#SOMETHING JUST HAS TO INFECT MY BRAIN BUT THEN!!!!

[hugheses]

i’ve gotten a bunch of asks about the trump of it all and i just want to say a few things.

1. fuck donald trump and everyone who supports him and his misogynistic, racist, and fascist rhetoric and policies

2. the vast majority of men’s hockey players are stupid idiots, american or not

3. i don’t believe that jack is a trump supporter, but he is wayyy more neutral than i would like, especially considering his mother’s public tweets. i don’t think his “i think we’re motivated enough” remark was a brave resistlib moment. i also think he is too media trained to say anything of substance either way.

4. unfortunately i have this stupid blorbo im obsessed with. and this incident isn’t going to cure me of blorbo obsession despite it clashing with my own deep rooted political and moral views. if only i could be free.

5. if this is where you get off the hughes train, that’s fine and i respect that. but i also think fandom is about more than just the objects of our obsessions, it is also about the things we create, the bonds we form, etc. and i also think we can be interested in public figures without uncritically stanning or even supporting them. i’ve always intended my blog to come across as more of a journalistic investigation than like, a stan twitter account. i think stanning men is bad for your brain and sets you up for disappointment in 99% of cases.

so like, yes, i have a bad taste in my mouth, and im not even really rooting for team usa because they’re mostly acting like fuckwits. i might not even watch the game. and that sucks, because i love watching good hockey, and i love watching jack especially. but what sucks way more is that trump and his cronies are actively hurting and even killing people, including people i care about, including me.

part of me really wants to believe, deep down, that the hughes family are good people. ellen has certainly made her political views known. jack and quinn have spoken about the importance of pride nights and inclusivity. quinn spoke up about the murder of george floyd 5 years ago. but they also surround themselves with outspoken trump supporters. jack gives a nothingburger answer about that phone call. i’m not going to pretend like that doesn’t upset me. but im also well aware that that’s better than most of the rest of their peers.

men’s hockey is a festering cesspit of white supremacy and the subordination of women. it is in every nook and cranny, no part gone untouched. it is built into the foundation of it, and you cannot play anywhere from the nhl to the gthl without being infected by it. i do wonder sometimes, is me running this blog being complicit? am i “endorsing” this culture? and that’s something for me to continue to ponder on. but for now i will be here, and we will be here together if you so choose, and we will all have to grapple with the uncomfortableness of it all. idk what there is else to do.

[thebluewritingbench]

you & me in the wreckage

written for @ekingston's flash fiction challenge! :)

this was fun!! the prompts i got were: thriller, only survivors of a zombie apocalypse, celebrity/just some guy (gender neutral), and blood. thematically consistent, at least. tw for (a fairly small amount of) blood and gore, unsurprisingly. enjoy!

+

Someone is breathing on the other side of the vehicle.

No, Kara reminds herself yet again. Something.

It’s hard to say when the simple sound of another creature breathing became an instant trigger to send adrenaline coursing through her veins. Every tiny hair on her body rises. Her heart rate accelerates until she can feel it behind her teeth, a war drum. She moves with utmost caution; she cannot make a sound.

There’s a creak of metal. A low groan.

Kara recognizes the sound. The pleading moan of perverse hunger.

She can’t see it, as she creeps around the passenger side of the dark vehicle. The thing must be inside the car. The sound came from low down, though. Maybe it’s on the ground. Unsurprising—they always seem to end up there in the end. After having exhausted the limits of human muscle, with no prey left to chase down, they collapse like expended cargo.

The car is a solid black Rolls-Royce. A rare sight in the city, let alone out here. This one has seen better days, though. Shiny paint marred by dust, pock-marked with dents, half the bumper hanging off. How it ended up swerved into the ditch of this rural, two-lane road is a mystery.

Probably someone trying to escape.

Kara’s mind constructs the story even as she rounds the front of the car, reaching for her weapons. It must have contained someone wealthy or important, someone with the resources to get this far. But they must have been infected before they could escape. Though shaken, they would have attempted to brush it off. Nothing but a scrape. The teeth had barely punctured their skin. They would have sped away, gotten off the interstate at the first chance, taken turn after turn until they found a safe, isolated road. This is how far they got before the alien pathogens hijacked their brain.

But that would mean—Kara’s pulse spikes again—that would mean the creature on the other side of this vehicle is the most dangerous kind. Starved for the taste of human flesh. Not spent, but with the full power of the human body. When used without regard for muscles tearing, flesh rending, bones breaking, it could do remarkable things.

Kara knows. She has witnessed it.

The way Alex moved, when the disease took hold…

She shudders. Pushes the image from her mind. That thing hadn’t been Alex anymore.

