#but it's going to get better

[bloody-bee-tea]

24 Days of MHA 2024 Day 8 - Beauty

Shouta aches all over and only half of that pain comes from the various injuries littering his body. Mostly he's just tired and weary and too damn young to feel this old, but the thought of what his kids will likely have to face in the future, the thought of one of them still missing, weighs him down way beyond his years.

He's only barely listening to the doctor telling him how to care for himself and his scrapes, too busy thinking about how they best get Bakugo back, how he'll have to reassure the kids, the parents, the media, and just the thought of having to deal with the latter leaves a sour aftertaste on his tongue.

Shouta doesn't have time for this.

He doesn't have time to listen to this when Recovery Girl can just kiss him better once he got a decent night of sleep, he doesn't have time to sit here and be idle when a million things need to be done and he especially doesn't have time for Hizashi's fretting.

Who materialises in his hospital room as if Shouta’s thoughts have conjured him and Shouta just barely suppresses a sigh.

Hizashi has been hovering ever since that incident at the USJ and Shouta is growing tired of it. He doesn’t need a chaperon and he doesn’t need Hizashi to lose his head over injuries that have long been healed when there are so many other things that need worrying about.

“Shouta, how are you?” Hizashi frantically asks, coming to a stop in front of Shouta and fluttering his hands over his body as if he could feel any potential injuries.

“I’m fine, will you stop,” Shouta says and takes a step back, dismayed by the easy way Hizashi invades his private space.

“Are you really? Where’s the doctor?” Hizashi demands to know and looks around. “Or your file. Gimme.”

“You will not read my file, Hizashi, I am fine.”

Hizashi eyes him critically, clearly not believing a word Shouta is saying and Shouta is so fed up with this constant fretting and worrying and hovering that he snaps.

“Will you stop it?” he hisses out and Hizashi frowns at him.

“Stop what?”

“This—” Shouta gestures at the entirety of Hizashi and then makes a sweeping motion through the room. “All of it. You don’t need to see my file and you don’t need to speak to my doctor!”

“Shouta,” Hizashi says, and he seems entirely serious, which only pisses Shouta off more. “How else would I know how to care for you? It’s not as if you tell me anything. Hell, I had to hear about you being in the hospital from Nezu! Again, I might add because you can’t be bothered to keep me informed.” Hizashi pauses to take a deep breath but he goes on before Shouta can find his own words. “You kind of drifted away from me ever since Oboro died but it’s getting worse lately, you keep pushing me away and how am I going to take care of you if I don’t even know your injuries?”

"Well, the beauty of this arrangement is that you don't have to take care of me," Shouta scathingly says because he very deliberately did not make Hizashi his emergency contact for precisely this reason, and watches how Hizashi stills completely.

"Arrangement?" he whispers out and Shouta refuses to be hurt by the way his voice cracks. "You're calling this friendship an 'arrangement'?"

He sounds lost and broken and flayed open in a way Shouta didn't think possible and he takes a surprised step back when open and raw hurt flashes over Hizashi's face.

It's a look Shouta hasn't seen on him since he screamed at him to leave him the fuck alone right after Oboro's death and Shouta thought he would never see it again, because ever since then Hizashi has been guarded around him.

He's been guarded around him for close to ten years now, Shouta suddenly realises with a start but he doesn't have time to process anything before Hizashi's face shuts down on him, smoothing out into absolute perfect nothingness.

"Alright," Hizashi says, his voice perfectly even as he stuffs his hands into his pockets as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. "See you at school, I guess," he adds and then turns around and leaves.

Shouta feels as if the muted thud of the door closing echoes around the room for minutes and during that time he can’t bring himself to tear his eyes away from it, wondering if maybe Hizashi will come back, will laugh it all off like he did so many times already and then go back to fretting over Shouta but nothing happens.

Hizashi is just gone.

~*~*~

It’s jarring, Hizashi’s absence.

Shouta didn’t expect it, wasn’t aware that Hizashi is so closely tied to Shouta’s life because—and he can maybe admit to it—he did keep him at arm’s length, or at least he tried to.

It’s clear now that it didn’t work, not at all, and Shouta is completely lost. Everything is a mess; his head, his body, his students, the world at large. It’s all fucked up and for a while, Shouta doesn’t have time to think about anything but press work and his students and All Might’s retirement.

By the time he gets to sit down and really think about things, it all comes crashing down around him and he realises with a start just how much he misses Hizashi.

But Hizashi has kept to himself these past days; he hasn’t tried to contact Shouta, hasn’t tried to keep up with anything that’s happening on Shouta’s side and he hasn’t so much as spared a single look for the scrapes still littering Shouta’s body.

He keeps a professional air around him at the school, and it almost feels as if they are nothing but co-workers. As if over ten years of knowing each other never happened in the first place and Shouta knows it’s his fault.

He has to admit that there is no one else to blame, because he fucked up, he said the wrong things at the wrong time to the only person that still matters to him—after doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons for years—and he has no clue how he’s going to un-fuck all of this.

Well, he knows where to start, knows where he has to start, but talking has never been Shouta’s strong suit and especially not with Hizashi.

It’s true, that he kept pushing Hizashi away, but probably not for the reasons Hizashi thinks and Shouta has no clue if he can explain it in a way that would make Hizashi understand.

