#because I'm afraid it might not

[theexhaustedmermaid]

What a time to be alive in America for an early career scientist

[icewindandboringhorror]

(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)

[lazylittledragon]

i'm in one of those phases where i really wish i believed in manifesting and spellcasting and things like that bc you know when you want something so bad you're literally praying for the universe to let it happen

[frostedpuffs]

does anyone else ever feel like they never Fit In fandom spaces like. sure i create stuff SOMETIMES but i feel like such an outsider in the fandom and idk why asdkfsakdf

[lxstingravity]

Spirit Water - Drinking from faucets recharges mana by 20%

[johanna-swann]

Okay, but how about an angsty thanksgiving intervention? They have a friendsgiving thingy a couple of days before or after the actual holiday at the Madney house. I imagine Maddie, Chim, Hen, Karen, all their kids and Buck are there. Eddie is in El Paso for the holiday and Bobby and Athena are busy with something else, idk. (I feel like having Bobby there would prevent a lot of the drama, so for reasons he can't be there.)

But Chimney (with Maddie's approval) also invites Tommy - except Tommy doesn't know this is a family event [tm], he thinks Chim just invited him over to hang out. Drink some beer, watch a movie maybe.

And Tommy thinks: "I should probably go, Howie's been my friend for almost 20 years now. I can handle hanging out with an old friend for a night, even if he happens to me ex's brother-in-law. It'll be good for me." But he's completely and utterly unprepared and not ready to run into Buck again so soon, much less in a context that oh so loudly screams "family" and thus represents everything Tommy always wanted and never had. It's an ocean's worth of salt in a fresh wound.

Buck on the other hand doesn't know Tommy's coming to the friendsgiving either. He just prepared a shit ton of food and figured spending time with his family will be a good distraction from the break-up. He hasn't hung out with Hen and Karen in a while and he's looking forward to having all the kids around. Who can mope about a stupid ex when the noise is drowned out by giggling and laughing children running around?

Chim and Maddie hoped that their plan might help Buck and Tommy to at least find some closure or maybe even get them talking to each other again. Either way, at least everyone gets a good, home-cooked meal and some quality time with friends out of it, right?

But then they're suddenly and unexpectedly confronted with each other when neither of them is ready. Buck has barely begun to even process the break-up. Let's be honest, the baking thing has been more of a distraction from thinking about Tommy than a coping mechanism to work through his feelings. He's still a little bit in denial and Tommy crashing his safe-space catapults him into the anger/depression stage.

Tommy could've dealt with a movie night with Chim, could've even coped with having Maddie and Jee-Yun there, but an entire ass family holiday? Avoiding eye contact, forcing smiles, faking normal for hours while pretending he isn't still putting the pieces of his own heart back together? Knowing he will go home alone with the fresh reminder of what he will never truly have and get to keep?

So Tommy awkwardly excuses himself and maybe Buck throws in a bitter: "Yeah, leave. You're good at that." And maybe in an attempt to de-escalate - or at least move the escalation out of earshot from the kids - Maddie suggests they talk outside. But outside they just stare at each other, not knowing what to say. Tommy apologises again, saying he'll just leave and let Buck enjoy the evening.

"It's fine", Buck says: "I think I'll leave too, actually." And Tommy lays into him about how he shouldn't spend the holiday alone when he can just go back inside and be with his family, he shouldn't be sitting in his empty loft when he could play with Jee-Yun or catch up with Karen instead.

Buck finally gets angry about what happened, but he hasn't put his thoughts in order yet, can't put into words what he feels yet. He also feels ambushed and a wee bit manipulated. So he just bites out: "Oh right, I forgot. You're the expert on what I should and shouldn't be doing. God forbid I decide for myself what I want", walks over to his car and drives off.

Tommy sits in his car for a little bit, then he goes home too. Maddie and Chimney feel bad. After they tried to encourage Buck to move on a bit too soon, they overcorrected in the opposite direction and it blew up in their faces. Maddie tries to call Buck, but he's turned off his phone. Chimney tries to reach out to Tommy, but his text sits there delivered, unread and stays unanswered.

Tommy ends up sitting on his couch, crying and staring at the tv which he hasn't even bothered to turn on and Buck spends hours pacing in his kitchen, alternating between wanting to yell at Tommy for breaking up with him in the first place and deleting his number so he'll never even be tempted to talk to him again.

So they all end up spending the friendsgiving evening in varying degrees of misery.

