#It's okay to be disabled and doesn't always need 'fixing'

[chiropterx]

👫 (Matt?)

Send a 👫 and I’ll write four headcanons I have about our muse’s relationship

Initially, Matt and Kirk's first meeting did NOT go well. A chance visit to Gotham quickly alerted Matt that not all was well within the crime-ridden city; something very large and dangerous was lurking out there, something only he could hear. A timely intervention on Daredevil's part saved an unlucky wanderer out late at night from getting drained of every last drop of blood but bringing down the beast would be a whole other mission for the vigilante of Hell's Kitchen. Fortunately, future meetings would be on much friendlier terms. Kirk would be able to relate to Matt and vice versa what with both men having disabilities since they were children, in a world where able-bodied people tend to look down upon or pity those less 'capable'. Kirk WOULD admire Matt's prowess to get about without actually requiring assistance but Matt is a good lawyer and an even better superhero! Kirk was raised on less strict grounds but does believe in God. He would respect Matt's beliefs in Catholicism along with how difficult it can be at times, neither judging nor condemning the man's actions and words. It's hard enough being tough on yourself and Kirk would approach Matt kindly, particularly in times when he senses Matt is not doing well or has been punishing himself. Matt knows when Kirk has been taking his serum and when Man-Bat is most likely to make an appearance. Out of everybody he knows, Matt stands the best chance of convincing Kirk to kick the habit for good or at least hold Man-Bat back, preventing his wild instincts from taking control.

[barrel-crow-n]

The "Wylan should learn how to read" thing irks me because a huge part of his arc was learning to accept that this was just something that he couldn't do, and that it can't be fixed and that he shouldn't live in shame over it.

Wylan just can't read. Van Eck tried everything. And true, at one point it would get stressful but Van Eck was a kind father at first. It's not about getting a new teacher, it's just something Wylan can't do.

A big part of his growth was learning to accept that. And Kaz is a big part of this.

Kaz is the first person not to scorn Wylan for his dyslexia. Kaz is the first person to just genuinely not care.

Kaz was the one that told Wylan that his weakness was never his disability but his shame surrounding it. He normalised the disability for Wylan, made it a small deal. It's still a part of Wylan, but not as life shattering as his father had always made it out to be.

It can be inconvenient (taking double the time to read the papers at Smeet's office) but it can be worked around. In fact, I believe taking Wylan to Smeets office was for Wylan's benefit. "I knew how long this was going to take" - dismissing Wylan's shame that Wylan is slowing him down. Reassuring him, in his own way, that it's okay. That it's not that big of a deal. It's not even really a problem.

"I didn't hire you to read." Wylan doesn't need to have the ability to read to get on well in life, despite Van Eck's opinions, and Kaz decides to show Wylan that. He decides so because that's what people said about his limp. That a disabled boy with a bad leg will die in the Barrel.

Kaz could get a healer for his leg, hell, Genya offered. But he declined. Why? Because he refuses to be ashamed. Because this is what he is and he won't change that. "It had become a declaration. There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken."

He becomes a boy to be dreaded despite the limp, no, with it. His cane is his weapon. It's not a weakness, it's also a strength. It's not fear the boy despite the limp it's fear the boy with the limp.

And I believe Kaz was truly one of the most important people in Wylan's life because he did that. He showed Wylan not to be ashamed. That he can be powerful not despite the disability, but with it. That what Wylan can do is more important than what he can't and I don't think Wylan will ever forget that.

[bandtrees]

this has always been one of my favorite lines in this scene it’s so striking to me. i think debating over callum’s level of lucidity and what can or cannot “fix” him is deeply antithecal to what the story is trying to express with him - but the idea that callum is still there and still a person who does have the capacity to love mingus, just not in a way she can ever comprehend or accept, because she can't comprehend or accept anything outside her narrow worldview, is sooooo good.

there is no way of actually knowing if callum is proud of mingus, much less recognizes her at all - but it's added to by the fact there's only so much of that she would accept even if he could. ultimately, she wants validation and power, his prestige, from him, she wants a supportive parental figure she never had - there's only so much of that callum is able to provide even in a world where her stint to fix his memory actually worked. he's like a hundred. he never even MET her. to say nothing of all he's missed in the past fifty-odd years. to say nothing of how his age may have messed with his mind deteriorating even without the pre-existing brain damage.

and mingus' phrasing here implies he doesn't even look at her when she visits - which brings me to the visit that radicalized her: the one after her surgery, where he was watching gingi out the window.

obviously, callum watching gingi is mostly for the thematics of it all, how similar the two of them are in ways mingus refuses to recognize, but theres also the thought of... callum's been sitting alone in that room for over half his life, barely lucid if at all. of course he's going to be drawn to a brightly-colored thing making noises and knocking stuff over outside. if he can't respond to stimuli of the people around him he's at the very least going to latch onto something more visually interesting than Brown Wall and Brown Figure.

but it's not like mingus can think of it like that, because she's internalized so much about her grandfather and built up such a specific, personalized vision of him - she doesn't see him as an elderly man with (a fictional equivalent to) dementia, she sees him as President Callum Crown™, the man she personally has to please and live up to the legacy of and make proud, disregarding the fact that's not something he has the mental capacity to even do - because she's so obsessed with validation and complete control that the only way she can get it is by either subjugating others and forcing it out of them (what she does with her townsfolk), or just completely projecting on someone who, for her purposes, is basically a blank slate.

which is maddening to her in its own way, see how crazy she drives herself trying to restore callum's memory in the first place - but also, would she be happy even if callum could see her for who she is? post-game, when she's working on herself, that's an irrelevant question as she's pushed past that need, but as we know her? absolutely not.

i love the ch3 standoff between norm and mingus as a show of "Okay guys let’s see who can dehumanize this disabled guy harder (via pedestal-putting) and justify themselves for it better" and why i think it is so important that it’s gingi who reads the postcard and ultimately speaks for callum instead of either of them, or even the narrator. they can’t read, and they struggle to, but they manage to get it right even when people are telling them to stop. and the fact they’re able to do it at all, are given the chance to do so, and are ultimately the one to wind down this conflict shows that the world of dialtown, while not perfect, really is how callum would have wanted it.

both gingi and callum are some of the most altruistic and human characters ever, and the crux of their parallels is that they are denied this by close-minded people because they happen to Behave Strangely. it's why seeing mingus act the way she does hits so hard - she loves her paw-paw, yes, but if she were to see him in a vacuum, a one-limbed man who can hardly think, much less speak for himself: or even his younger self, who was struggling to make ends meet with his odd inventions...

...well, the feeling norm's imagining here would probably be mutual. mingus' relationship with bigotry is a very fascinating one, she's very close-minded but views certain oddities (ie her flesh-head) as having earned their place and thus being fine - she's a freak too, by her own admission, but she's doing it for a just and wider purpose, so it's fine. which is, ironically, the ideology callum forced upon himself.

callum was obsessed with helping people, pushing himself to do more and more, because it was the only way he ever found respect. if he didn't help people and have grand visions for the world and make himself "useful" to society at large, then what would he be, if not a freak?

mingus and her paw-paw are very similar people, from their well-intentioned extremism, to their stubbornness and paranoia, to their inability to view themselves as anything more than a vessel for that grand cause they believe in (callum in the dialup, mingus in restoring her paw-paw's memory) - which is funny, because if mingus was able to view callum, and herself, as a flawed human person, she would come to understand how similar they really are.

:(

[doberbutts]

Was talking to someone about how it’s not okay to consider transmisogyny the root of all oppression and they agreed, but when I said it’s also not okay to consider misogynoir the root of all oppression either they seemed to consider me racist for that (we are both nonblack poc). I’m sorry if I’m wrong there, it just doesn’t seem fair to believe any one type of oppression is the worst one that causes all the rest. All oppression is interrelated but not in that way to me?

So normally I wouldn't answer this because it reads like bait HOWEVER I know who's asking bc I saw your conversation about it in the discord channel so I'm willing to take in good faith only bc of that.

In the context you were speaking of, I both agree and disagree with the statement "fixing misogynoir would fix all oppression".

Misogynoir is so intertwined with so many things, and while they're all pointed at black women, fixing each hook of the web will inevitably help both non-black and non-women people. I think I referred to oppressive society as a jenga tower a couple weeks ago. Wiggle one block free and the tower shakes but doesn't fall. Remove enough blocks and eventually the whole thing collapses. You can think of misogynoir as a collective of probably a third to a full half of the total number of blocks in the tower. It's not the whole tower, but it's a significant enough portion that removing them all probably does break the whole thing. Even if the tower IS still standing by the end, it's more likely to begin to fail as you remove what few blocks are left keeping the structure upright.

I have never met someone devoted to misogynoir who is not also intensely ableist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, xenophobic, as well as sexist and racist in other ways. This is especially, and unfortunately, true of the black men who refuse to support their sisters and instead push them down while seeking their own freedom. This is a known problem and fairly intensely discussed in black feminism.

HOWEVER I understand that your interpretation is that would then mean that black women are The Most Oppressed. I do not think that is what that statement is intended to imply, but I also get how it could be read in that manner. I think it is dangerous to try to measure oppression on this sort of scaling, because A: personally I think it is too contextual to say any one demographic or combination of identities is "the most" anything, and B: even if there truly is a "The Most Oppressed", people who are crying out for help should be helped, regardless of where they sit on that ladder. If you don't have food you don't have food, let's solve the problem of people not having food first and we can quibble about the details later.

