#I’m 25 here

[tacosaysroar]

Heather found some old photos of me at my bridal shower, and hooooo boy. This young lady has no idea what’s in store for her.

[thekeythief]

[griddlebait]

since i couldn’t post the new chapter to celebrate the one year anniversary of sckl and a few of you said you wanted to read it, i'm sharing the first scene of chapter 25 below the cut.

(keep in mind that this is before beta-reading and final edits so a few things might change when the chapter is posted!)

Just past one in the morning, Gideon quietly let herself into her apartment. She carefully placed her shoes on the rack and tiptoed through the living room, assuming that all of her roommates were either asleep or trying to get there, but she soon noticed a dim, fuzzy glow emitting from the kitchen. Not all of her roommates, then.

Harrow was sitting on the counter with the refrigerator left open in front of her so she didn’t have to turn on an overhead light. Gideon wasn’t surprised; she caught her like this every now and then, most times eating individual ingredients or cold pasta straight from the tupperware container or chugging all the water she’d forgotten to drink that day. Tonight she lacked that manic, starved alleycat quality to her movements—she was looser, relaxed, nonchalantly glancing over her shoulder and languidly straightening her posture at the confirmation of Gideon’s presence—but Gideon still spotted a cup of water clutched in her hand when she rounded the bar. 

“Where have you been?” Harrow asked the moment Gideon reached the line between carpet and tile.

“Am I in trouble?” Gideon whispered back sarcastically.

Harrow’s fingers idly tapped against the plastic cup in muted, arrhythmic thumps. Her voice was curiously hoarse as she said, “That depends on where you’ve been.”

Gideon didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but it warmed her face and prickled her skin. “I was downstairs with Nona,” she elaborated automatically. “She asked me to help her pick out her nail polish colors. And we watched the Ghostbusters movies. And then fell asleep by accident.”

Harrow stared at Gideon. She blinked. She dropped her eyes. Then she said, “okay,” and there was slight resignation in the drooping of her shoulders, an audible settling in the quietness of her voice. She looked down into her cup as if the water inside was suddenly supremely interesting. 

“So … am I in trouble?”

Harrow didn’t look up. “I suppose not.”

The air between them thinned out like a window had been opened and Gideon realized, feeling unlike herself, that she’d gone in the wrong direction. She was supposed to play along and make up something ridiculous yet interesting, like that she’d actually been out at a leather bar with Ianthe getting into fights for fun. She should have given Harrow something to at least roll her eyes at, but she didn’t, and the moment passed, and it was already too late. 

That kept happening these days. Gideon tried not to kick herself too hard about it this time. She wasn’t convincingly dressed for a leather bar anyway. 

Harrow turned to set her cup down on the counter, allowing Gideon a better view of her face. She looked almost as if she’d just rolled out of bed: her cheeks held a curious flush in the yellow light and the ends of her hair were sticking to her forehead and temples, the rest of her grown out buzz cut tousled and poking up in random places. Her expression was blank and tired and gave absolutely no hints at what she was thinking about, so Gideon attempted to read her body language, lowering her eyes and—and—

And Harrow’s arms were extending upwards and curling behind her head in a lazy stretch, and that movement sent her shirt riding up on her stomach to reveal more than a couple inches of bare skin. Gideon privately remarked, her mind growing a bit foggy and distant, that she had never actually seen Harrow’s stomach before.

Which wasn’t a big deal. Stomachs were super common. So were belly buttons. There was no reason to die of shock at the non-revelation that Harrow had both a stomach and a belly button. It was just that every inch of her skin that Gideon had seen before now had been empty and blank—naturally speaking, anyway; Gideon had given her wrist a permanent blemish that summer—and, although it wasn’t as if she’d thought about it specifically, Gideon kind of assumed that the rest of Harrow’s skin would be equally as plain. So even if everyone had a belly button and it was neither impressive nor profound that Harrow also had one, Gideon found herself momentarily transfixed by the small dark brown speck just to the left of it. A freckle, or a mole, or a birthmark, Gideon couldn’t tell with the distance and lighting.

