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Go write that fucked up fic.

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People really underestimate the power of just telling someone you like them. romantically obviously but hell even just platonically too. You can admit you enjoy peoples presence it doesn’t have to be mind games it’s okay to just be sincere and true with your thoughts and intentions btw

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look, I have a type okay??? those are my emotional support tropes. i need them to make the brain do the thinky thing.

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Name a better feeling than getting the first comment on a fic you were uncertain about and knowing that at least one person liked the tiny piece of your brain that you put on the internet

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nothing worse than seeing an otherwise relatable post referring to being unwell about The Character (generic) except op defaults to using he/him for The Character and you gotta choose between not reblogging it or reblogging it with "*she" or "*they" bc The Character you're currently chewing drywall over is a woman or nonbinary. why does this happen so often. i mean i know WHY it happens so often but like. why.

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The Bear as tumblr posts part 1

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i know it's hard. but i so firmly believe the strongest antidote to loneliness is reaching out first. and continuing to reach out. again and again and again. excise any scrap of shame you hold about being the person who texts first or pitches the plan or asks to get lunch. everyone is tired and busy and struggling. and afraid of feeling unwanted and unimportant. don't let the people you love feel that way. reach out first. don't be a ghost in your own life.

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in the Canadian Arctic straight up “not finding it”. and by “it”, haha, well. let’s justr say. The nornthwest pessage

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I know this is super random but as a fan of numb3rs do you have any inkling to write fic for it? This isn’t meant as a “writer must write what I want when I want” thing so sorry if it comes across that way. Genuinely just wondering. I love your writing!

yes!! i have a couple concepts bouncing around but probably my strongest and one that i want to start serious plotting for as soon as i make some forward momentum in some of my other long-brewing projects, bc this is gonna be another long haul (shocker with me i know lmfao), is a concept called bifurcation theory

big shouts out to @readwing and @anotherlongstoryshort for encouraging this along and doing so much plotting and ideas badmintoning with it, and also keeping my love of numb3rs alive

the basic conceit is that like... well. it's the harlan coben show the five but make it numb3rs.

spoilers below the cut, for the five and for the fic i suppose if anyone cares about that XD

the five is about a man whose little brother disappeared twenty years ago and it devastated him and his family. throughout the show, he and his friends piece together what happened the day his little brother disappeared, when he was fifteen and his brother was five. the culmination is one of my favourite episodes of all tv i've ever seen, where we learn that his brother is 1. still alive, 2. someone who has been with us all along. he is revealed to be a secondary character who works with one of the protagonist's friends.

so bifurcation theory says what if one day when don was supposed to walk little baby charlie home from school, he got caught up playing baseball with his friends or something instead. charlie walked home alone but never actually made it home. and they never saw him again after that.

fastforward to don eppes, fbi agent. never got over the guilt he carries for feeling responsible for his baby brother's disappearance. and then he starts working with a math professor named kyle wells. (wells is an homage to the five, as that's the protagonist and his missing brother's last name.) there's something about kyle that feels achingly familiar. they piss each other off, they work really well together, they become close. before he knows it, don feels towards kyle like he hasn't felt towards anyone since charlie disappeared.

he feels awful for it. he hates himself for it. he feels like he's trying to replace charlie, or like he's projecting on kyle because he couldn't keep his brother safe. kyle's friend larry likes don an awful lot - kyle is reserved and isolated, lonely and doesn't seem like he's been treated exactly as he should in his life. don and his team are good for kyle, larry thinks. they get him out of his awful lifeless apartment. alan, don's father, is good for kyle too - once he started coming around the man took a shine to him.

kyle grew up in a home where he was held to impossible standards that seemed to flip on a dime. his parents, mr and mrs wells, seemed like they loved and hated him at the same time, were proud and eternally disappointed. he knows he had a brother who died, his parents' older son. that's not the brother he wakes up crying for. they're not happy when that happens, and eventually he learns to stop telling stories. his home is not happy, and he does not feel safe there. most of his life, he feels like he's trying to learn how to disappear. drawing attention was never a good thing growing up. he wasn't physically harmed but... but that's not enough, is it?

larry helps. he's a good friend. he doesn't seem to like kyle's parents, but kyle likes them less and less himself. and then, well. then he meets don. and they start working together.

and we can all see where this is going, i'm sure.

it's important to me for the record that the relationship that don develops with 'kyle' isn't like... some kind of biological inevitability nor is it framed that way. just. to put that out there. and the problem with the wells parents wasn't that they weren't related to charlie/kyle but that they like. yknow. kidnapped him lmao. larry is just as much Real Family to charlie/kyle, though their relationship doesn't have like, a defined role, as don and alan, and indeed he's charlie/kyle's family LONG before he meets don and alan this time.

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I like it when characters are really close friends but theyre like. Bad at friendship. like theyre not great people . theyre not necessarily always good to each other. But they are friends!! Incredibly close friends at that!!!! They're Just Not GOOD At It

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gonna start headcanoning every single character as aroace just to redress the balance

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writing is a kind of self-inflicted sisyphean torment where you come up with a single sentence, paragraph, or interaction that makes you feel as if you could unhinge your jaw and swallow the sun and spend every living breathing moment after this steadily losing faith in your ability to prove that you were ever worth the weight of your own existence until you stumble across the next combination of words that makes you feel like this all over again. rinse and repeat.

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sometimes you get so insane about a character that you forget they are not in fact everyone else’s favorite character

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we have absolutely no fandoms in common or even really any interest in common but i stick around because i like hearing you talk about aromanticism and platonic relationships. i'm not even aro myself lmao. your posts about it all always make me think deeper about how i approach romantic shipping and even my own attraction, and i feel like i have a better understanding of both now. it's so nice to be introduced to new ways of thinking. hope you are doing well.

oh wah!! that's really lovely of you to say <3 i'm so glad that my posts can be enriching to you, i think there's so much value into unpacking the way that we've constructed relationships and how we approach them and it's to the benefit of everyone to be critical and intentional in the way that we do that. i'm so glad that's something i've been able to help with <3 and also sorry for all the rest of this LMAO

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“and part of this character’s arc is them learning how to be loved and cared for”

me every time: oh my god part of this character’s arc is them learning how to be loved and cared for

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People need to start headcanoning characters as aromantic more often I'm so serious

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tumblr users’ obsession with self-reporting (especially as a weird form of penance) needs to be studied