Rather, it is more that specifically misogynoir as said is so interwoven with so much more than simply "racism and sexism towards black women" that fixing all the pieces of misogynoir would make such a vast improvement on the whole of society that many, many, many oppressive structures would vanish.

I also think you can say that about pretty much any intersectional view of oppression, which is why I'm always saying that we need to be joining hands and lifting each other out of the pit rather than fighting over crumbs and our 5 seconds in the spotlight. If I'm fighting misogynoir, and a friend is fighting antisemitism, and a third friend is fighting transmisogyny, and a fourth is fighting for disability rights... all of these things hook together. The other three's fights directly influence mine, and visa versa. So rather than reading it as "abandon your cause and join mine instead", it should be "therefore we are allies because our goals run parallel to each other".

I'm also aware that plenty of people interpret it the first way, and refuse to listen to the second. This is also fairly widely discussed in black feminism, with some having the first interpretation and others the second.

[luveline]

maybe for zombie Steve au, there’s some sort of emergency at the college so there’s like a lockdown ish but Steve & reader get split up & then have an emotional reunion? 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

thank you so much for your request! I took a smide of inspo from scenes of twd (specifically when the prison fence gets it shit rocked) steve zombie!au ♥︎ fem!reader 5k words

"And you…" You pause, tongue sticking out as you struggle to tuck your shirt into your jeans. "You smoked?" 

Steve laughs where he's shrugging into his own jeans. You're both very late. 

"Everyone smoked junior year." 

"I didn't." 

"No, of course you didn't," he says, laughing more. It's a nice sound to hear so early in the morning. You can almost pretend you're well-rested. 

"I didn't," you say emphatically, leaning against the wall by the door to slip on your sneakers. 

It doesn't matter if you're telling the truth, Steve clearly doesn't believe you. He mirrors your actions and puts on his own pair of sneakers. They were white, once upon a time, but now they're a gritty grey. You stand tall in unison and pull open the door.

"Wait," Steve says. 

He brushes your hair out of your face, looking over each of your features casually before his fingers dip down to your belt. You startle on instinct, though he's only fixing the mess you'd made of your tucked shirt. His fingers push under your belt methodically, efficiently. In less than a minute he's done. 

Neither of you bother with a jacket. Steve pockets the keys and the door locks behind you, the two of you half jogging out of Little Hawkins to the front of the building. 

"I'll be at the north fence all day, okay, so if you need me, come and find me. You're–" 

"In the pantry where I always am," you say, "and I'll be fine, so you don't let anything bite you and I'll see you at dinner." 

"Wait, wait, wait," Steve says, catching your wrist before you can part ways. 

He pulls you in by the arm until he can grab your shoulders. He does altogether too much looking, eyes raking over your face, your neck. He meets your eyes, cups your cheek in both hands. 

"I love you," he says quickly, "I love you," —he kisses you wonky, lips way too close to your nose, "I love you. See you at dinner." 

He's sick in the head. He doesn't give you any time to answer or bestow the heaping of affection he deserves, simply splits and power walks away from you.

You sigh, wringing your hands together. "Steve! I– I love you too!" 

He turns around, his smile ridiculously big, and waves at you. You wave back. 

He races out of view. You try not to make eye contact with the people milling around outside of the dorm building and pick up the pace, running down the street to the cafeteria building. 

The town hall is alive in the mornings, and class is in session, more kids than you'd ever expected to see again in your lifetime all bundled up in one room. You think it's nice, the way they teach them here. They don't bother with algebra or arithmetic, though Sammy the 'teacher' offers tutoring to anybody who wants it, they just draw and play and talk about emotional wellbeing. Sometimes there are survival classes, but they don't really talk about geeks. They show the kids what wild flora is edible, or how to wrap a cut. You think it's probably more for routine than actual teaching. 

"Hi, Sammy," you say. 

She smiles, and you're horrified as she says, "Hi, baby. Class, say good morning." 

All the kids say good morning to you. You flush with heat from top to bottom. Their cute little faces beaming up at you is an instant disarming. 

"Hi, kids," you say, waving. 

Hands holding crayons and pencils wave back at you. 

You make your way into the kitchen, which is a huge industrial affair connected to an otherwise small cafeteria. Maybelle and Pauline are already inside cleaning up the leftover breakfast and preparing for community dinner. 

Breakfast is specifically for the people inside the community who can't manage to make it themselves, the disabled, the injured, the elderly, but dinner is for everybody. 

"Sorry I'm late," you say. 

"Hun, we don't care," Maybelle says. 

"Did you want breakfast?" Pauline asks. "I'm gonna wrap this up otherwise. Somebody's gonna eat it."  

It sounds like a threat. You take some of the breakfast they've set aside, which isn't a breakfast food at all, just boxed mac and cheese that tastes slightly stale. You barely notice it anymore, though the texture gives you the heebies. 

You move into the pantry and check everything still there, the easiest and most useless part of your job. Then, Maybelle and Pauline try to put together a meal that's both cost effective (the cost being the energy expended to retrieve the food, and the likelihood that this food will be seen again) and not disgusting. Oftentimes they have to make a bunch of different stuff that doesn't go together, but it's better than nothing. You like this a whole lot more than if they just gave everybody a can a day and said there's your lot. 

You mark down the things they've taken. You mark down things you might need in Hopper's next supply rub. It's a super cushy job, the kind that isn't strictly necessary, but there are a lot of people in the community and the majority are willing to do what needs to be done. They ran out of jobs quickly, and you're sure Hopper had felt a little sorry for you, so here you are. You're not like Steve. You're not a survivor. You're lucky. 

You sit down after a while, no use pretending you have anything left to do, left side pressed to the side of the industrial oven. 

"You know, we used to live in Mississippi?" Pauline asks you. 

"What?" you ask. 

"Mm-hm, we were only in Michigan for vacation, if you can believe it. We had a good time." 

"Before, the uh, the apocalypse," Maybelle says with a tittering laugh. "We were hiking in the Porcupine Mountains when some dude tried to bite me. We thought he had rabies." 

The room smells like jarred pasta bake, a rich, garlic-thick smell that threatens to make your eyes droop. In the cafeteria, through the open shutters, you can hear the kids singing. Sammy hates nursery rhymes, so they learn the words of old songs by Louis Armstrong. Today, they're a discordant, too fast chorus of What a Wonderful World. It's a racket.  

But no matter how loud the kids sings, they can't cover the reverberations of a gunshot. 

A hush falls in the kitchen.

You stand up. You aren't panicked, exactly. More like you've stepped into a heavy overcoat, trepidation a weight that settles like a second skin. You move to stand by the sink with Maybelle. She pushes it open, and the three of you stare outside. 

Trees rustle in the wind. The kids descend into giggles as Matthew, one of the rare teenagers who deigns to join in, busts out a Louis Armstrong impression, his voice deep and bending. The oven hums. 

The second gunshot sounds. After that, you can't count them. 

Maybelle slams the window closed and twists the handle down to lock it. 

Your heart beats. None of you know what to say. Your pulse bumps, and bumps, and bumps. 

"Lock the doors," Maybelle says. "Lock the windows. Just in case." 

Gunfire comes fast and ferocious as a sudden downpour, popping in the near distance. Your footsteps clip over the linoleum floor, firm rubber soles like an elastic band as you bound into the cafeteria and meet Sammy's eyes. 

The kids are perturbingly quiet. 

"I'm gonna lock the doors," you say tentatively. 

Dread fills her face. "Okay. Alright." 

You fizz around the room, locking the front and side entrances one after another. You're thinking so many things at once that you can't seem to focus on any, and instead your attention is drawn to the inconsequential. How cold the metal on the door's emergency push bars are. The colouring books on the floor. 

You're standing in front of the last door with shaking hands as it gets thrown open. You gasp and scrabble backwards, hands in front of your chest to protect yourself. 

It's Joyce. Breathless, red in the face Joyce. 

"Lock the kids in the kitchen," she says. "The north fence has a leak. They're getting in." 

—

Steve is not having the good day he thought he'd be getting. 

You'd been exceptionally pretty this morning, tired eyed and disorientated but adorable through and through. You and Steve have fallen into a routine, and you talk so much it's a surprise your throats aren't sore. There's so much to say and never enough time to say it; you've taken to trading stories in the morning while you get dressed. Today was Steve's turn. He'd told you all about his birthday party during junior year, how his dad had almost killed him because somebody left a hole in the wall, and how he still can't eat Dunkin' Donuts without feeling queasy. You'd asked him when the last time he actually got to eat a donut was, and it hadn't been sad, like you might expect. 

He'd said, "I don't need any extra sweetness, are you kidding? Got all my sugar right here." 

You'd laughed at him (not with him) and nearly choked on toothpaste. 

That's a perfect morning for Steve. That's as good as they get. It might be silly, but he'd felt damn good, and foolishly tricked himself into thinking the rest of the day might be similarly great. 

"You're a fool, Harrington," he mutters to himself. 

"What was that?" 

Steve looks up. Jonathan and Christopher are staring at him. 

"He's going crazy," Christopher says. "Best take him out to the back shed." 

"Funny." Steve kicks the dirt in front of him. "So bored I'm talking to myself," he admits. 

"It could be worse," Jonathan says. "We could be on latrine duty." 

Steve would rather not think about latrine duty. God bless the communal bathroom in Little Hawkins. 