(Maddie, Chimney and Buck patch things up almost immediately. They bring him breakfast the next morning and apologise for springing this on him without warning. He accepts the apology, he knows they meant well and it was actually a nice thing that they tried to include Tommy despite the break-up. He wants Tommy to be happy. Really, he wants Tommy to find whatever he thinks Buck couldn't give him. He hopes Tommy one day finds a man who won't make him run the opposite direction. He wants Tommy to feel good about himself and to have a life full of friends and family and people who he can call his. Eventually. Right now, he admits, he selfishly wants Tommy to feel a bit shit. He hopes Tommy is hurting at least as much as he is. He hopes Tommy's favourite basketball team loses every game of the season. He hopes one of Tommy's coworkers says the q-word and jinxes them for a full 24 hours shift. Buck doesn't know when he started crying, but Chim and Maddie are there for him and they spend most of the day together.)

(Chimney also apologises to Tommy. They don't really talk about it, Tommy doesn't want to. He'd rather listen to Howie gush about becoming a dad again, talk about the next pick-up game and ignore the elephant in the room. It's easy to slip back into the casual friendship, the conversations that are full of movie dialogues and references, the bragging and comparing of batshit calls they've worked in the past 20 years. They don't hang out at Howie's house, they either go to Tommy's or meet at a bar. But Tommy is relieved he at least got to keep this.)

(Buck and Tommy run into each other again a few weeks later. It's the second christmas day, Buck is invited to hang out with the Diaz family. Christopher has agreed to come to LA for a week - a trial run of sorts to help him and Eddie figure out what comes next - and they're all going to spend the day at tía Pepa's. Buck is picking up some groceries on his way there and who does he meet in the canned foods isle? Buck doesn't really know what comes over him, but he suggest they should hang out together while Chris and Eddie are here. All four of them. Eddie was Tommy's friend before they ever went out after all and so was Chimney. Plus, they're all firefighters. They're bound to run into each other again sooner or later, it'd be childish to be hung up on the past. Tommy says yes.)

(They start talking to each other more after that. Not very often, not consistently, not about their break-up. But they talk. It starts with texting and hanging out in group settings. Then the phone calls start. At first just small ones, "it'll be quicker than texting" calls, "I'm ellbows deep in foccacia dough" and "broke my hand on call yesterday, so quite literally can't text" calls. Then they start hanging out one on one again. Neither of them has ever stayed friends with an ex before. Is it supposed to feel like this? Is Tommy's laugh still supposed to make Buck's heart skip a beat like this? Is Evan's soft smile still supposed to melt Tommy's insides like this?)

(They get back together in March. It's not preceded by a big and dramatic event. There's no "life or death" situation, no traumatic incident to make them realise that "tomorrow isn't promised, no awkward jealousy over a new partner. It's just another movie nigh. Buck falls asleep with his head on Tommy's shoulder and Tommy doesn't even think about it before running his fingers through Evan's curls. Buck wakes up as the credits start rolling. He shifts a little, looks up at Tommy, but he doesn't move away. The kiss is soft and chaste and they leave it at that one kiss. Buck doesn't move to the bedroom with Tommy, but he does crash on Tommy's couch. They talk in the morning. They talk about being all in but taking it slow anyway, they talk about crushes and admiration and love and the difference between all three, they finally talk about the break-up. They keep it a secret for a little while. Call it precaution or payback for Chimney's attempt at meddling.)

(They make it three weeks. Then Tommy surprises Buck at his loft and they forget that not only was Eddie supposed to come over, Eddie also has his own key. They never live it down for as long as they're alive.)

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

not enough discussion about the gavins' complicated relationship with feminine-coded/beauty products, i don't think.

[qwantzfeed]

it makes it awkward if the second you land on the moon you announce that you're the horniest person on the moon, so, that's probably why Neil Armstrong didn't do it

[dxxtruction]

Louis' "You're boring!" Could mean so many things, but I think what's most apparent about that line is that Armand takes no initiative just for himself. He's not really anybody, because he never goes out and finds himself or gets attached to anyone but Louis. Without Louis as his guide he's literally just sitting on a couch picking lint! That's the thing.

He orbits constantly around what would make Louis happy, and never really fully going what would make me happy? Ultimately that drive to please Louis is what drives him to torturing Daniel, not so much that he'd care to just do it. Ultimately, not giving proper care to Louis is just a way to make sure Louis knows he has to orbit around him as well, with shoving Lestat onto him just that other nail on the coffin. So, even if he fails to figure out how to make Louis happy with him, he still knows what Armand is good for, and better than.

