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Let’s Have Another Bullet Point Story, Courtesy of a Friend

So I have a friend that used to be in the tumblers troupe at the renfaire as a contortionist

We were chatting online and she told me to tell you all this story.

I love Kat dearly

but she forgets that she’s stupid strong and hypermobile

so one day she throws her back out

bad enough that she needed painkillers and couldn’t stand upright

“But also I needed Tampons and like.  A Burrito, real bad.”

she’s flat on her back in her apartment when she decides this

and, in an

impeccable

leap of reasoning, decides

“I can’t roll my back forward to sit/stand up like normal.

But I can ARCH my back just fine.

SO 

I’m going to do that and get on my hands and feet in a stomach-in-the-air this-shit-belongs-in-a-horror-movie-type pose,

And amble on down to the 7-11”

“And get me that Burrito”

It is, 

for context, 

after midnight in July during a wildfire so it’s hot as satan’s own asshole and the moon is red and shit’s already generally cursed.

Imagineyou are some poor sap working nights at the world’s deadest 7-11, and you hear the door jangle but you don’t see anyone’s head over the counters.

Whatever.

Except you keep hearing noises like there’s someone in the next aisle over.  

Fucking around in the burrito section

It’s also worth mentioning that Kat

1. sings whatever earworm is currently running through her head when she’s not paying attention

2. sounds EXACTLY like some kind of creepy child from a horror movie when doing so

tonight’s song is something from veggietales.

DUDE ACTUALLY STANDS HIS GROUND

and/or is really fucking high and isn’t sure if he’s tripping balls or notanyway

Kat goes up to pay for her burrito and tampons

She realizes the counter presents something of a challenge, and then demonstrates for me on her kitchen table at 4AM during a different july wildfire, 

exactly 

how she used the shelves to climb up the counter 

like one of the boston robotics beasties

dude stares at her for like, five minutes and says.

“Register’s broke.”

“Oh No!” Says Kat. “Just Take ‘em.” “Really?  I can leave cash-you don’t have to give me change I don’t want you to get in trouble with your manager.” “…Nah.” “Oh!  OK!  Thank you!” “Yeah ok bye.”

Shortly after she arrived back at the apartment, she got a text on her phone from the campus security about  "A Suspicious Individual” at tle 7-11. 

It took her 

FOUR

FUCKING 

YEARS

 to realize she was the suspicious individual

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star trek tos au where all the uniform boots look like this

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pfbbbbbbb

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I can be shaped by more than the things that hurt me

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redraw of that meme going around. i know danny would do this shit

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Art by @tired-all-the-time22 !!

I really liked this sketch, and I wanted to practice my water coloring, I hope I was able to do the dynamism justice.

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I outed myself to a client today.

*Edit: I should point out that while I’ve been out to family and friends for a while now, I always guy-mode while working because it’s just easier.*

Like most of my clients, she’s an older lady and is, to put it politely, quite conservative (her nickname on my phone contacts is "Racist Jill."

Racist Jill always likes to have a chit-chat after I’ve finished working in the garden - she usually complains about the quality of her home nursing care (because they’re Filipino or Indian) or about The Gays or Young People Today and I politely smile and nod because whilst I don’t care for her world-view, I do like her money (and charging her extra on account of having to listen to it.)

Anyway, while I’m sitting in her lounge politely listening to her, she suddenly notices that I’ve had my ears pierced: "You haven’t always had earrings!" she says.

"No," I said. "I got them a few weeks ago as a gift to myself."

"Well!" she huffs. "I can’t say I approve of men with earrings!"

And then, in a completely spur-of-the-moment, impromptu, spontaneous moment-of-madness, I leant over the coffee table and said conspiratorially, "It’s just as well I’m not a man then…"

I leant back and let the silence hang for a few seconds while the cogs turned in her head. I could see her trying to think of something to say so I decided it would be much funnier to just cut and run: "So, I’ll see you again in three week’s time?" I say.

Thoroughly confused, she agrees, we say our goodbyes and I leave - a big smile on my face because Racist Jill is the first and most unlikely person (who is not friend or family) that I’ve come out to.

I can’t wait to see her next time.

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Routine

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I made art for once!

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If you see this on your dashboard, reblog this, NO MATTER WHAT and all your dreams and wishes will come true.

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Ok quick check. This is for females of all types, and men of all heights, and anyone who isn’t falling for that Gender thing.

You are on a date. The person you are with is about to gift you with something: What is most likely to ensure a good impression?

Please reblog so there’s more than 2 votes.

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Humans are Space Orcs is still rotating

Humans live in the past (excluding those of us who do the Anxiety, in which case we have explicitly said that that's Not Good).

But picture:

Aliens who live in the speculative future. Imagine how weird it must be for them to find humans, who base our actions off of things that have happened - so much so, in fact, that attachment theory is a thing. The past can fuck us up like no one's business, or it can make us into awesome people. We celebrate the memories of good things that happen, and we grieve and mourn things that make us sad or scared or nostalgic.

An alien species without nostalgia.

Constantly looking forward to the future - still experiencing the present, but focusing on how to make it better instead of reliving the good that it was.

A species without graveyards or obituaries or days of mourning.

A species without birthdays or holidays or anniversaries, without commemorations or in memoriums or stories passed down without a specific point.