The day is breezy but surprisingly warm, not a cloud in the sky. The sun bears down and heats Steve's skin in waves. He likely should've stopped for his jacket this morning, but he'd been super late. He doesn't want a citation. Another citation. 

This is the slowest day they've ever seen on fence duty. Usually the general hubbub of the community catches the attention of a handful of geeks, and fence duty stabs them through the brain with lethally modified crowbars. It's gross, but it's necessary. It keeps you safe. Yet today they haven't seen a single undead. 

"Maybe they're dying," Christopher says. 

"They're already dead," Jonathan says. 

"How do you know? You felt for a pulse?" 

"They decompose," Jonathan says, laughing softly. "They're corpses." 

"I'm just saying." Christopher shrugs. 

Steve ignores them both without malice, staring through the section of chain link fence he's standing in front of and out into the streets. The north side of The College faces the surrounding town. From here, he can see a pharmacist's building, a sandwich shop, and a small veterinary clinic. Shells of cars long dismantled line the road. Natural works to reclaim them slowly, tires threaded with long grass. A few days ago, a deer ran straight up to the fence and stared at him. He promised you he'd come and find you next time, even though you hadn't really minded. He wants you to see it. There's more out there than just geeks and bad people. 

He shivers and fiddles with the holster on his hip, checking for the tenth time in as many minutes that the gun held within has the safety mechanism on. He really doesn't wanna shoot himself in the foot. That would majorly suck, though, he thinks, you'd look after him. That might make it worth it. 

Not that he'd shoot himself in the foot for your attention, that would be totally backwards. But he thinks you'd look cute as a nurse, with the little hat— 

"Do you hear that?" Jonathan asks. 

Steve pulls away from his questionable thoughts and turns to see his kind of friend. Jonathan stands with his nose to the fence, straight brown hair curling at the bottom of his neck. He needs a trim, but who is Steve to judge? 

"Hear what?" Steve asks. 

Though you can see the town through the gaps, the fences are blanketed by trees. Old trees with thick trunks, the kind that protesters would chain themselves to if the government ever suggested cutting them down. The ground around them is more dirt than grass, like the packed earth under the fence and Steve's shoes.

He assumes Jonathan's talking about the creaking of a thousand branches in the wind. Brown and orange leaves fall in droves, crinkly and scratchy as they litter the floor. 

"I can't hear anything," Steve says. 

"It sounds like a car engine," Jonathan says. 

Steve cannot agree. Now that the world is silent, car engines sound like jet planes. They shake the ground. There are no vibrations to be felt, but… there is something. 

"I'm gonna walk the perimeter," Steve says. A creeping unease takes shape over his shoulders like the winding suffocation of a python. He can feel the pressure of it against his throat. 

It's nothing, he thinks to himself. 

Sections of street flash between the trees. Tree, empty street. Tree, empty street. Each tree blocks the sun, and goosebumps erupt over his skin, the hairs on his arms standing up with each footstep into the dimness. Steve pulls his crowbar close to his chest. 

I'm paranoid, he promises himself, even as the strange sound Jonathan had heard begins to rise. He knows what it is, he knows, but he doesn't want to know. The wet suck of meat being pulled off the bone, and the dry rattle of lungs that won't fill. He lets the sun kiss his cold face for a moment, and then he stops behind the cover of a huge sycamore tree and leans, carefully, slowly, to the left. 

The sun hasn't warmed the sparse grass. Each blade is frosted into spikes. The leaf litter has turned to mulch, disturbed and churned by the body splayed open atop it. Blood emulsifies the dirt, a black mud that covers the hands, arms, knees, and mouths of a sizable herd. 

Steve flinches backward, covers his nose to shield himself from the stink, and swiftly presses stiff fingers over his mouth to stop himself chucking up. 

There must be fifty or more geeks huddled there, fighting for scraps of ligament, falling over chunks of inedible veel.

Steve wants to retreat quietly. His hands have other ideas. 

He drops the crowbar, fumbling for it with every centimetre it falls, and ends up knocking it a couple feet away with a horrified gasp. 

The fences are hammered into the ground so they can't be moved, but there aren't many fence posts between sections. Flimsy chain link is all that separates Steve and the herd. 

They look up. They start to move. 

Hands reach for him, hands force themselves through the holes of the fence, skin peeling back over muscle like the delicate rind of a pear. He watches in horror as the herd congregates, as the herd leans its collective weight against what's basically chicken wire, as dessicated flesh shaves off of their dead bodies, as the fence begins to bend. 

The geeks use each other like ladder, pulling and climbing, heaped like jenga tiles until a gnarled hand closes over the top of the fence. 

He wants to run. He needs to stay. He needs to separate them, he needs to thin the weight. He scrambles to take up his crowbar again, taking a step forward, but the tattle tale sound of metal scratching against metal squeals in his ear, and he leaps backward as the fence tips forward.

He should scream. 

He trips as he grabs the crowbar, palm aching as it smashes into the ground. He barely touches the floor, pushing himself back up and using his momentum to sprint toward the rendezvous point. 

"Jonathan!" he shouts, his voice strained. "They're over the fence. Section twenty one is coming down!" The fence has already come down, but Steve isn't thinking straight. 

Jonathan barely looks at Steve. He only needs one glance before he's looking past him. Steve looks back, too, and then he keeps on sprinting.

Jonathan unholsters his gun. Christopher does the same. 

Behind Steve, across the stretch of the college campus, a wave of geeks snap their gored maws. Steve runs harder than he's ever ran before, faster than he's ever moved, even faster than that night in the woods with you, scroungers on your tail, laughing and cussing, their flashlights shining at your heels like the beam of a prison guardhouse. 

Steve vaults himself over an overgrown hedge and right into the centre of the campus. There aren't many people out, but any at all is too many. 

"Get inside!" he shouts without explanation, shoes sliding over stone as he leaps for the civil defence siren nestled against the gym building. "Get inside! There are geeks inside the fence!" 

Jeremy and Dustin had jerry-rigged the broken siren months ago for situations like this to only play for two seconds. Not long enough to attract anything that isn't already here. Steve slams his hand into the button and stares up at it in a petrified awe as the siren begins to cry, one long and wailing wave of sound that careers over the community. 

It might be his imagination, but he thinks that the silence after it stops is imbued with impending doom. One empty, fragile moment, before the shouting begins, and the following pop of gunfire is impossible to ignore. 

He thinks of you in the kitchen across the quad. He thinks of running to you, of hiding you somewhere nobody will ever get to you. 

He runs back the way he came. 

—

All these little faces in disarray. You huddle amongst the youngest ones and try your best to keep them quiet, whispering a story as the sound of gunshots cracking over asphalt rivets the quiet. 

"Me and Steve, we saw all kinds of fish. We saw carp, and salmon, and koi fish in the lake. They looked like huge, gorgeous goldfish, they had–" everyone jumps as something close by takes a hit, a fence perhaps, split apart— "these huge black eyes and these popping mouths. You know how fish pop their lips together?" 

You look around the circle and beg one of them to answer. If Sammy weren't such a wicked shot she would've stayed and handled this a hell of a lot better than you are.

"I know," says one of the youngest girls. She can't be six years olds. 

"Yeah? How do they do it?" 

She starts to pop her lips. You grin despite your welling panic and nod encouragingly. You'd clap if your hands weren't full of smaller hands. 

"Yeah, like that! They were swimming so close to us, I could see their gills." 

Your story isn't true, but it is distracting. You hold their attention for as long as you can. Pauline stands in the doorway, eyes flitting between the three entrances to the cafeteria, and Maybelle haunts the sink, hiding just behind the other overhead spray to try and find out what's going on. The storm siren hasn't sounded again, and Hopper hasn't come around to tell you it's safe. 

It might never be safe again.

You swallow down the urge to scream and squeeze the tiny fingers curled over your palm. They belong to a little boy, white and brown-haired with pretty hooded eyes. He looks like Steve. 

You could've sworn, just before the siren, that you'd heard him yelling, but you'd raced to the sink and looked out and hadn't seen him. 

You can't help thinking about it. About everything — he could die. He could already be dead. Joyce swore she hadn't seen him, and had only managed to speak to Christopher, who'd split off to alert the older group. She said Jonthan was holding off a group of geeks. She couldn't stay, determined to go help him. 

So if Christopher was looking for Hopper, and Jonathan was by himself at the north fence, where was Steve? Where exactly was the leak? 

You lean forward toward the kids and whisper, "Does anyone else have a story? From a vacation?" 

"We went to Niagara Falls, once," Becky says. 

"You did? What was it like, huh? Was the waterfall really loud?" 

Becky starts to tell her story. You try to listen. You can't think of anything at all besides Steve, though your priority is keeping everybody here safe, your brain won't stop. You can't shake the feeling that you'll lose him, and it's a bright red branding behind your eyes. You're gonna lose him.

This can't be happening. 

It's been a month since Connor, an ex-member of The College with delusions of grandeur, dragged you underdressed and freezing through miles of forest with your wrists bound, wondering if you'd ever see Steve again. A month of nightmares and hot flashes and reaching out for Steve in the dark. 

You'd thought, if you died, if Connor killed you, that it would ruin Steve's life. He'd waste it looking for you. You'd thought that was the worst feeling in the world, knowing you'd leave him behind.

You hadn't understood what this part felt like. How Steve must've felt, wondering if you were dead. How he must've argued with himself as you do now. 

Steve hadn't hesitated. Robin mentioned it once, casual but earnest. Steve tore the place apart looking for you. He assembled a search party and went looking for you on a hunch. Steve says he's lucky they chose the right direction. You know it's more than that. You know you're the lucky one. 