It seemed impossible that you could know someone for their entire life and still keep finding things to learn about them. Gideon thought it was wildly unfair that it had taken nearly twenty-one years for her to discover this very simple fact about Harrow, and then she wondered if something could even be considered a discovery if it had already been discovered by someone else. She found this to also be wildly unfair.

She blinked so hard rainbow flurries danced behind her eyelids and she narrowly avoided physically shaking her head to clear her thoughts like an Etch-A-Sketch. Harrow was totally oblivious to the attention and finished her stretch, dropping her arms to her sides; her shirt slid back down until there was nothing but a thin sliver of skin above the waistband of her pajama pants left exposed. 

The refrigerator was safer to look at. They ran out of orange juice this morning. Cam probably added it to the grocery list already.

“So did you stay up just to get on my ass about coming home late?” Gideon asked. Her throat felt strange.

“No,” Harrow said. After a brief stretch of silence, each word lulling with hesitation like she hadn’t quite decided if she actually wanted to say what she was in the middle of saying, she tacked on: “I was with Camilla.”

That made sense. That explained—yeah. Okay. Not really information Gideon needed to know, but okay. Waves of disappointment rolled through her chest, embarrassment following soon after. She’d been mostly joking—Harrow never needed a reason to stay up—but it was unwelcomingly humbling to be told that no, Harrow hadn’t been waiting for her, and in fact had been plenty busy with somebody else. 

The fact that Gideon had been doing the same thing in a different context, and the question of how much that context mattered and why, were such fleeting, whispering thoughts in the back of Gideon’s mind that they might as well not have been there at all. 

"What, you guys don't have sleepovers?" she asked, her voice supernaturally relaxed as opposed to the unsteadiness she felt internally. 

“No,” Harrow said, and Gideon already knew that. 

"Guess I’m special then,” she pressed because she couldn’t help herself.

“You’re—Yes. You are unique in that.”

That, too, confirmed what Gideon already knew. She still felt better for hearing it. 

Harrow’s leg brushed against Gideon’s elbow as she slid off the counter, but she didn’t seem to notice. She stepped forward and shut the fridge, casting them into a darkness that was only salvaged by streaks of moonlight slipping through the curtains, and turned back to Gideon drenched in shades of gray. 

Gideon wasn’t sure what she expected—nothing, really, she wasn’t expecting anything. It was her body that pulled taut with unnamable anticipation when Harrow looked her in the eye. It was the briefest of glances, and Gideon still could not maintain the contact; she unsteadily cast her gaze anywhere else. Harrow stepped past her to leave without letting the moment linger.

“Goodnight, Griddle.”

Gideon exhaled, her body sinking as if she’d been released. Harrow didn’t notice. She was already halfway through the living room. That was as much of a relief as it was a disappointment. 

“Goodnight,” Gideon replied a beat too late. Refusing to let herself watch Harrow go, she settled for listening to the sound of her footsteps grow quiet and distant. 

[moonkhao]

hi.

[custom-emojis]

Drags my corpse in here.

Hi obviously, I’m not dead. Just insanely burnt out. My boyfriends gonna be visiting me and I’m on new meds so I think by the end of the year I’ll be more normal. I plan to just not even attempt emojis until next year. This has just been a hard year for me art wise okay.

Next year I’ll try to actually be filling the queue again, but some things regarding emoji style will change and I can’t promise I’ll ever be able to deliver daily new content again. My OCD likes to pick up on habits like that way too easily and 2023 was really bad for me with the emoji queue in terms of absolutely obsessing over needing one to be posted daily at exactly the same time Or Else to the point I was missing sleep and food to fulfill it etc. I just can’t let that shit happen again and honestly daily content is an insane expectation from one person anyways.

So yeah, just a little update. I’m still active on my server but the tumblr will be just used to promote my other art until next year when I can stand to try emojis again.

Thanks for the understanding and support!