Humans are a storytelling race - we talk about things that happened, things that didn't happen, things that might or might not have happened. We write our stories in the past tense, because they are about things that can't be changed. Things that were. Things that are no longer.

What about the species who focus on What Has Not Been Yet?

That one Internet Thing in this genre about the last members of a dying alien species being found and cared for by humans in its last days marveling at how they remember.

Imagine that's the oddity.

Imagine that setting store in the past is not how it usually happens. Other species would find it strange how we get sad at certain times of the year because a person we once knew is no longer in our life. They would see no point in talking about history, except for the tangible value of the lesson it provides - military tactics, or some wisdom or knowledge. They would be confused why we find it necessary to bring things that Are No More into Now.

In a way, what if the galaxy is devoid of Holding On?

What if humans are the ones who preserve it?

What if the What Ifs govern the actions of all other species, and they tell stories of What Could Be?

What if they can't grasp the value we put on keeping old things close because they used to mean something?

Extrapolating a bit, because I like the "The Thing That Makes Us Human Is Love" thing, what if we're just attached to things more? A human on an alien crew getting funny looks because they keep a picture of their dead mother with them to remember her by. Other species just not understanding why we would sacrifice the things we need before the things we love.

The evolutionary order of preservation is self, progeny, connected others, then unconnected others. But humans, depending on which of those categories they have, shunt themselves to the last slot. Aliens who don't understand why humans run toward the crashed, unstable ship to help the survivors even though they know they won't come back.

More to the point, aliens who don't understand humans going to be with others in their final moments, especially if their own death is assured - or even going down with the ship, as it were. I'm attached to the idea of a human running into an actively melting down reactor to save an alien friend, being told to save themselves upon finding rescue impossible, and the alien who urged them to go being told to fuck off and accept the company.

Just something to think about.

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SU theory- Steven’s fusion survival tactic in Change Your Mind

Okay, so I have some thoughts about the scene where White pries Steven’s gem out in Change Your Mind. Specifically, about how cleanly that gem came out of a kid who’s body has literally grown around it for the past 14 years- it should be a completely integrated part of his system, right? Like another organ.

But after it comes out, there’s not a mark to be found on Steven’s human half. 

Now, logically the real reason this is so is because, well. Steven Universe is a cartoon intended for a wide range of viewers, especially kids. It’s fantasy, and the Gems are magical, and they’re not gonna show blood. 

But on an in-universe scale, I still think it’s fun to come up with theories as to why it might have happened this way.

So! Theory time!

My thoughts begin with the postulation that Steven’s gem is not the only Gem-like feature to his anatomy. He’s not just a completely human kid who happens to have a gem- instead, that gem is actually the core focal point (like a heart or brain) of a few non-human “organ systems” completely 100% integrated into his body. These systems are what allow him to fuse, shapeshift parts of his body, etc. etc, like a full Gem can.

As supporting evidence, I point to the gem destabilizers in Jailbreak. Specifically, their effect.

As in this:

This seems to be a sort of specialized Gem circulatory system that runs through their hard light forms and holds them together. It’s disrupted by the destabilizers, which is what makes Gems fall apart.

As a half-Gem, Steven also has this.

The same lines of hard light, running throughout his body exactly like nerves would, or blood vessels. (He doesn’t fall apart because he’s not merely hard light- destabilizers have no effect on solid flesh and blood!)

“But Jen,” you say. What does this tell us? What does it mean?

It means that if White Diamond were to rip his gem out as is, that Steven should be suffering major internal damage. Remember, to Gems, this is like a combo heart/brain. His skin and other organs literally grew around it, this Gem circulatory system is dependent on it, there’d probably be a ton of blood- Steven should NOT have survived this.

Repeat, Steven should NOT have survived having his gem pried out.

So how did he?

My theory is that- subconsciously, as a preemptive protective measure- Steven literally unfused, unraveled, Gem half from human half. 

This means that White Diamond did not on her OWN power excise his Gem. Instead, he “gave up” his gem momentarily to avoid what COULD’VE happened should she have actually succeeded. It’s like a jerk-moment survival instinct, the sort that’s hard wired into your DNA, the sort your body automatically initiates in times of danger.

At the very second this happened suddenly you have 100% human Steven, with not a single Gem “organ system” in sight, and then you have his Gem- completely separate from him at the moment. (And in White’s tight grasp.) Thus why there’s no blood. 

All this said, I do not think this is ever something he could ever consciously initiate. That’s because it’s not quite a TRUE example of fusion- it’s something a bit more unique. Where fusions like Stevonnie or Garnet are made up of two entirely autonomous halves, Gem Steven and Human Steven clearly cannot exist without the other. Both are extremely incapacitated by the loss of their other half. 

Human Steven is physically incapacitated, barely able to move or speak due to the sheer shock and trauma of being torn in two, of missing an entire side to his physiology that he’d lived with and grown used to his entire life.

Gem Steven is emotionally incapacitated, separated from his soul, his feelings. All the personality stuff that makes Steven who he is as an individual- his empathy, love, wit- is now gone, leaving behind an empty hard light shell running on nothing but detached memory and raw strength.

I’d probably describe it as a biological permafusion- not a permafusion of choice like Garnet, but one that’s existed that way since birth. A fusion that must not and cannot be split apart, not unless his survival is on the line.