He knew you were in danger, and he came to get you. 

"Maybelle," you say, standing up. "I'm gonna need a knife." 

— 

Steve isn't sure what the fuck they're doing. Hopper shouts instructions but they're confusing and nobody knows what's happening. Geek gore drips down his arm and he prays he doesn't have any broken skin as he ploughs the sharp of the crowbar deep into a grey mottled eye socket. 

It shucks out, the geek's body collapsing in a heap at his feet. Tens more stagger forward.

"Everyone should be inside, but that doesn't mean everyone is inside!" Hopper shouts, his booming voice echoing over the din of shots and slick stabbing. "We need to contain them. Joyce, Jonathan, I need you back here. Bernier, Taylor, McCoy, push for the fence! We need to get it back up and standing before this gets worse. Harrington!" 

Steve pierces the skull of an approaching geek like an eggshell, springing back before a second can tear a chunk out of him. "What?" he yells. 

"You should circle back to the quad, make sure there aren't any stragglers."

"Joyce already secured–" 

"It's up to you, kid." 

Steve appreciates what Hopper's doing. Everyone knows you and Steve are unhealthily dependent on one another right now considering the circumstances, and he'll admit that his heart wants literally nothing more than to be where you are. He thinks of you locked up in the kitchen with all this happening outside and hates it, but as long as you stay where you are, that's as safe as you can be. 

He doesn't bother saying yes or no, throwing himself back into the throng. 

It's the ultimate workout. Sweat stings his eyes, his brain pounds behind them. He has to stay vigilant and he has to be fast. He cuts down geeks with a practised agility, Bernier on one side, Taylor the other. They force their way to the fence, and soon there's a small army of survivors behind them, bullets burning his eardrum to the right. 

When the fence is finally in view again, they buckle down. 

It's a huge struggle. Hopper and Livingstone front a team of five of the older guys with a replacement fence on their literal shoulders. The woods are teaming with geeks who must have heard the gunfire and the siren. They cut down the old fence behind Steve and the youngers. The new one gets thrown up just as Steve spears a geek through the ear, hammers whacking into frozen earth with a sound like a car crash.

"Harrington, inside the perimeter!" 

Steve eyes an imminent geek but does as Hopper commands, weaselling through the single gap they've left behind. They finish the inner hammering and Hopper and Livingstone set about chaining the sections back together. 

Steve backs away from the fence and tries to catch his breath. He leans back and brushes the hair out of his eyes, chest heaving, eyes shuttering closed in relied. They survived it. They did exactly what they were supposed to do in this situation and the plan worked. 

Somebody takes the crowbar from his hand and he lets them, scrubbing both hands through his hair, scalp cool with sweat as a gale of wind blows. He looks up, and the sky has darkened, that rare morning sunshine nowhere to be seen. 

He opens his eyes. Christopher is sitting a ways away looking queasy. Joyce is hugging the life out of Jonathan, kissing his cheek, hand in his hair. Bernier and Taylor are stabbing the new wave of geeks. Steve isn't worried, there aren't a quarter as many as there had been. 

The smell is barbaric. 

"Don't relax too quickly, kid," Hopper says, "we still gotta round up the bodies." 

Steve laughs morosely, secretly pleased when Hopper pats him on the shoulder. His back fucking hurts and he stinks of gore and zombie gunk. Dead material somehow slimy and dry as bark at once, Steve wants a shower, and a hug from you, in that specific order. 

"You okay?" Jonathan asks him, squinting. There's blood splattered against his forehead. 

"They had to do this today?" Steve asks. "This is my favourite shirt. I'm never gonna get the guts out–" 

A scream splits the air. 

"The quad," Hopper announces. "Taylor, Bernier, keep going. Everyone else, with me." 

His blood ice in his veins, Steve runs with the rest of the group. He realises he's left his crowbar with Taylor and grimaces, pulling the gun from his holster and knocking off the safety mechanism. Steve isn't good with a gun. He only ever used one right at the start, when he hadn't known that sound to a geek is like a porch light to moths. That, and he'd run out of ammo. 

"Oh, goddammit." 

There's a crowd of geeks they must've missed around the side of the town hall. Hopper immediately starts yelling at a young teenager screaming in front of the gym to get back inside. 

Steve's okay, his heart's fine, and then he sees you. You're wrist deep in brains, surrounded by bodies and coated in a black spray of blood. It's in your hair, your eyebrows, all over your cheek and your shoulder. 

He nearly wrenches Livingstone off of his feet as he bursts forward to help you, gun raised and poised. He shoots and drives forward. One geek, two. Three, five, he loses count. He gets so close he can hear your panting breath, not panicked but struggling to keep going. 

"Fucker," he says, one geek left between you and safety. 

You scramble to the side. Steve shoots it point black in the back of the head. It falls down slow, and then it thunks against your shoes. 

You reach for him on automatic as you pull your feet from under him, treading over the soft of the geeks shoulders and into Steve's waiting arms. He holds the gun away from you to click on the safety, shoving it back into his borrowed holster. 

"You're okay?" you ask loudly. 

"I'm fine, what are you doing out here? You should've stayed inside the pantry." 

"Says who?" you ask, squeezing him so tightly he feels his skin bruising in the shapes of your arms. 

"Says everyone!" he shouts, squeezing you back just as hard. 

You catch your breath together. His hands rove over your back, checking and rechecking that you're real and you're not hurt. He pushes you away from him to check your front properly, hand on your face, your arms. 

"I'm fine," you say, "I'm perfect." 

"You have more blood on you than the rest of us put together." 

You hum unhappily. "I think I got a fresh one in the artery. It sprayed like a fountain, it was–" You sigh, stroking a loose curl of dirtied hair from his eyes. "It was disgusting." 

He wants to kiss you, but he's normal, and you're both plastered in blood. He's less normal as he wraps his forearm behind your head and forces your face into his neck, groaning in an exhaustive relief. Your warm breath against his skin is everything he could ever ask for. 

"Stay inside, next time," he murmurs. 

"Not a chance." 

"Think I can give him a citation?" Steve hears Hopper ask. 

Joyce gasps through a laugh. "They're cute!" 

"This is a public space." 

Steve huffs a laugh against your ear. "Holy shit, you scared the fuck out of me." 

"I had to know you were okay." 

His hand slides down your shoulders, searching for something he can't explain. "I'm okay. We're okay, honey. You can relax."

The last of your resistance ebbs away. You melt into his arms, and Steve pretends for your sake that he can't feel you shaking like a leaf. You just tore your way through a herd to make sure he was okay: you're the bravest girl he's ever met.

[axeylotl]

something that makes me really happy about the DLC is how it treats Roger's mental disability.

vague spoilers under the cut, specifically for the good route and ending

Similar to Karen, nothings outright stated diagnosis-wise, and still like her, it doesn't need to be.

The writing doesn't hold back that it is, genuinely, disabling, and it's never disparaging about that fact.

He can't be like everyone else, he can't do all the things everyone else can, he needs more help than most people, and it's okay. it's not something he has to fix to fit expectations, because it's not something he can fix. it's just a part of who he is, and he has to accept it and expect accordingly of himself.

Peter doesn't treat Roger like a child, and he's not resentful of Roger for needing the help he does. Not everyone can give him as much support as he needs, and those who can aren't always ready/available, and it's no one's fault. No one is selfish for needing help or not having the resources to give it.

(And, as someone who sometimes worries I'll never be fully independent or very successful due to my ADHD, with very similar symptoms to Roger, it's a very reassuring sentiment)

frankly, there's probably even more I could say, but I need to replay it a few times

[evellynssocbrainrot]

An Important Notice

Almost every time I read a fanfic or see what people say on Tumblr and Pinterest, Inej is perceived as this perfect angel with no flaws and Kaz is the one who needs fixing.

This is really annoying.

Listen, people, Inej is amazing, don't get me wrong. She's one of the best characters in all of literature and I look up to her as a role model, but she's not perfect. She is not a saint or an angel, she's a human. Even she can be stubborn and arrogant from time to time. Let's not forget how she doubted Wylan's demo ability at the beginning of SOC. Her line, "I will have you without your armor, Kaz Brekker, or I will not have you at all," is iconic and I understand the meaning, but it's still a bit hypocritical when you think about it. She's telling Kaz to make himself vulnerable but it's not like she's that open about her own vulnerabilities either.

As for Kaz, the poor baby is almost always painted in the wrong light. He's the one with all the flaws, the one who doesn't deserve anything but misery, and the one who needs fixing. Even if he's just a character, I feel bad and think perhaps sometimes the Grishaverse fandom isn't fair to him. In the books, Kaz told Wylan how he shouldn't feel ashamed of his disability, VERBALLY said that he wanted to give himself up for the Crows, and didn't allow Jesper to use Parem even though it was a very efficient way to gain the victory. He even gave Nina Matthias's share of the kruge despite having the option to take it for himself.

