#at least today

[actual-changeling]

if you do not follow/haven't seen my recent posts, i really recommend you read this one and this one before continuing, just to make it hit the right way.

also reminder that i have an ao3 right here (and it's not all pain, promise!)

sorry in advance :)

-

the more time passes, the easier it is for joel to talk about sarah. it still hurts, always will, an old bullet buried in his heart surrounded by scar tissue, but except for a few memories, words don't make him bleed anymore. tommy tentatively starts bringing her up once he notices that joel no longer flinches when he mentions her name, and it feels good to breathe life into their shared experiences, his brother the only one who comes close to understanding his pain but also the joy that colored their years.

ellie asks, too, just as hesitantly as tommy at first, but soon her curiosity takes over and not a day passes by without a question in-between sentences about his past. joel answers all of them, stories spilling from his lips and spinning themselves into a sarah-shaped web that he can share with her.

"she played soccer, right? when did she win her first competition?"

there's a few sports teams in jackson, and of course the soccer one caught her eye, making joel dread all the twisted ankles and bruised shins he was going to have to tend to. getting grass stains out of sarah's uniforms had always been a task and a half, and eventually they both stopped caring about it and just watched them pile up, turning white fabric a greenish-brown.

joel opens his mouth, the coffee cup in his hand hovering above the kitchen table, and then he stills, every muscle in his body turning to ice.

ellie's joel? is drowned out by the ringing in his hears, knuckles turning white and gripping the porcelain so tightly he can feel it crack in his palm, and he must have stopped breathing because his vision is growing fuzzy, black dots scurrying in his periphery.

joel lets the cup fall more than he sets it down, stomach turning, bile rising in his throat, because ellie asked him a question about sarah, his sarah, and he doesn't remember the answer.

it can't be, right? just a small gap in his memory, nothing big, it'll come back to him in an hour and he'll tell ellie about it later. but the panic squeezing his chest is real, terror slithering up his neck and curling around his ear whispering what else did you forget?

more than ever before, he tries to think back to all of it, from the first time he held her in his arms to the moment he buried her, and something odd happens to him when he finds that so much of it is. blurry. frayed at the edges, burned holes and white blotches obscuring important and unimportant details alike, memory an old role of film decomposing in the back of his mind.

the color of her baby blanket (blue, it had to be blue, he can't see), the first movie he watched with her, her favorite book in primary school, the way he did her hair on the first day of kindergarten, the friendship bracelets they made together, the posters on her wall, the dress she wore to her first dance (purple right? right?), memories surfacing as his panic cracks him open like an earthquake, and joel tries to cling to them, nails scratching at the parts that should be there but aren't until he tastes blood, desperation growing and growing because he is forgetting her.

"joel you're scaring the fuck out of me right now what's wrong?"

ellie's voice is distant, and he hates worrying her, hates the almost hysteric edge beneath it when she repeats herself, hands squeezing his shoulders, softly, first, then harder when he doesn't respond. all of the years that he didn't even know she existed, memories she has that he never will, all the firsts and buts and what ifs and failures that define a childhood, their innocent light fractured into vivid fantasies by the stained glass window of life. he has had all that and more with sarah, clung to it in the after to remind himself that she is real, that he is still a father even with his daughter buried by a nameless river.

it is all he has left of her, the childhood she never got to outgrow, and it's fading in a mind that has mourned her for longer than she got exist.

not for the first time, joel wishes he hadn't flinched, his brain worthless if it allowed sarah to fade away. without ellie bound to his heart, he would have tempted fate again for that alone.

