my name is aster, they/them/theirs, 25+. this is an independent multimuse blog. muse list here!
Please be 18+ to follow or interact with me. This blog is not for children.
I do not make or read vagueposts, please tag them so I can avoid them. I am not psychic and I do not guess. If you want me to know something, tell me.
I will hardblock if I see you reblog a callout or if you ask me to engage with a callout.
please tag ALL PHOTOS, GIFS AND MENTIONS OF the twelfth doctor from doctor who.
i am anti-censorship in all forms for private writers writing for fun. Zero exceptions, no prerequisite, write whatever you like however you like. 'but what about -' mun =/= muse. Fiction =/= reality. I personally find research for writing extremely fun but personal unpaid writing does not come with research requirements.
i will rb memes/muse inspo/etc from whomever i feel like whenever i feel like it. i encourage you to do the same with my posts.
i cannot read things that have multiple spaces between words.
i do not put deadlines on threads and do not respond to deadlines on threads.
I often do not have energy to talk a lot or at length. it is not because i don't like you. i am very sick and very tired most of the time. be nice
thanks for joining us here.
likes on this post welcome but not remotely necessary, i just like little waves from friends :)
I love it when Whumper openly admits that Whumpee doesn’t deserve what’s being done to them, but keeps hurting them anyway. There’s just something about being simultaneously self-aware and ruthless that interests me.
Like, you expect the perpetrator to have some kind of guilt or internal conflict, but they just go on like usual. Like hurting Whumpee is as natural as brushing one's teeth.
[Kidnapped] A and B are total strangers with nothing in common, except this: they are both in the trunk of a car, with their wrists tied together, back to back, and probably an injury or two. (or they wake up in a room together? feel free to alter as needed)
[Woods] A is camping somewhere. B is camping nearby. Somebody wants A dead, and they’re camping in the woods, too. (‘Hi nice to meet you sorry to say this but I’m being hunted and if they find you you’ll definitely be killed so we need to go now.’)
[Woods x 2] A is camping somewhere. B is bloody and bruised and maybe running on adrenaline, but they have just escaped from a place they were being held (or maybe they’ve just been lost, for days?), and they’re stumbling blind through the woods. B stumbles on A’s campsite.
[Alley] A is trying to get home late at night, but is being harassed (even abused?) in an alley by the villains of our story. B happens to be walking by.
[Undercover] A is an undercover cop, or a reluctant gang member. B is a trafficking victim. Our story isn’t A saves B - our story is A needs to work with B to find an opportunity to free the rest, and A is sorry, and it’s dangerous, but A needs B’s help anyway.
[Disaster] A and B are in a natural (or manmade) disaster/emergency situation together. A traffic accident, a flood, fires, the like. They’ve never met before, but they need to work together, either to get themselves out safely or to help others get to safety (or both).
[Flowershop] A works in a flowershop to cover a shift for a friend who needed to go out of town for something. B either needs flowers or is the recipient of flowers (a thank you, etc) which A delivers.
[Neighbours] A and B are neighbours, because A recently moved in/moved to town/etc. Their first meeting is neighbourly - maybe to borrow a cup of sugar, to say hello and meet the neighbours, or let them know they can definitely hear them having sex, please put the bedhead against the other wall.
[Allergies] A is anaphylactic-allergic to something. B happens to know how to use an adrenaline auto-injector (EpiPen). (Alternatively: they don’t know how to use one, and accidentally inject themselves, instead of their patient. Don’t put your thumb over the end, folks.)
[Property] A has been burgled, and is sad to have lost (important item/items). B finds the item, alongside A’s emptied-out wallet, which happens to have A’s address. They swing by to return the lost items.
[Media] A has been in the news a lot lately, maybe because they were the victim of a crime, or they committed a crime (feel free to fill in details). B sees A being heckled/harassed about it in a coffeeshop or bar by people who Weren’t There, and A obviously isn’t enjoying the conversation, so B steps in.
just watched 'I Don't Understand You' where the premise is (spoilers) a gay couple waiting on their surrogate to go into labour go for a brief trip to italy for their anniversary and the filmmakers noticed "you're going to be a dad!" In an italian accent sounds like "you're going to be dead :|" and they kill the bearer of good news and then everybody else who might be witness. They escape to the US and get their baby at the end
rollllling around the way both connor and tk have ways of self-destructing if you leave them alone long enough + they've been hurt badly enough. tk will self-destruct messily and loudly and with anger that drives people away because he hates himself and he wants the world to tell him that he's right to, and connor meanwhile self-destructs so quietly you might not notice it. he's not doing it on purpose, he might not notice it. but if it's pointed out or if he hears it himself, catches it, he'll right-course, but when he's desperate to Move he will move in almost anywhere that he can and it might take him a bit to realise that he is not willing to move too far in one direction.