And for Inej, the sweetheart did as much as he could. 😭

He was dead set on saving her at the beginning of CK and stopped at nothing until she was with him again. And his line, "I would have come for you, and if I couldn't walk, I'd crawl to you." He said he would crawl, CRAWL!! Fucking crawl to her, and knowing Kaz, he so would if he had to. And then he liquidated all, not some, all of his assets, every single cent, he gave it all up for her. To fully free her from the Menagerie. In the end, he bought her a ship, found her parents, and even went as far as taking off his gloves and holding her hand for a long time IN PUBLIC!!!! At the harbour where anyone could see. In fact, he's the reason why she's where she is in the first place. He got her out, gave her a knife, and made her dangerous. He gave her the freedom to grace the rooftops in the dead of night and haunt the streets. He gave her the option to leave if she wanted. HE LOVED HER TO THE POINT WHERE HE LET HER GO BECAUSE HER HAPPINESS AND DESIRES MATTER MORE TO HIM THAN HIS OWN!!!

He's not that bad okay. I know he's very flawed and traumatized, but he's got a very big heart, he just doesn't show it. He gave Jesper a place to go, provided Wylan with protection, and allowed Nina and Matthias to reunite. He formed the plans for the Ice Court and ended Van Eck and Pekka Rollins while doing his best to ensure that the Crows would stay alive. But still, he's the only one who has to fix himself. Some fans still think that he isn't worthy of Inej. Meanwhile, Inej is the perfect, flawless angel. I thought people didn't like a Mary Sue. And Inej isn't a Mary Sue, she has flaws, she has weak points, and she has things that she needs to work through as well.

For those of you who read all this, thank you for sparing some time.

[the-guilty-writer]

No one asked for this but it's too late now.

disabled/mentally ill/chronically ill child and which BAU parent would be the most accomodating.

(of course all of them would be supportive and do their best but some of them would be naturally more accomodating for certain things. Just trust me.)

Some of these are really specific and others are more general be kind please it was 2 am when I thought of this

Spencer- absolutely the best dad an autistic kid could ask for. He knows the signs before a meltdown and exactly what to do. If you're non verbal he learns sign language to help you, gets you stim toys based on what motor function you find the most soothing, and this man would be the biggest supporter of your special interests (really this needs no explaination. I could go on for hours about this)

JJ- a learning disability. Not only is she mama bear who will fight a teacher that critisized you but her whole job revolved around communicating well. She knows how to adjust and break things down and go slow. She would figure out the best way to accomodate you and follow through every time. You never have to worry about her losing her patience with you, she knows you need breaks, and she doesn't care what grade you get- she's just proud that you tried your hardest and got through it.

Penelope- Depression. Not only is this woman nearly impossible to be sad around, but Garcia understands sadness and grief and darkness. She doesn't like it, but she understands it and how awful it feels. She also understand that sometimes you just have to feel the feelings and not try to fix them right away. She's all sunshine and rainbows, but she knows you have to weather the storm first. She helps you get through it, slow and steady, but once it's time to get up and going she knows how to do that too.

Morgan- Any physical disabilty. This man would find the best house possible and then restore it and fit it with any ramp, handles, resizing, etc. you need. Would totally redo your dining room to be a first floor bedroom if you needed it and outfit it with an accessible shower. He finds a way to modify just about any sport you want to try so you can play. Can and will fight buisnesses over their lack of following of accessible laws.

Emily- Ambulatory wheenchair user/dynamic physical disability. She makes sure you have any mobility aids, modifications to the living space, and will fight people if they don't follow accessible laws. But she also makes you feel badass- she points out that canes and crutches make great weapons (talk shit get hit) and using your wheelchair is a power move she always encourages you to take if you need it. If you need bravery, she'd let you borrow hers. Would cut a death glare to anyone who questioned your validity.

Hotch- emotion and mood disorders. Hotch is so steady when it comes to his mood and emotions and he's great at not taking things personally. So it doesn't matter how high or low you are or if you blow up at him and say things you don't mean because he knows it's not always in your control. You can depend on him to be okay when you aren't and make descision when you don't trust that you're in the right state of mind. He's your rock- always stable and consistent and reliable, even when you can't be.

Rossi- disordered eating. HEAR ME OUT OKAY. A lot of people who restrict have one special dish/snack that has significant and GOOD meaning to it and a lot of times it plays a really big role in recovery and Rossi would make sure you have that whenever you want. If you have more selective tendencies he's sure to get the exact thing you like every time because no child of his is going to eat generic we all know the brand name is better. Rossi believes that a relationship with food should be one of love and he helps foster that in the most sensitive and kind way possible

[cookinguptales]

Finally putting down some political thoughts, and put under a cut because I am not going viral for a political post, not again.

I suppose something that I've been grappling with is... how do you deal with reactionary politics?

I do not believe, for the record, that there is something innate in men that makes them more dangerous or self-centered. But there is very much a problem with men right now. We are seeing misogyny of a virulence and magnitude that I have never seen in my life. Like... "your body, my choice?" That sounds like something an editor would have axed for being too on-the-nose twenty years ago.

And I understand that many of us have been socialized to take responsibility onto ourselves. Some of this is the way that women are generally expected to do heavy emotional labor for those around them, and some of this is... well, I'm going to be kind and say it's control issues. (That I see in myself, as well.)

If we made this happen, if it was our actions that made men hate us so much that they've done all this, then we can also fix it... right? We're supposed to be loving, nurturing, understanding, and patient, so if all of this was a failure of those "intrinsic" traits, then... we can fix it by being those things, right? We can love them into not hating us anymore, right?

I think what's more likely is that what we're seeing is a radical pendulum swing. It's happened so, so many times through history. There's a period of intense social change, often with a greater sense of freedom for marginalized groups, and then there is a severe backlash to that. This doesn't just apply to women; it's happened to people of color, queer people, ethnic/religious minorities, etc.

Hell, I'm even seeing people getting angry at disabled people (like me) for being too "rude" and "demanding" and "entitled" when asking for our legally mandated accommodations.

It's scary because... okay, so this is a backlash to us getting rights. It's a backlash to the ADA. To Obergefell. To trans rights. To Obama. To #MeToo. It's a backlash to women getting bank accounts and no-fault divorce and Roe and workplace protections -- to women not needing men in order to have a financially secure life anymore.

It's a backlash that's been building for decades now, but which really seemed to hit a fever pitch during the Obama administration. Not only did we have a non-white president, but that president enacted a lot of protections for marginalized people.

It's a backlash born of people who had lots of power now worrying that they will have less. It's men worried that they can no longer control women. It's white people worried that POC and/or immigrants will "supplant" them. It's straight people worried about some kind of widespread queer conversion. It's people who are financially unstable blaming these problems on social change. It's people who are billionaires worrying that they might have a single penny less.

It's a backlash that's happened more times than I'd care to count; you just have to watch pre-code movies to realize that progress is not always linear, and that we have had short-lived periods of freedom in the past.

It's a backlash. Okay. But so what? What do we fucking do about that?

I understand that every time one group gets more rights, the groups that previously had a monopoly on those rights are going to fucking lose their minds about it. But how do we assuage that? We can't just stop trying to progress. We can't just stop fighting for our rights. Even knowing that they're going to come down on us even harder in the future, we can't just give up and let them destroy us.

Like... when there is no pleasing a group except by surrendering all power to them, there is no compromise, not really. But then how do we prevent these backlashes? These periods of horrifying, cruel conservatism that are a direct response to periods of progressive liberalism?

Obviously strength of numbers in the voting booth didn't work. Nor did protests. Threats didn't work -- nor did kindness, for that matter. Fight, flight, fawn. None of them worked.

It's something that I keep coming back to. Like... you simply cannot depend on appealing to the humanity of oppressors. It does not work. Yes, of course I believe they have humanity. But so many people leave that behind the second they feel threatened.

The best I can think of, maybe, is coalition-building. Not with the people trying to kill us. I'm sorry, tumblr, but that's fucking stupid. But... god, I've noticed a shift in the past decade. There's been a lot of very purposeful division sown between the groups that will suffer most under the rule of Republicans. Women and POC and queer people and disabled people and immigrants and the impoverished... They've been training us to turn on each other, and then they've reaped the rewards.

It's one of the reasons why I finally deleted Twitter this week. I just could no longer take the amount of finger-pointing and in-fighting amongst the downtrodden while Republicans trotted around like fucking show ponies. Oh, this is the Latinos' fault. This is the white women's fault. This is the black men's fault. This is those damn self-hating women and queers. Boomer-ass cripples, etc.

This is your fault. No, this is your fault.

This is my fault, this is my fault, this is my fault.

Like damn, at a certain point they won't even have to destroy us if we do it for them.

But at the same time, I'm not going to feed you some Pollyanna shit about how we all just need to join hands and work together. There are internal prejudices and power structures that are impeding us here, and I don't think it's right to pretend those don't exist so we have the outward appearance of solidarity. To some degree, that's probably part of what got us into this mess.

If we can't at least unite against such a horrifying threat to our very existence, though... like... we will be destroyed.

After the debacle that was COVID... I don't know. It is harder to believe that people will work together to protect the most vulnerable of us, or even their own interests. But I also just do not see any other way forward. We're not going to just convince them to give us our rights back. These shitty alt-right fuckheads see kindness as subservience, not as bridge-building. That's why they take all of our concessions, absorb them, become more powerful, and then give us absolutely nothing in return.

Things are about to get a lot worse before they get better. And the only thing that might save us is numbers and solidarity, even when we have problems between us.

I feel pretty despondent about the odds of all that right now, though, so like... I don't really know what to do. :(

At the very fucking least, though, stop making posts about how their abhorrent actions are our fault for being angry and afraid. I've seen it on tumblr, I've seen it on twitter, I've seen it on reddit... The past few days I've seen more thinkpieces about how women made men this way than I can count, and it's unbelievably frustrating. Like... when women felt threatened by men, they didn't enact sweeping reforms taking away their bodily autonomy. They just wanted to be left alone. These two reactions are not the fucking same.