Kara considers her weapons. A large kitchen knife. A small handgun—the better bet. Not much ammunition left, though. She’ll have to move quickly. She’ll have to make it count.

She lifts the gun, then lunges around the front of the car and fires.

The shot echoes across the scrubby hills. A shriek rings out, black hair flying as the creature shields itself. It begins to turn to her. She missed. Kara’s finger is pushing down on the trigger again when a voice cries, “Wait! Wait!”

She wrenches the gun aside. Her shot flies wide.

There is nothing but heaving breathing in the wake. Human breathing.

The woman crouched on the ground, staring up at Kara in terrified shock, is alive. Truly alive. What’s more, Kara knows her.

 “How are you here?” Kara says. The cognitive dissonance of seeing that face here, now, is so intense that she wonders if she’s hallucinating.

“What?” says Lena Luthor. “Why are you trying to kill me? Do I know you?”

We’ve met before.

“No.” Kara feels herself flush. How absurd that she’s even capable of such a reaction anymore. “I’m nobody.”

Lena Luthor stands on unsteady legs. “No, you’re that reporter. From… BuzzFeed, was it? You came to my office with Clark Kent.”

“CatCo Magazine,” Kara corrects automatically. It feels like a lifetime since she was Cat Grant’s assistant, barely daring to aspire to journalism. Struck nearly speechless by the presence of this woman—her inarguable celebrity crush.

Embarrassing.

Lena looks uneasily at the gun. Kara realizes it’s still pointing in her direction. She drops her arm. “Shoot. Sorry.”

“Don’t shoot, preferably,” Lena says dryly. It takes a second for Kara to realize it’s a joke.

“I wasn’t trying to— I thought you were… one of them. You’re not infected, are you?”

“None of them have touched me. This thing is bullet-proof. I did plow through a few of them…” Lena looks queasy. Kara follows her gaze to the front of the car. There’s blood congealed on the grill.

A flash of memory. She sees the creature that was once Winn charging at her. Her panicked swipe of the kitchen knife across its throat. The spray of his blood, copious, vibrant, across her shirt, across the pavement. For hours, she was terrified the blood had found its way into some scrape, some opening. Infecting her.

She grimaces, presses her thumb hard into the space between her eyes. Stop.

“Where did you even come from?” Lena says. “There’s nothing around here.”

“I walked from the city. I’ve been trying to find anywhere with supplies. There was a group of us. I’m the only one left.” That awful, leaden truth. Kara pushes past it. “How did you get out? I haven’t seen anyone else in weeks.”

“I hid in my office. I had it outfitted as a kind of bunker years ago. I thought I was being insane at the time, and yet…” She trails off, ashamed. “I did nothing to help. Nothing. I stayed there until it quieted down. Then I took the car, and I ran.”

“You couldn’t have done much. No one could have.”

“And now my stupid tire blew, and I am somehow incapable of changing it, so I’m pretty much fucked.” Lena kicks the deflated tire. “Fuck!”

“Your tire?” Belatedly, Kara notices the spare lying on the ground, alongside a toolbox and a badly misplaced jack. She feels a wild urge to laugh. That’s it? “I can fix your tire.”

“Really?”

“Of course.” She swallows. Remembers that somehow, Lena Luthor is standing in front of her. A woman who Kara has followed extensively in tabloids for years. A world leader for tech. Generous. Brilliant. Beautiful. “On one condition.”  

“What’s that?”

“Take me with you.”

Lena Luthor leans against her car and, miraculously, grins. She gives Kara a lingering once-over. “Where are you going?”

“Anywhere. Away from here. I need to find out what happened to my cousin. And my mom.”

“Well, I could use the company,” Lena says. “It’s a deal.”

She holds out her hand. Kara shakes it. At the feel of Lena’s hand in hers, warm, chapped, alive, Kara feels a spark of something she hasn’t felt for ages, since before her life turned into a nightmare.

Hope.

[brothermouse]

When things get scary globally and nationally (see right now-ish) I have this thing where I find post apocalyptic media comforting. Heck if I know why I'm like this, but I am.

Anyways, there's far too little post apocalyptic Mormon media for my liking so "be the change you want to see" and all that, I kinda want to make some post apocalyptic Mormon flavored short stories and I wanted to pick tumblrstake's brain.

Here's just some loose ideas to start with:

End of the world happens with a massive cyber attack. Basically anything with an Internet connection gets fried, starts acting weird. Closed networks also get infected so nearly all digital storage is wiped out. It's a massive loss of knowledge and information globally. Military systems are also hit, causing missiles to launch at random targets or just detonate in their silos.

All this to set up that post apocalyptic society is low tech, slow communication, and not a whole lot of surplus weapons of mass destruction. Local groups that know how to take care of each other end up surviving the best.