here's connor, my homicide detective who will eventually be married to a mafioso's right-hand man, talking to teenaged!ciro, the mafioso's (@lovedbyspark's) son. it was just an interesting conversation, here it is, interesting interesting interesting
“You don’t like me,” Ciro invites.
The room is cold. They’re snowed in here, in this cafe, waiting for the snowstorm to pass over in the depths of an Austin winter much colder than it’s meant to be. Detective Connor sits in a chair pulled well away from the full-wall, glass windows (where the warmth leaches out into the ice), sipping at a cup of tea they’d managed to make with the gas stove in the cafe’s kitchen, even though the power’s dead here. They’re gonna have to, Ciro thinks, eventually share body heat. He doesn’t know how to broach that topic with the broody Detective, and he really is planning on hopefully not having to.
Connor does not take his eyes off the window. His service weapon sits on the cafe table in front of him. He says: “Correct,” like that’s a full answer to Ciro’s question. It isn’t.
Ciro shifts uncomfortably, lifting his shoulders in the tiniest of shrugs. To be entirely honest, what Detective Connor thinks of him isn’t really the most important thing in the world to him, but it kinda sucks that he doesn’t like Ciro ‘cause Ciro knows how much Lorenzo cares about this guy. Even if Lorenzo doesn’t admit it and, Ciro believes, would probably kill him if Dad asked him to (how does that work???), Detective Connor could be, like… welcome. He could be welcome, if he wanted in. You know? Dad even likes him. And Ciro knows Detective Connor likes Dad or they wouldn’t be working together. So what gives?
“Well, um…” he fishes, carefully, “I’m accepting feedback?”
This, at least, draws Connor’s eyes away from the window. He looks at Ciro in the way he has of looking at people that Dad calls x-ray eyes, a sort of intent, plain, open searching which takes absolutely everything that the recipient is willing to give, consicously or not. Ciro lifts his chin a little, self-conscious, and squares his shoulders. Braced for insult.
Connor thinks for a moment how to encapsulate his critique. He settles on: “You aren’t Don Volpe’s son.”
For a moment Ciro is so floored by the audacity of this that his brain flatly refuses to process it. He sits in his own chair in his skinnyjeans and hoodie, wishing the coffee machine worked so he could at least get a hit of caffeine or SOMEthing to take the edge off of not knowing where his family is, and he thinks the word and says it at the same time: “What?” because Connor knows the full extent of it, and he has never been an asshole about it before. (Ciro does not know this to throw at him, but Connor, too, was an adopted child.)
“What calls have you ever made, Ciro?” Connor asks.
Ciro remains silent, unsure what the question is.
“I’m aware your father decides on the regular who he’d like to live, or die, or answer a question. He organises people, and pieces. Alexei organises, too. And Gion, for his daughter.” (It’s news to Ciro, that Connor knows about Bethanne.) “What have you ever done for your family?”
It is an audacious question. Connor’s not sure he would have asked it with Harry in the same room (he doesn’t think he’d be killed; but he does think it’s needless drama), but Harry is not in the same room, and Ciro has asked directly for feedback. Ciro does not waste much time in coming back with: “I love my family.”
“And that’s enough, in the mafia?” It isn’t, he means.
“Yes!” It is.
“And if someone had a gun to your father’s head, and you had the opportunity, would you be able to pull the trigger? To decide to?” Would he even know how to be that sort of person? Connor sips his cup of tea. This is pleasant conversation, for him. For a moment, a hot flash of it, Ciro is filled with a hatred of this man who sits and makes assessments and sips his stupid cup of tea while he tears into Ciro’s flesh and insults his loyalty to his family.
“Don’t disrespect me,” Ciro says. He has learnt this from is Dad.
“Or what?” Connor asks, lightly. He peers over at Ciro Volpe, mouse of a man. “You’ll tell Daddy?” Let Harry take care of Connor for him, too? This is exactly Connor’s point: Ciro doesn’t have anything dangerous in him, no vindictiveness. He’s, what, petty? That would work for someone who was not the son of a mafioso. Ciro is the wrong man for the role, raised by the wrong people for too long. This boy in a life of crime is going to get someone killed. Connor, or Alexei, or Stefano, or Gion. Someone close to him, and he Is either too reckless or too stupid to see it.