Sorry that you ran into some traumatized women who didn't want to keep trying their odds! Weird that you decided to become a Nazi about it! Seems like maybe this is less about a woman who's been repeatedly sexually assaulted posting "I hate men" on twitter and more about systemic social messaging that you are being deprived of your ~god-given power~ by those who should be beneath you, like women, immigrants, POC, disabled people, queer people, etc.!

I swear to god, this is just the same "oh but the shooter was bullied at school and ignored by girls" rhetoric in a new coat of paint. Maybe if you really want to talk about how men aren't intrinsically bad, you should stop assuming that they have no choice but to become comically evil at the slightest provocation.

"Your body, my choice." Come the fuck on.

[pokemonshelterstories]

I'm looking for advice. I'm looking to get a partner pokemon of my own, but the only experience I have is with my family's buneary. I've always loved scolipedes, but I've also heard that pidoves are friendly and intelligent pokemon... do you have tips for either of these, or general advice for a new solo pokemon owner?

i may be a bit biased lol...but pidove make great first pokemon to raise on your own! i recommend getting at least two to start so that they can help keep each other company, because they're social little guys. pidove are kind of well known for not being the brightest...but they have one of the most amazing memories of any pokemon! so they're not gonna be big problem solvers, but simple puzzle toys and memory games are great ways to entertain them. theyre definitely friendly- my pidove love sitting on my head or shoulder!

scolipede's tougher. i don't usually recommend poison types as a first pokemon, and the venipede line is known for its aggression. they need a good bit of space and places where they can root around for food. their venom is also powerful enough to disable a human, so i'd only get one if you're feeling very confident- and certainly don't try to evolve it too fast. a different bug or poison type would really be better for your first mon.

as far as general tips- remember that your vet and the pokemon center are your friends! they're your first and foremost contact for questions and concerns. and also- remember that you're going to make mistakes in your care, and that's okay. raising pokemon is harder than people make it sound sometimes. if someone trustworthy tells you that you need to change something you're doing, it doesn't mean that you're a bad trainer. you're just learning things as you go, and everyone inevitably screws something up. as long as you're doing your best for your pokemon and fixing things that need fixing, you and your pokemon will be okay.

[stranger-rants]

Disabled Billy & Steve Week Day 5 featuring Billy's OCD & Body Focused Repetitive Behavior

TW - discussions of self harm, intrusive thoughts, nausea & purging (non graphic)

Billy snapped the rubber band against his wrist for the hundredth time while in the waiting room of the doctor's office. His knee bounced up and down and he counted each second of every minute, glancing up at the clock every five minutes that ticked by.

It was all he could do to distract himself from the overwhelming desire he had to drag his fingernails down his arms, picking away at the thin lines of red scabs running down the inside. The thin lines he put there that week.

Something he tries to hide in public until the urge becomes too strong and he can't help himself but scratch and pick. He knows what people must think. He's not hurting himself, or rather he's not trying to. He's stopping it. Yes, that's it. Stopping it.

Every appointment is the same. "How are your wounds healing?" "Okay." "Oh, don't pick at the scabs. I know it's tempting, but they won't heal properly that way." A nod. "Are the pain medications working?" "Fine, I guess."

Hopper picked him up after the appointment. The ride was silent. It almost always is. There isn't much to say to one another, and Jim has given up trying to ask him how these appointments go. The answer is always the same. A shrug. It's fine.

It's not fine.

Billy's eyes fixate on the veins in his wrist. He rubs his thumb against it, tracing them. Hopper glances at him as he does this and it makes him feel uneasy. Coughs. Says they're having pizza and wings and soda tonight, "so think about what you want."

Another nod that doesn't tear Billy away from his fixation. His nails drag experimentally against the skin there. His thumb digs in like a dull knife, tracing the blue green veins, making half moons with his other fingernails that don't draw blood.

"What are you doing?" Jim says, irritated. That makes Billy jolt up, eyes shifting immediately away from his wrists. Getting caught floods him with a sense of shame, but he doesn't really understand what's so shameful about it.

"Nothing."

"It doesn't look like nothing "

Billy closes his eyes. "Just leave it alone, okay."

"Can't leave it alone if you're hurting yourself, Billy."

"I'm not!" Billy snaps, because he isn't. He's fixing it. He's stopping it. Hopper just doesn't understand.

Jim sighs. Every day feels like one step forward and three steps back with the boy. He understands what he went through before The Mindflayer. He can even relate to some of it, but it's hard to understand everything else. He tries, but it's never enough.

That's what the therapist is for, but with Billy refusing to open up it's been hard for him to make any progress there.

Billy sinks into his seat. His brows furrow, and the thoughts pour. His arms tingle. His blood turning thick and black like tar. The smell and the taste of chemicals in the back of his throat nauseate him. He tries not to cry.

It's there inside you. It's in you, and you have to dig it out. You have to make yourself well. You have to fix it. You have to make yourself clean, and there's only one way to do that. The doctors can't fix it. Only you can. Only you can dig it out. Dig it out. Fix it.

It loops through his head, and Billy pulls and snaps the rubber band against his wrist again to make it stop but it wont stop. When he gets home, he slams the door and locks himself in his bedroom. He pulls out his tweezers and picks all his scabs off.

Billy comes out of his room for dinner. Jim hands him an unopened liter of soda. Billy wont touch drink he doesn't open himself anymore. It's one of a number of strange behaviors Jim has had to get used to, but he doesn't fight Billy on it.

He figures it has to be a control thing. The Mind Flayer must have put so many things into his body without his permission that Billy needs this. That's half true. The other half being that Billy thinks that everything and everyone is trying to poison him.

Billy knows that's not right or fair.

Hopper isn't trying to hurt him, but what if Hopper didn't know it was poison? What if he just washed his hands and the soap got in the bottle? What if he didn't wash his hands and germs got in the bottle? That could kill him in his weakened state.

So Billy takes his fate into his own hands and opens his own bottles. If he makes himself sick, then Jim doesn't have to feel bad about it when he dies. No one should feel bad about him getting sick or dying when it's his fault and he should've stopped it.

Billy eats a couple chicken wings, but when he finds a black vein standing out against the white meat of the chicken, he stops and stares at it. It's in there. It's in your food. Spit it out. Get it out before it's too late. Billy pushes away and runs to the bathroom.

He brushes his teeth after for what feels like half an hour, checking his tongue and teeth for black blood or discoloration. Satisfied with his inspection, he pulls his sleeves up to check the scabbing wounds on his arms. The wounds he put there.

Seeing himself and his work in the mirror, the guilt and shame rises in his chest threatening to choke him. God. How could anyone want to touch him like this? He just wants it to stop. He just wants it to all go away. He feels out of control and unwell and...

He needs help.

Hopper sits in the living room reading the paper when Billy shuffles in.

He looks up at Billy and frowns. Billy's eyes are red rimmed, screaming distress. His sleeves are pulled up. The angry red and raw lines stand out, and Jim tries to stay calm. It's hard not to react, but he steels himself just enough not to chase Billy away.

"What's up, kiddo?"

He's tempted to ask if he's okay, but that never goes well because he's obviously not and Billy's not good at answering that question honestly.

"I just want it to stop."

Jim stands up quickly and pulls Billy against his chest. Billy crumbles against him, sobbing. "Why won't it stop? No matter how hard I try. It just gets worse. I try so hard, but it just wont go away." He rambles on and on while Jim strokes his back.

"We're going to get you some help."

Billy snapped the rubber band against his wrist in Hopper's car. He was going to see a specialist in his condition. He had recently been diagnosed with OCD, and the past few months out of the hospital were starting to make sense.

The thoughts that were plaguing him all the time. All the weird things he did to make them go away. His inability to feed himself. The way that digging his finger nails into his skin felt good and bad at the same time.

Hopper pulled into the parking lot.

"You ready, kid?"

Billy took a deep breath.

"Yeah."

[grimwalker-grimoire]

We keep seeing posts about how you're not doing enough for the Current Events flavour of the month if you're not doing Specific Thing and therefore you're Evil and Bad and genuinely, that literally doesn't help people who can't do shit and just hurts their mental state. This isn't about any one thing. Yes there's plenty of worthy causes to take action in the name of, the world sucks! But many people aren't able to contribute in ways other than sharing content online, or even at all, and that's okay!

Yes there's need for support for many things but people who may already be hurting can't be expected to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Being fed bad food and told "there's starving children in the world who would appreciate this, you're so ungrateful" is a similar kind of thing to the stuff we're seeing--others suffering doesn't always mean you need to make yourself suffer to try to help them. You shouldn't be forced to have less than the bare minimum because no one should. "You're privileged that you get to ignore others suffering elsewhere"--yes! But we're also disabled and literally can't help anyone, even ourselves, if we don't have the energy to. Our help is nothing if we put all of our energy into things we can't fix and expend what little energy we have for ourselves. We don't even have enough money to live, some people can't give money or time and it's not always out of greed or hate! Stop acting like poor people who can barely feed themselves need to donate to things--go talk to the people hoarding all the damn money!

Stop guilt tripping. Spreading awareness is amazing but acting like people online are the villains for needing space and time isn't the way to be activists, you're harming people and preying on those with things like moral ocd under the guise of helping others.