That dependency is what drives Armand's abuse. It really just comes down to that. Armand doesn't even realize how suffocated he is by his own dependency. This is just how life is to him. (It shouldn't be lost either that dependency is a theme considering this episode also deals with addiction).

Daniel's fascinating because he's just so driven to be somebody. He's largely independent, he seeks things because he wants them. It's his drug to poke and prod at all the things that he shouldn't. Daniel's exciting because he lets Louis in to something different, lets him in to all this potential in another person that he can also do the same with for himself. It's a real connection. A two way street. It's easy to tell how Armand can be smothering then because he's never introducing him to anything really new, and most the ways both of them connect are all painful and traumatic. It's never just fun because there's always that layer of that pain. Fun died with Claudia.

50 years on they've gotten to a lot better place, both of them, but it's still that same shit. No seriously, "How is this any different from last time, Louis?"

Well... Because Armand's going to be, at the very least, making one [1] decision only for himself - and that's to hold power over Daniel's life. Fucking sick foreshadowing.

They aren't driving each other to the brink anymore but "The vampire is bored" STILL. Maybe it's even worse, despite being in better places, because Louis' sort of just been defeated by it. (I mean, can he even really leave this either?). He's accepting the dependancy cause he kind of has to. He'd literally ended up letting all the enjoyment be up where he can't reach [The book shelves]. Armand so desperately wants Louis happiness but what really ends up happening is that Louis ends up having to give Armand all his own. He's got no one or anything else to get it from. But like an iPad and an over the top eating ritual. Two extremes of what's just more lint picking.

This whole relationship is one I find just tragic inside and out. You have to just pity it, really. There's ways in which you can find yourself feeling bad for both of them. But you can only really be mad at Armand for any of it. Armand, who isn't even 'free' in any sense, having so little concept of his own independence, but is at the same time so controlling over other's. It's a tragic cycle. It's an infuriating one.

Louis at least has the mind to know when enough is enough. If just needing that extra push to get there. Armand's too scared of it being over to even try.

[dutchs-paisley-vest]

Been thinking about Hosea a lot as I write this analysis on Dutch and Micah.

Maybe I’ll eventually whip something up about him, but for now I’m left with thoughts about knowing that not only is Hosea just as guilty as Dutch when it comes to how their boys were brought up (and continued to be treated through adulthood and ultimately up to their deaths), but also the way the two irreparably damaged John and Arthur’s entire lives beyond even their own comprehension. FURTHERMORE, they set forth a viscous cycle of familial violence and neglect that maintained momentum into the next generation. (See: John and Jack.)

The way Hosea’s action, but more importantly his inaction had in part led to… well, [gestures vaguely to RDR1 + RDR2].

Hosea might have been gentler than Dutch on the surface, but he saw it all, and at times both implicitly and explicitly encouraged it through the meticulous timing of his decisions to remain a “silent watcher.”

Yes, refusal to mitigate the violence makes him complicit, but the matter of the fact is… Hosea can’t even feign partial innocence as a third-party bystander because of how calculated he is in nature.

Additionally, there is no “third party.” Dutch and Hosea are a single unit. They occupy the same space even as two separate individuals in John and Arthur’s lives.

The deliberate nature of Hosea’s inaction puts him in the same position as the “perpetrator” because he isn’t just a watcher, he corroborates directly with Dutch and agrees with what he is doing on principle. He reenforces it in perhaps more subtle ways, but that doesn’t make him any less responsible for the outcome.

The only difference between the two is that while they’re dealing different cards, they are playing the exact same game.

[and-his-hands-were-24-crows]

This is a book that I bought in 2002, when it was newly published. I misplaced it for a couple of decades and then found it in a box in my parents' house last year.

It is... incredible, to start rereading this book that was so influential for me and is somehow more than 20 years old. To read introductions from people who experienced the gender politics of the 50s and 60s and learned and grew and saw so much evolution in their lifetimes.

It feels sad, too, to read about the same LGBTQIA+ infighting that we still see. It feels melancholy to read about times when maybe there was less of that. I love seeing the hope for better things, and I worry that perhaps we have not done well enough in these last two decades.

In her introduction, Joan Nestle says, "Think of the richness of the conversation 50 years from now, if we survive the present world."

2002.

If we survive the present world.

[a-vibing-potato]

Got caught up on all the episodes of the Magnus Protocol I was behind on today (there were four) and after listening to the last one:

Heinrich Unheimlich, I love you and will be waiting for you to show up next episode when Alice goes to Berlin. <3 Also, STARKWALL???? GWEN CALLING STARKWALL, SHE'S FINALLY CAVING?!?!?!