-

"who hurt you" too many people to count and luckily tumblr lets me make it everyones problem

[providing-leverage]

Sometimes you have to take a break from homework and reread your own fics because they make you happy

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

last summer I got overtaken by a very strange fic idea and I decided I might as well write it because it wouldnt take that long and it was weird enough that I cackled to myself the whole time I wrote it

well, I just went back and reread it and I'm so glad I ran with that bonkers idea because that was 2K words that had me smiling the whole time. I even laughed at one of my own jokes! out loud!

anyway, I know I say this all the time but write the stupid oneshot that popped into your brain. go back and read your old stories. enterain your future self with the things you love right now. future you will really appreciate it

[quixoticanarchy]

One reason shoplifting is good is that it reminds you everything is fake. This shitty gas station coffee drink costs $3.99? That’s cute but not to me it doesn’t

[caressthosecheekbones]

me: *around forty minutes into Tár* this is good. and also pretentious (as expected). and Exhausting.

time left: 01:51:54

me: ach du scheiße

[lycheeherbtea]

Things lately:

Started intermediate fasting and it is working well for me. I only do it 4 times a week and I stop eating at 3 pm, then have breakfast at 7am the next day. It should have health benefits on the long run, so we will see (or not- I won’t have a comparison)

Reorganized finally organized my closet as all different sizes and so on (pre pregnancy, post pregnancy, …) we’re all mixed up. So far I found about 50 tank tops which I obviously need, every other shirt is dark red - which suits me but again too much and I only have black and grey pullovers. At least I have some other colored cardigans. I finally got rid of non fitting pants, because I will never fit perfectly into a size 36 (Eur size) anymore. Could squeeze into some, but it came with a muffin top. And I am too old/ life is too short for this.

We still don’t know which is the main hand of my older son - he is now 6 and starts school in September. We went to two different experts, one said he might be more right handed but she is not sure, we should go to her referral, who said he might be left handed but she also can’t tell with certainty. So I guess he will be right handed because writing is easier with right.

[lesboevils]

my mental health crisis is improving a little.

[americas-saboteur]

Probably won’t even watch tonight if I have to wait for fucking golf

[astriiformes]

Really says something about the dire state of offerings for men interested in sewing their own clothes that even searching things like "interesting men's clothing patterns" brings up articles with links to four or five whole websites that primarily offer admittedly nice but practically identical patterns for making button-ups and work pants and maybe a varsity/bomber jacket if you're lucky.

(Branching out into historical costuming for everyday wear is like your one shot at variation, and even then, the ratio of men's to women's patterns on every website is frustrating to say the least.)

Patternmakers as a trans man I am begging you. Give me a little more to work with here.

[ink-stains-and-constellations]

So I got this really amazing pair of overalls today

And idk what the hell my gender is doing atm (as mentioned in the last two or three posts I am currently very confused on the matter)

But whatever it is, it liked the overalls.

I thought it was gonna be a dress day but nope something about the dress felt off. And then I tried on the overalls and my brain went "YES".

So yeah. Cool spiderweb overalls are now mine and they have been making me very happy.

[doctorsiren]

sock opera

[itsbansheebitch]

Genre savvy characters this

genre unsavvy characters that

NO

are YOU genre savvy? what genre is YOUR life?

[watchmakermori]

manifesting the worst tory election result in history tomorrow. like to charge reblog to cast and reply to send the tories to a shadow dimension for 3000 years

[iliothermia]

angel who hides in an abandoned torah ark

[aszkodagadac]

I don't want to make cute penguins that look good as knickknacks someone will eventually throw away when we all decompose into wildflowers. I want to make shit that will make you think about that one thing your caregiver said to you when you were seven and still in love with my little pony. You know excatly what I'm talking about. And I hope it will change your mind because they didn't know shit.

After that you can throw it away. Just remember to recycle!

[iamanartichoke]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but as a creator -

I am fine with "the audience" -

downloading my fics

printing my fics

copy/pasting or screenshotting my fics

sharing your saved copy of my fics with anyone else who might want them in the unlikely but never impossible case that my fics are no longer available on ao3

making a book of my fic(s) and running your fingers across the pages while lovingly whispering my precioussss

doing these things with anything I create for fandom, such as meta, headcanons, au nonsense like 'texts from the brodinsons,' etc

I am not fine with "the audience"

doing any of the above with the purpose/intent of plagiarizing my work or passing it off as their own in any capacity

feeding my work into ai for any reason whatsoever

Save the fandom things. Preserve the fandom things. Respect the fandom things.

Enjoy the fandom things.