[cottagecorrosive]

*Tears of the Kingdom SPOILERS*

Okay, so I've seen some fanart that may line up with my thoughts, but I just have some stuff I wanna say after beating tears of the kingdom. The ending was very sweet and wholesome and it is literally the best ending possible for the circumstances. HOWEVER, I think it would have been more appropriate (may not be the right word) if Zelda stayed a dragon and LINK completely lost his arm.

So like, it was stated many of time that consuming the forbidden fruit gummy would result in an unchangeable and unthinkable transformation. I'm glad Zelda came back in the end, but as far as themeing goes, I feel she should have stayed a dragon. The monumental sacrifice to transform yourself into something you wouldn't even recognize to MAYBE get this decayed weapon to your companion thousands of years into the future so they can defeat the apocalypse (again). Although, the reason Zelda did so was because she had unwavering faith in Link - and vice versa - even though she is completely unaware of his state in the future. The last thing she saw was Link falling with her and his arm and his sword completely busted. But she still had faith because Link is the only thing in Hyrule that she can rely on. No matter what happens, Link will be there. So she makes this sacrifice to become a dragon and help Link kill the Demon King. There are a few moments throughout where there is some longing between Link and Zeldragon, which are quite somber. And by Link slaying the Demon King and ridding Hyrule of evil, her sacrifice was not in vain. In my opinion, her transforming back into human form takes away from the impact of that decision. While her initial decision believed she would not come back, within the themes of the story it makes it feel less (to me at least). And think about the bittersweet ending it would've been if everything was better and Hyrule was safe and Link just looked up to see her at all times. Sad, yes. But without her Hyrule wouldn't exist.

In addition, I believe Link should have permantly lost his arm. As stated at the beginning, the damage was beyond repair so Rauru just gave Link his arm / power for a bit. And in the end he used said power to heal both Zelda and Link's arm. However, I think it would've been way rad if Link, along with the help of the sages, took on the Demon King and they had to use all their collective powers to do so. And to land a final blow (since the Demon King is literally the most powerful being in Hyrule) they used Rauru's hand to weaken him, and tear away from Link's arm (though it's just a smooth stub now), and use the master sword to finish him. (And I feel the final fight was a bit lackluster but that's neither here nor there). Link would then straight up not have his right arm anymore. And it would've been cool if either Purah crafted Link a new arm from sheikah technology or if he simply lived without it bc disability doesn't need to always be "fixed." I was thinking something similar to Finn from Adventure Time honestly.

In conclusion, I believe Zelda should have stayed a dragon and Link should have fully lost his arm because it would fit better with the themes and make for a more interesting story. What I think both Zelda and Link's arm represent are sacrifice and loss for what you believe in. They were both willing to give up a part of themselves (though Link kinda unintentionally) to protect those they care about and safeguard their home. The end would've shown that their actions were not in vain and that it was worth it. I feel getting things back to "normal" takes away from these themes and the impact of these events. This is my headcanon bb. In addition, all the cute zelink stuff could've taken place between botw and totk so you could have both "haha cute couple" and "I lost my arm and my gf is a dragon now. That's rough, buddy" at the same time. :)

P.S. This is just my opinion I promise pinky. I heavily enjoyed this wonderful game (I finished it after all) and think the ending is really wholesome and great for Link, Zelda, and everyone else. Maybe I just wanna see my little guys suffer. Who knows.

[honeysucklethornsandalligtrhorns]

Lex's List: Truths, Advice, Quotes, Mantras, & Words to Live By:

Fuck it, we ball.

Take it easy, but take it.

Life is not measured in a series of wins and losses; some things just are.

Don't approach a horse from the rear, a cow from its side, or a fool from any direction.

Perform random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.

Be gentle with yourself. You are still learning.

Be gentle with your past self. They were still learning.

Treat yourself as you would treat your daughter.

We all die, you either kill yourself or get killed.

Fuck around and find out.

To accept queerness, disability, neurodivergence, mental illness, differing religions, differing cultures, and a differing world, is to accept 'weirdness' and learn how to properly educate yourself on new (sometimes only to you) ideas, subjects, concepts, ways of life, etc..

One essential way to properly educate yourself on new ideas, subjects, concepts, ways of life, etc., is by listening to the stories and experiences of people who are of that specific group, from them themselves.

"Because I'm sexy! And chubby, man." "Why aren't you on a diet?" "Because I like to eat, is that such a crime?"

There are two types of anger-- explosive and implosive.

Intrusive thoughts are not from you, your brain is a wrinkly hunk of fat with lightning in it and it doesn't always know what it's doing. Just let them pass on and don't dwell on them.

Maybe they're just new at it.

You need to love yourself before you try to love others.

Saying sorry doesn't guarantee forgiveness. It's an offering, not a fix-all.

Trust, like respect, is earned.

In that sense, respect & trust can be given and taken away. They are privileges. You have to uphold them.

Phases are a natural part of life. Embrace them.

Everybody talks.

Whatever you do, there is a child out there doing it better than you.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Everything is a social construct because we live in a society.

Family is not just blood or genetics.

It's okay to need help, but clean up your own messes.

If you leave towels crumpled up instead of spreading them properly, they won't dry correctly.

If you leave issues untouched instead of addressing them and communicating, they won't dry correctly. They will fester.

Water damage is real. Clean up your spills.

This is your only body. Take care of it.

At the end of the day, it's only meat, fluids, electricity, and bone.

You have free will for a reason.

Homosexuality is present in over 1,500 species. Homophobia is present in one.

Never make assumptions.

Fact check everything.

Do not get involved in drama that isn't yours.

It's just fabric, get over yourself (in regards to judgment of others' clothing).

It's just fat, get over yourself (in regards to judgment of other people).

It's just skin, get over yourself (in regards to judgment of other people).

Admitting you were wrong takes more balls than arguing over who's right.

Ask first.

Mean what you say and say what you mean.

Use deodorant.

Vaccinate your kids.

If you can afford it, go to therapy.

Don't expect rewards for basic human decency.

Healthy, safe, and well-informed sex education is vital and should be taught in schools.

Don't purposefully walk into a strip club and then act shocked and offended to find strippers.

The axe forgets, but the tree remembers.

Your ancestors looked like you, and they all managed to get laid. There's hope.

Spite is the world's greatest motivator.

Do it bored.

If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.

You are the light. It's not on you, it's in you. Don't you ever in your motherfucking life dim your life for nobody. Don't you ever stop being who you are and dimming your light for none of these motherfuckers out here.

Art should calm the disturbed and disturb the calm.

Thousands of years ago, ancient peoples got bored.

There's a likelihood that you are not the first in your family line to be queer.

Nine days before the Wright brothers' flight, it was predicted that man would not achieve flight for another million years.

To love and be loved-- that alone is what makes this lifetime bearable.

Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

Language is fucking weird and accents are natural.

To laugh is to feel such joy you cannot contain it.

90-year-olds still go on dates. You will find someone.

Don't put metal in the microwave.

Taking 'unnecessary' precautions is favorable to getting unnecessarily hurt.

You can switch religions whenever you want.

And the universe said I love you/ And the universe said you have played the game well/ And the universe said everything you need is within you/ And the universe said you are stronger than you know/ And the universe said you are the daylight/ And the universe said you are the night/ And the universe said the darkness you fight is within you/ And the universe said the light you seek is within you/ And the universe said you are not alone/ And the universe said you are not separate from every other thing/ And the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code/ And the universe said I love you because you are love.

To be willfully ignorant is to welcome death.

The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.

Coercion is not consent.

Make sure you have a safe word set in place.

Grief does not disappear. You simply grow around it. You live with it.

Your conscience is a triangle. It pokes you when you do something wrong. If you ignore it enough, it'll smoothen out and become a circle. You won't feel the pokes anymore.

To live is not to survive.

Change your perspective, even if you think you're seeing clearly.

Don't be a dick to kids.

Money may not buy happiness, but it buys comfort.

First, you have to forgive yourself.

Don't panic. Panic drowns thought.

Carelessness is to die.

Your art hot like potato chip.

Remember to take your meds + drink water + eat a snack + unclench your jaw.

If you wouldn't take their advice, don't take their criticism.

'Bad' art that's made with passion is better than 'good' art that has no soul.

Hate is a learned trait. No one is born intolerant.

Love was the law and religion was taught.

Arrive early.

Just because someone looks like you does not make them a friend; just because someone does not look like you, or is unfamiliar, does not make them an enemy.

There are different temperatures and steeping times needed for different types of teas. If you get it wrong, your tea will turn out flavorless or bitter.

Don't store raw meat next to vegetables.

You can't 'just cut the mold' off of soft cheeses, fruits/veggies, or most dairy products.

Boiled water is not the same thing as boiling water.

Bake flour to remove the bacteria. Boil water to remove the bacteria. Put toxic things (such as tarantulas) in boiling water and boil for at least an hour to remove the toxins.

If you don't take yourself seriously, neither will others.

Defeatism is to die.

We are made of stardust.

Never make generalizing statements.

If small things bring you joy, fill your home with small things.

To be cringe is to be free.

Punch 'em in the throat.

