, after all - but they really are two halves of one whole.

They don't just share their lives, they share a life, and their skin, and their bones, and their breaths, and their hearts, even if they deny it. They know their soulmate deeper than anything else, they know without words how they are on a physical level and can care for them without asking, because their pain is shared.

And that is beautiful, and fascinating, and surreal, and terrifying.

they removed posting from tumblr. now there's only scrolling down through the vast blank expanse. great

Jimmy tweeted ♥️

Stickers / Washi Tape

Part Time Princess Shop on Etsy

she/he c!iskall can we get this to 10k

this is great!

So what’s the list of IRL nerfs for MCC participants this time? 

Grian just got back from Germany and is gonna be travel-lagged.

Foolish is in the middle of his 48 hour stream and is gonna be playing on no sleep.

Tubbo’s going to be playing from a field? (?)

“You’re the one who asked if the Cod Empire had stories,” Jimmy says, sitting next to Scott by the edge of a mangrove island. In the distance in the swamp, they can watch several young codfolk attempt to play—Scott doesn’t know the name of the game. Something that involves a lot of treading water and throwing a ball around and makes Scott look exhausted just watching it, at least.

“Yeah, but I don’t get it. Don’t fables normally have like… morals?” Scott says. “The ones I knew did.”

“I mean, I’d say the story about the catfish was always pretty clear to me,” Jimmy says. “Doesn’t change, but adapts. It’s willing to eat anything, but not change who it is, and it outlives the goldfish, who change all the time, because of it—”

And Scott stands, distant from Ren but still covered in blood, red crystals floating around him. He raises his sword silently, then he sits down with the axolotl and waits. He’d finish it himself, but he’s always simply tried to survive, survive without changing who he is in the process. He doesn’t know if he’s succeeded. His teeth taste like iron and bile. If he’d been about to throw up, though, he would have done it days ago. Maybe that’s what victory tastes like.

“—that’s a moral, right?”

“Other people change the goldfish though. The goldfish don’t choose to change. That’s… that’s the point of goldfish breeding, Jimmy.”

“Yeah, and they die if you breathe on them funny. Don’t you know what a metaphor is? You’re the one who said fables normally have lessons!”

Scott sighs. “Yeah, yeah. Fine.” He sighs. “The oyster one, though.”

“Well that one’s just literal. Did you not know you can crack open oysters to check water quality? They’re a good indicator!”

Scott throws his hands up. “No! I didn’t grow up by the ocean! And the story’s more like that an animal just kills the oyster one day, and it finds out the pain the oyster had been preventing—”

And as Jimmy bleeds out on the grass, he realizes he’s bleeding out for them a second time. He hears, distant, Grian justify himself, but all Jimmy feels is like he’s somehow been cheated. He’s been killed first, again. The first name in a bloodbath of them. How is that fair? He’s never asked to die first! He’s never asked to die at all!

“—which is just. Really sad for the oyster?”

“Scott, they’re oysters.”

“They’re fables! We were just talking about metaphors!” Scott flops back. It’s undignified. He’ll get leaves in his hair, and mud all over his clothes. He doesn’t care. Here, the mangroves in the brackish swamp water smell like salt and something he hadn’t smelled anywhere else, and it doesn’t smell good, really, but he’s figured out it smells like life, and also maybe Jimmy, in a way that makes it easy to not care quite so much about appearances. Maybe it’s the bird in him, he thinks jokingly. He does have wings, and so many of the birds come to roost around trees like these.

They’re quiet for a while, Scott flopped back, children screaming and laughing in their game, and Jimmy watching all of them.

“Did you have a favorite?” Jimmy finally asks.

“Would it be cliche to say the one about the lovers? The seahorses, the one who builds a beautiful thing for his lover.”

“They die in the end, though.”

“Yeah, but, like—”

The war never comes to the hobbit hole. It’s funny; in the end, the two of them had gone to the war instead, when it came looking. Maybe they’d known better. Maybe, thinks Scott, in the afterlife their four hands had built, maybe they’d known better than to taint it.

“—the things they made were real.”

“Huh.”

Jimmy helps Scott up again. He looks at Scott in the eyes in that way that makes Scott either want to kiss him or strangle him. Scott’s never fully decided which, which probably makes it all the stranger that he’s sitting here, getting covered in swamp water and talking about fables.

“And yours?”

“Mine? Oh, uh, it’s one—funny, I think I learned it from Lizzie? I have no idea why that would be.”

Scott raises an eyebrow.

“It’s simple. It’s just that all things start as water, and all things will be water again one day.”

“…what? Why would that story be your favorite?”

Jimmy is quiet for quite a while.

“Maybe it’s because… no matter how badly we were to mess up…”

And he watches the explosion and he runs, he runs, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

“…no matter how bad of a decision we have to make…”

And Scott looks at the sword, and looks at Xonorth, and he doesn’t know what else he could do.

“…we’ll always end up back where we started.”

“That’s… oddly optimistic,” Scott says, although he’s not really sure that’s what he thinks about it. Somehow, instead of optimistic, it makes Scott feel like he’s somehow both too big and too small for his skin, thinking of the world like that. Thinking of everything going back to how it started.

On a circle, once again, they agree on their rules, and they shake hands, and they make their kingdoms. Again, and again, and—

“Well, I do like to keep cheerful when I can!” Jimmy says brightly. “Oh look, they’ve finished with their game!”

“Yeah,” Scott says. “So they have.”

watched this for the first time when i was 14 i think? it saved me

sorry but there is no romance in bluetooth earbuds. they're very handy and nice but nothing will ever compare to sharing a pair of corded earbuds with someone to listen to music or watch a video and leaning together so the earbuds don't get pulled out. even now when i get handed a bluetooth earbud to share i lean close out of instinct. we need to bring the cords back for the love of god