Post Apocalyptic Mormonism gets some schisms. Something about where to gather. I figure there are three main groups: Salt Lake, Nauvoo, and Adam-ondi-ahman. I think it'd be cool if they split for a while, but eventually reconcile and reunify. Then the Quorum of the Twelve is made up of four apostles from each group and the First Presidency has a prophet from each group.

I figure there's some monk-y business going on at the Granite Mountain Vault. In the sense that it becomes a kind of monastery. Run by monks. Monk-y business. Get it? Whatever. Mormon Monks in making illuminated genealogy records.

There's some group of people obsessed with the White Horse Prophecy. You know, "the Constitution will hang by a thread," "the Elders of the Church will save the country" yadda yadda yadda. Problem is the Constitution (and the whole country for that matter) has already fallen, so either they're trying to bring it back or they're insisting that it didn't really fall. Maybe both.

Word of Wisdom gets tweaked to account for the fact that nobody can get coffee anymore. It becomes more about "eating fruit in the proper season" and "eat meat sparingly".

So that's just some loose thoughts I had that I might work into a short story or something. If anyone has more ideas, don't be shy, share with the class.

[kurtsascot]

one of these days im going to write lesbian klaine and itll be OVER for all of you

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

hope you feel better soon!

I am riddled with ailments, but I stay silly!

[goldkirk]

.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[alchemocha]

Robotnik looking at Stone one day and just… staring… thinking, until he comes to a sudden and impromptu decision one day.

“Why don’t we leave and never come back!”

He decides then, while looking at Stone, that it doesn’t matter what they do or where they are, if Stone’s there, they can do anything together. So why not just runaway for a while and leave it all behind? Enough of the incompetent government breathing down their necks, they could just live. And Robotniks not sure what this feeling is or what this impulse is but he’s so ready to just run. Not in defeat, not out of fear, but just because they can!

[cicidraws]

i miss how i felt before this year.

[rosesradio]

i think my university fucking bit me wtf

[skitskatdacat63]

Yaaaayyyyyyyy vettonso wip!!:

THEY WON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!

I barely ever use my physical sketchbook, but now there is literally 12 pages just of trying to figure these guys out....

But hey happy to say I can actually draw Seb's face from memory!! I like it better when I can draw from memory than having to stare at ref pics. Nothing wrong with using ref, I use it all the time, but it causes me to think about it way too much. Fernando I've really only drawn one other time so I kinda just copied off my last one as a placeholder 😭 so I should probably just stare at pictures of him for a while, like I did with Seb, until his face is eventually burned into brain

This is like, first joint portrait into the arranged marriage type vibe sjfkfl

[erin-gilberts]

The niche support group I need is one for people who became long COVID-damaged during or shortly after their conversion process because it truly fucks everything when newfound memory issues start pulling the bricks out of the foundation you had to lay by hand yourself

[cutearose]

okay but how do you ask for help when your childhood makes you feel guilty for needing help and the help that you need feels rude to ask for

[h34vybottom]

My standards for RWBY are still high but I do catch myself going "Well at least it wasn't as bad as least season," like girl? The show is still bad but it's not as bad as what? Season 6? Season 8? Some of the worst seasons of the show??? Girl.... get a grip.

[samuraisharkie]

Ive been wondering about this and I’m not sure like where to say it so I’m just saying it here. Is it intrusive thoughts or some other ocd thing where your brain likes to repeat a word, name or phrase that upsets you or you disagree with specifically to put you into anxiety mode and it’s impossible to stop it from being there and making you have to do shit to shut it out or ‘cleanse’ yourself from it after you have the thought??

[medicinemane]

Ok, can I just complain about what has just clicked to me that it's actually a full on trend with youtube thumbnails?

Fucking sick of the pointing arrow with "winner?" every fucking time there's anything that involves any kind of competition these days

Saw it a little, thought it was dumb, but it's becoming more and more and more common and... and I'm not even that mad at the people who do it cause I get it, but fuck I'm sick of it and fuck I'm kinda sick of... of if it's working the people who have shiny brain and click cause oh! must find out, or if it's not working the youtube algorithm for I guess making it seem like it work

Actually I suppose I just am fucking tired of the whole culture that leads to it in the first place of fucking gotta have jingling keys at all time, gotta fucking consume, always need something to consume

Fuck man, I'm almost glad that some days like the past couple I've just kind of sat around in malaise, bored out of my mind while not being able get myself to do anything I wanted or find anything that was entertaining... but like, fuck, I think I'd rather get like that sometimes but know how to just sit through it than have to have new content every second of every day or else

(And this isn't a straw man and this isn't railing against the youth or something, I know a dude that's like that who is a bit older than I am)

"Winner?", man, just fucking pitch me what's happening and I'll watch it or not