[exeggcute]

the pendulum of opinion swingeth I guess. and swingeth wildly lol. the "addiction isn't real" shit feels a lot like the "disability is primarily a social/accessibility issue (rather than a medical issue)" shit to me because I think they both mean well and come from the same impulse (i.e., a desire not to pathologize traits that are actually "normal"/common/otherwise value-neutral) but do so in a way that not only starts with a conclusion and works backwards to prove it, which is obviously not the best approach, but also tries to hard to dodge an existing pitfall that it creates new and exciting pitfalls in the process.

uncharitable 2 AM thoughts but chewing it over I also am starting to wonder if like, okay. zeroing in on the disability part here because I think that's both a broader category and further up the river of conclusions. I do kind of get the sense that the "in a perfectly just and accommodating world, no one would be disabled" angle tends to come most forcefully from people whose perspective on disability either focuses solely on neurodivergence or on (surface-level) mobility issues specifically. things that affect how you navigate the world, essentially. because those are for sure two areas where social improvements have a huge and positive impact! maybe even two areas where you could reasonably argue that social improvements are enough to remove the barriers that "disable" people in a verb way, full stop.

but extrapolating that to all forms of disability is less useful, because not all disabilities are primarily issues of accessibility, and if it's not broadly true across the board then I think its fair to say it's just basically not true. you end up glossing over too much shit. not that social improvements aren't helpful, but many disabilities come from the fact that your body needs to do certain things to stay alive but is not always good at doing them properly, so you're gonna have to address that directly at some point. I don't think it's an accessibility issue when your trachea collapses or your kidneys start to give out or your immune system starts tearing up the wires in your spine. and yeah you could circle back to say, well, the accessibility piece here is really about access to treatment, which is fair! but that still requires finding and developing treatment in the first place, which leads us back to the "this is a pathology to fix/address" thing. permanent treatment or otherwise. I guess I think it's not only true that some states of physiological equilibrium are like, objectively ideal, but also possible to accept that premise without fucking over anyone who isn't in that equilibrium. or even zooming out, I think it's possible to strive for a cure to to "my body is bad at surviving"-type conditions in a way that doesn't also imply that the people with those conditions are not worthy of surviving otherwise. and I think that if we ever figure out a cure for celiac disease there's gonna be parades in the streets

[hbosscreations]

Fixing Hellblazer: Dead in America

Apparently I'm not doing being negative today, so I'm going to channel my bullshit into fixing things.

Let me tell you a bit about me. I love bad horror movies. I LOVE horror movies that aren't great, but you can see how they COULD be great under different circumstances. My favorite thing to do for years was take a movie that wasn't good and think about what needed to be done to fix it.

Dead in America actually has a pretty simple fix that would help with the rewrite. You'd have to rewrite the whole thing, this draft isn't salvagable, but if you really want to tell the story about American Racism, it's such an easy fix, I don't know why they didn't do it in the first place.

Make Noah Ikumelo the main character.

Seriously. That's the big change.

Maybe he's not the focal character for the entire 11 issue run, but have him be the perspective of at least one issue instead of the random racists that keep getting their stories told like we're supposed to care about them.

Issue 1: Flee

Tommy is dead, K-Mag is dead, they're on the run, and John says 'well, I've got friends in America who could help us out'.

Noah's scared, Nat's scared, John seems to have a plan. So, they're off to America with no money, no papers, nothing but the clothes on their backs.

It's okay at first, John's magic lets him manipulate people a bit, gets them through security checks and keeps them fed, but it's definitely not enough to keep them safe forever.

Noah has a bunch of exposition he gives about being black in the UK, about being disabled, about his feelings about his mother (being a cop, being in a coma, being weird about magic).

How he has always felt unheard until John came into the picture and saw him.

They're traveling, the fear starts to wear off, Noah realizes they've fled the country and his mother is alone.

Where's his gran? This is a point to show flashbacks. Maybe she's not mentally all there? Maybe Noah has been sleeping on John's couch. Maybe he's been learning magic during the months we don't see in the original run. Not a lot, John tells him that he likes that Noah's not really involved in this shit.

Until the murder dreams, when Noah starts getting a crash course in magic and hasn't had a chance to think about anything except John and his stupid plans.

The issue ends with them on the freight ship they stowed away on approaching the docks. They've arrived in port, and it's time to leave. John puts his hand on the double decker bus and reassures them both that he's got this. He's got a plan, and things are going to be okay.

He looks fondly at Noah, and Noah wonders if he can trust that face. Can he believe John?

He doesn't really have a choice, does he?

Issue 2: Where is everyone?

This issue is mostly from John's perspective and his narrating voice takes control again.

John reaches out to old contacts. They're gone. Dead or never existed in the first place. No capes and cowls in this universe. Just magic, divinity, and damnation.

They're fucked.

Meanwhile, Noah and Nat both realize that they're being treated differently than John is. Both have experienced different types of prejudice based on race, gender, disability, and now there's an extra layer of it. The American layer that the story really wants to talk about.

John gets a little, but it's pretty clear that people are generally cooler with a blond haired, blue eyed, white man with an accent than they are with Noah's lack of speaking and Nat's heavy Glaswegian accent.

There's a level of cruelty that makes being trapped in another country, unable to call anyone and tell them that you're alive, unable to know if your family is safe, unable to know if you were even a suspect in the crimes committed, extra fucky.

John's contacts he'd normally call are all of touch the easy way.

So, fine. If he can't call them, he'll go to their usual haunts and track them that way.

Hence, road trip.

This leads into the actual comic scene where John is in St. Augustine, Florida and talking to the statue.

You can still have the Girl Scout come and be cryptic and cruel, have John losing his shit over the fact that he's damned Noah to hell.

(Or we can include my favorite headcanon that Noah was supposed to be a tulpa designed to distract John. I don't know if it would work here, but a story about a kid literally designed to be a sponge for prejudice and cruelty might be a mirror this story about racism could play with. It would need a MUCH more competent writer than me and at least two sensitivity readers.)

Noah wants to pull over for a hitchhiker, they've got the space and he's kind, but John cautions him that America is VERY different from London. We learn that Noah has not traveled much outside of his home city if at all because of his mother's profession and then her coma, leaving him in the care of his gran, who lived on the estate and therefore didn't really have much in the ability or desire to go far.

The dream with Dream still happens, which gives us a nice connection to the previous story as well as John's whole...being dead thing. They're looking for the sand, they're looking for friendly faces, they're looking for magic in a world that John quickly realizes is GASPING and DYING.

Because the multiverse still got punched in the dick by Tim Hunter, and while this world hasn't been hit by him specifically, it's feeling some of the multiversal repercussions of an apocalypse that massive.

And John doesn't have the power to get them out of this while he's a corpse. The longer he rots, the weaker he gets.

Dream gives his orders. John agrees.

They wake up, Noah is being threatened by the cop because he's black and driving a bus. We don't make it about the cop being too stupid to know what a bus is this time, instead, we make it because the bus looks strange and 'why is a black boy driving a bus unless he stole it? obviously he's a thief and he's refusing to speak out of disrespect'.

That fucking sucks, but it also works more to the actual threat of racism in the US. The OTHERING. They're dangerous because they're OTHER. They're lesser because they're OTHER.

Nat keeps the cop's gun after he's frozen. She's freaked. Noah's freaked.

John calmly tells them the spell won't last forever and they need to drive. Nat goes to the wheel and we watch Noah sneak up to the upper level and cry.

John watches from the stairs until he's sure Noah is asleep. He doesn't know how to offer this particular kid comfort, how to offer to hold him without revealing his death or just being too attached.

We see him put his coat over the boy as a symbol of protection. He brushes a hand over Noah's head and asks Dream to look out for the kid.

"I know you're pissed at me and I don't really have the right to ask, but hasn't he had enough nightmares for now?"

Noah's dream about all the horrible things he's processing from the previous issue, the previous run, and that night melt into something more pleasant. Maybe the groundwork for him learning John is his father.

John is back with Nat as she's driving. She's angry. The conversation from the original issue can stay and be expanded on. John tries to comfort her, tries to ease the tension, and it eventually works.

She gets what he's doing, even if he's not doing a good job.

This is a Classic John Constantine who cares about other people but isn't necessarily good at showing it.

The sun starts to rise.

"Where the fuck are we going now? We're a target in this thing, John, and that cop's gonna call us in."

John reassures that they're fine and he's got a new plan.

Most of the hero types don't exist now, but that's fine. He's started to tap into the multiversal memories that he'd repressed in the 2019 issue, and he's pretty sure that he's got a friend who will exist in this universe, even if people like Zatanna and Superman don't.

After all, the Green is a multiversal constant.

This leads into the ending of the original issue 1, with the swamp being filled in and turned into a golf course.

And that ends issue 2.

I don't know if I want to invest energy into re-imagining the entire run, and I suspect that would require the run to be finished before I can properly fix anything except the opening. If you actually read this...sorry about the way it's written, this was all just thought to typing, so it has 0 polish.

I think this is a series that could have worked under different circumstances. I think there are elements here that are good, but this was clearly not written with any real oversight or a coherent story beforehand.

I would have loved for them to learn magic on the bus. Scenes of Nat and Noah picking up spells, Nat teaching Noah the proper way to throw a punch that won't fuck up his hands. Noah being REALLY good at making sure they all manage to eat properly (I am deeply invested in this child shoving oranges into people's hands because 'do you want scurvy?').

A scene of John teaching Nat sign language while Noah slept because he's already so isolated and they all need to take care of each other. Nat forcing John to drive, only for him to hit a car and immediately switch back to her driving. Nat reading a novel aloud to keep Noah awake while they drive at night.

Basically, we need to make them seem like they're actual people who actually spend all of their time trapped together.

Also, does John eat? How have they noticed that he doesn't eat? Does he sweat? If he showers, does that damage his skin and hair, since he's apparently molding at the start of the series?