Ciro stands. “I’m serious, man. I mean it. Lay off.”
Connor looks him over, very aware that he could press another button and see exactly what Ciro is like when he’s posturing, when he’s decided that someone’s crossed a line. It’s intriguing. Connor would like to know what is on the other side of all this bluster. But he isn’t here to provoke a teenager, so he looks away again, eyes back on the window, watching the snow whirl outside. “People typically think it’s a compliment, when I tell them they’re not capable of murder.”
“I’ve killed someone.”
“That’s not something to tell a homicide Detective,” Connor tells him, flatly, unamused, “and I’m aware.” He has read up on Ciro Volpe, and the death of a Mr Raphael Calombaris. If he’d had the case himself he might have pursued it; as it is, the case is considered closed and was considered that way when he first picked up the file, an accidental death, and Connor suspects it was self-defense, anyway.
The room is getting colder by the second, the residual warmth of the day leeching out into the snow pressed flat up against the glass. They have dressed the windows with furniture (a sofa from one corner of the cafe; blankets from the reading nook), at least as much as is reasonable, but there’s still gaps. Ciro can see his own breath spiral in the air as he thinks, numbly, for something else to say. The problem this homicide detective has is that he doesn’t kill people?
That he doesn’t want to?
He throws himself back down into his chair, glum. “You don’t gotta be such an asshole,” he says.
“Mr Volpe,” Connor says, and he picks up his weapon to holster it again as he turns to face Ciro, “I don’t like you, because just by existing where you are, you are a danger to yourself and your family. The work people look to you to be doing has to be offloaded to your father, or to Lorenzo, or Gion. You don’t make the decisions because your family doesn’t make you. So when you have to, and they can’t, someone is going to die.”
“Nobody’s going to die.” He won’t let that happen.
“You’re a mafioso’s son.” Connor thinks yes: he will.
“Yeah, OK, well — if that was going to happen, why has nobody talked to me about this?” Ciro demands. “They’re my family. Weird it’s just coming through you.”
“Your family have lost enough children. They’d die for you.” Connor tells him, like it is obvious. (It is). “Personally, I’d rather not.”
“Yeah, well. They love me. And I love them.”
Connor has no comment on this. It is true. He sees it even in the way Alexei speaks of Ciro sometimes as he’s making dinner Connor isn’t going to eat, talking - albeit carefully - about his day, and Ciro’s latest hockey game, and the lizard Alexei “had” to help Ciro smuggle into the Volpes’ mansion. This boy is loved dearly by the people around him: it is going to get everyone killed.
The phone sitting on the table in front of Connor vibrates. It’s a personal phone; he has texted Alexei to tell him that Ciro is with him, sheltering in this storm. Alexei is grateful to know. Connor blacks the screen out and takes another sip of his tea, waiting for the morning to come and the plows to move in and the snow to give way to the sky.
Ciro doesn’t speak again, either, slumped in his seat and feeling maybe-sort-of-kind-of small because of all of this. He is loved. What is wrong with that? What is wrong with any of it? What, ethically, does he have to do about it? He is loved. He loves his family. What does some asshole working as a dirty cop have to say about him and his family and how he works in it all?
leaving the lights on for someone starts in the same place as bringing soup around when they're sick. asking how someone is and caring about the answer starts in the same place as paying for a stranger's medical bill. kindness is kindness is kindness is kindness all the way down. you are not Less Kind because you only have space or resources in your life to choose small kindnesses. small-kind and big-kind are the same.
if you looked at earth with a big enough telescope from far enough away there would be dinosaurs roaming the earth. the light took that long to travel there. there is a planet out there where the pets and the people you love are not only still alive but only just taking their first steps, learning their first sounds, being fresh and new and laughing at your jokes and kissing your forehead, and all you have to do to see it is to look. time is not real it is just a matter of where you happen to be.
Trauma didn't make me nice, I consciously made me nice because I don't want anyone else to suffer like I did. Trauma didn't make me strong, I made me strong. Don't you dare ever tell me my trauma made me anything but scared, broken, and confused. Don't give credit to the abusers for me being a good person. They didn't make me good, I made myself good.