[stuckinapril]

How tf am I gonna be a neurosurgeon one day if it destroys me every time I see a senior patient with a neurodegenerative disease sad

[lightning-and-sparks]

Me sitting after an extreme rn and thinking abt how in two weeks when I’m back in school and taking like an insane schedule of chem and bio classes and not having any free time to play just dance or write fic

[herebecritters]

Step on up everybody, get your smooches here!

[grasstimes]

I need to post these before I finish jetters otherwise i will have too many

[gettingintoknives]

on the verge of vomiting in the fedex package hub parking lot

[fieldsofbone]

i’m turning 28 in june and besties. can i be honest. i have this sense of anxiety and foreboding as i near 30. i love my birthdays and genuinely see aging as a privilege and i think every year that i’m older i feel so much more myself and you couldn’t pay me enough to be 21 again, and i don’t even think that 30 is old! i actually think that, holding the emotional progress i’ve made these past few years constant, i’m going to thrive at 30! i have this idealized image of myself at that age and i am truly looking forward to it! and i do think some of these feelings can be attributed to the fact that my 20s are the first decade of my “adult life” and so i have nothing to compare it to — much in the way that turning 14 felt monumental and terrifying because it signified this arbitrary “transition” — but regardless of all of my cognitive recognitions i cannot seem to shake this feeling.

and i feel so conflicted about it for all the aforementioned reasons, but also because i fundamentally think our anti-aging culture is goofy and ludicrous and pernicious but i am also a member of the dominant culture so even with my beliefs and even as much as i know the anti-aging programming i am inundated with is horseshit meant to make me buy shit, i still feel it! i am still susceptible! and i will be fully honest that some of my fears / anxieties are vain or superficial. like i can admit that some of my thoughts are in the vein of “will i still be considered pretty as i age” which, again! i recognize as probably sounding insane or frivolous to people, but it is in my brain nonetheless. anyway i don’t know the point of sharing this on tumblr instead of journaling it but maybe i’m hoping that someone else understands this and i am not donkey kong king kong crazy

[polarisbear]

i don’t know if i’m the first to come up with this idea but i needed to get this au out of my head

[image id 1: a drawing of all four members of nightcord at 25. they’re all dressed in their casual outfits except for mafuyu who has shorter hair, a dress shirt, and slacks. they’re drawn in a style reminiscent of bocchi the rock!

image id 2: a drawing of all four members of nightcord at 25. they’re all drawings of expressions from the bust up. they’re all in their casual outfits except for mafuyu who has shorter hair and a dress shirt. the drawings are mimicking bocchi the rock!’s art style. there are chibi’s drawn next to them in the style of bocchi the rock!’s endings.]

[sak-supernatural]

This is actually crazy! TODAY IS THE DAY!!!

I watched this when I was like 11 and I loved The Flash for the longest time (part of me always will), but I never managed to finish the show I stopped somewhere around s4. I randomly thought about it again today and looked it up only to find out that TODAY is the exact date that seemed so far off in the future in 2013. ONE day later and I would have missed this iconic moment in my life. How have I made it this far? As a kid it seemed like APRIL 25 2024 was nothing more than a fictional date that was never going to happen.

This was actually my first real fandom and I am forever greatfull for that, the first time I discovered shipping could be between any two characters canon or not and the first time I discovered gay fanciction (coldflash). Also a time where I delved hardcore into Xreader for the first and only time in my life, I had the biggest hugest fattest most gigantic crush on Barry Allen and consequently Grant Gustin. How can time be real when I am now the same age as he was when he started in The Flash? This is truly nuts and an iconic moment in my life!!

Anyway as a thanks to anyone who bothered reading my crazed ramblings I’m putting together a playlist of my favourite edits from this era of my life:

P.s. I don’t know how many times I listened to Barry sing “Running Home To You” and imagined it was to me, it was too many.

[lesbianprophecy]

ready 2 party rock

[stuckinapril]

I just know I’m gonna struggle in my later years bc I don’t wanna get married I don’t want kids I just wanna rawdog life and be a hot milf

[chaoticbuggybitchboy]

WOAH HI NOTES ON MY N25 POSTS???? YIPPEE HELLO

HI YES I LOVE N25 SO MUCH AAAA