[ave-immaculata]

fellas we're once again wrestling with imperfect vs. perfect contrition and why imperfect contrition with a firm resolution to not sin again and promptly receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation doesn't save

[despair-tea]

I think a lot of girls fall into a pit where you transition to overcome depersonalization, and that on its own tides you over for a bit. But once the rush of the new is over and you're living in your new body, if you haven't made a self to go along with it, then you'll fall right back into the hole, right?

You might not have the dysphoria anymore, but you go back to viewing yourself from afar, playing by remote control.

The self-concept is more important than the medicine. I mean it.

Medicine is wonderful, don't get me wrong. The softness is like a dream, the new curves are beyond what I cold have hoped for when I was young. I love having a body I'm comfortable in, that looks beautiful in the mirror, that doesn't repulse me when others tell me it's beautiful. I'm so glad to find out that it wasn't my body that was wrong the whole time, there was always treatment that could have helped me get here.

But those things... they really come down to having a good relationship with my own body, you know? And that won't change even if my hormones do.

I'm dedicated to building my body up the way I want it - to live in the way I think is most beautiful. But I also am a pragmatic beast who's known what it's like to have nothing too. I can still live. I can still be me, even without the medicine that makes my body more comfortable.

A sense of self. "Imagine a future self who has already surpassed her own limits," then make every move you can to get to her.

It sounds like magical thinking because it is. Many of us - rational-minded and pragmatic creatures with both feet on the ground - shy away from ideas rooted in magical thinking. "That's just bullshit," you say, shaking your head. But let me enlighten you: The whole concept of the self is magical thinking. Yet even in the depths of your disconnect you believe in it. You believe other people have one, which is why you feel so alienated from them.

You need to stop and reassess.

The self is inherently magical. It can't be proven or disproven. It can't be quantified or measured. Science has yet to find a way to isolate the sense of self in the body and I suspect it never truly will. Yet we have it. We, as humans, all have it.

So use it to your advantage.

That's how you overcome depersonalization for good. You need to decide who you want to be. Create an image in your mind. "I don't know what I want to be..." Of course you don't know yet - you're afraid of finding out your limits. But all the time you spend not pursuing your ideal self is time that your dreams spend slipping away from you.

What's that? You don't dream, either? Well - you're too old to not have a dream, aren't you? Adults wither away without one - they grow up into bad kids, or maybe like you they grow up into nothing at all.

This world is so vast and we are such small creatures. We can't change the world - there's barely anything you or I can do to change the flow of history or the fact of our era.

But you can change yourself.

Decide who you want to be and become them. That's called Self-Actualization, and it is the one and only magic afforded to us as humans.

I want a future that's kinder, that's full more of hope than the bitter-black despair I've known for so long. I want to be a person who's worth having lived this long. I want to be the person my past self will be proud of having grown up into. And I want to become the future self who has been there by my side this whole time, waiting to meet me in the future. My greatest ally in the whole world.

So even though I'm just a small part of this world, I'll change myself to make it so.

I hope you can find your Worth too. It's right there inside you.

[rat-creates]

Why dis 🐥 look so mad?

[islenskihesturinn]

While Lilja's being brought back into training, I'm taking lessons with Fjara to teach her to use those damn hind muscles to not trip and fall constantly. My dad's fallen off her three times due to tripping and he's not quite capable of helping Fjara get that posture back in the right place.

So here I am, risking my life (don't know her quite well enough under the saddle and I am not a courageous person)and limbs (I've got about 6 bruises on my legs now due to Fjara casually scraping past trees with my leg) to get miss ma'am back into proper shape and see if my dad gets the courage to ride her a bit again.

We've been working on leadership with groundwork, we're working on fixing that very lateral tölt (she's making quite a lot of progress already!), asking her for trot (did short bursts of trot today) and canter because last time I got one jump and she went straight into something resembling pace. Today I got:

a buck when I gave her the cue for canter

more pace

then three strides of canter before a very lateral tölt

a decent tölt, followed by a sort of scramble only a five gaited horse can manage

and then all of a sudden things clicked, Fjara went 'oh!', I learned what going very fast really means, and we cantered properly.

It's so funny, this horse is so fast in (re)developing her skills. With Lilja it's never gone this smooth, and it kind of makes me realise what a huge difference between training these two horses have had.

Also, extremely different personalities.