What he does know, though, is that he has to try, because this last week has shown Shouta that not having Hizashi in his life is also not an option.

Can we talk? Shouta sends to Hizashi and it feels wholly inadequate, but he doesn't know how else to start.

We can talk about the upcoming lesson plan at school. The answer is immediate and painfully unpersonal and Shouta aches.

Not about work, Shouta sends back. About us.

There's no reply for long enough that Shouta starts to pace the length of the room before he feels his phone vibrate in his hand.

You made it more than clear that there is no us to talk about, is the devastating reply he gets and he can't even blame Hizashi. This is all on Shouta and he damn well knows it.

Still, he can’t let it stand like this.

There is and I’m sorry I made it sound as if there isn’t. Please, let me apologise. Let’s talk.

Hizashi leaves him on read for long enough that Shouta’s heart sinks right to the bottom of his feet and when Hizashi finally does start to type something, Shouta clutches the phone so tightly he’s afraid it will break.

If you remember where I live you can come over.

Shouta is out of the door before he even has the phone pocketed and even though it’s been years since he was at Hizashi’s place, he still remembers.

He also remembers why he hasn’t been there in years and the thought aches still. But Shouta remembers the picture he saw in Hizashi’s living-room, of the three of them, Oboro and Hizashi smiling so brightly at the camera while Shouta had his trade-mark frown on his face and it had scared Shouta.

Because what if one day it would be on him to put up a picture of the three of them, to remember both Oboro and Hizashi? What if he ended up being the last of their friend group to be around?

It had scared him so much and now he can admit that he started to push Hizashi away at that time. He thought it would be easier like this when he’d inevitably lose Hizashi too, but of course Shouta got it all wrong.

Nothing is easier like this, alone, and especially not knowing he hurt Hizashi with his behaviour.

He makes it over to Hizashi’s place in record time but when Hizashi opens the door for him, Shouta finds himself tongue-tied.

Hizashi is looking at him but there’s still this distance and Shouta wonders if this is how he came across all these years too.

If yes, then it’s a wonder Hizashi didn’t tell him to go fuck himself sooner. But then again, Hizashi has always been a better person than Shouta.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing out of Shouta’s mouth and it’s not enough, he knows it’s not, but it’s a start.

It has to be because he doesn’t know what he’s going to do otherwise.

Hizashi eyes him for a moment and the ice in his eyes doesn’t melt at all.

“Is that all you have to say?” he wants to know after staring at Shouta for what feels like hours. “Because then you can leave again.”

“No, it’s not! Hizashi, of course it’s not. Can I come in?”

“If you must.”

Hizashi moves away, allows Shouta into his apartment, but he still feels like an intruder, as if he doesn’t belong at all and he wonders if there’s even a way for him to mend this. It would be well within Hizashi’s rights to not forgive him for the past ten years.

“Thank you,” Shouta whispers as he walks past him, eager to get inside because then, maybe, he can explain himself without Hizashi closing the door in his face.

When he enters the living-room Shouta’s eyes immediately fall onto the picture and it hurts just as much as it did back then but while it used to be because of the things Shouta already lost, it now aches with the threat of losing what he has left.

“Hizashi, you’re my friend. Of course you are my friend. You’re the most important person in my life,” Shouta gets out, his eyes still glued to the picture but he feels Hizashi’s gaze on him.

“How nice,” he says, almost sounding bored and Shouta thinks he deserves that. “You have a great way of showing that.”

“I know I fucked up,” Shouta says and turns around. “And I have been fucking it all up for a while,” he then admits, because he came here to make things right and he needs to be honest for that.

“If you’re here because you think you need to apologise for hurting my feelings, then don’t. I’m a big guy, I’ll survive. It’s my fault for reading more into our—acquaintance than there really was, anyway.”

“No!” Shouta almost yells out because this is all wrong, it’s all so wrong and he desperately needs to set this right. “We’re friends, or—we should be, still, and it’s my fault we’re not.”

“And that’s okay,” Hizashi shrugs without meeting Shouta’s eyes. “You don’t have to be friends with everyone. Without Oboro it’s—we can be co-workers. It’s fine.”

Shouta can feel the urge to activate his quirk rise in him, but it’s wrong, it would be so wrong, because he’d silence Hizashi like that and he already shut him out for long enough.

“It’s not fine,” Shouta says and he takes a step closer to Hizashi.

It’s usually Hizashi who bridges the distance between them, but Shouta realises that it’s on him now. He created that distance, so it’s on him to reduce it, too.

“I’m sorry I have shut you out.”

“Shouta, you haven’t shut me out. You shut someone out when you refuse to talk about a specific topic, or when you keep a certain problem from them. You’ve pushed me out of your life. And I was too stupid to accept it, so that’s on me. I should have taken the hint when you stopped sharing anything personal with me and I should have definitely clued in when you moved and didn’t even tell me about it. I had to find out from Nemuri because by then you couldn’t be bothered to talk to me anymore. Which is fine, by the way, because you are free to decide who you want in your life. I just somehow never got around to accepting that you don’t want me around.”

“Shut up!” Shouta yells out because he can’t hear Hizashi talk like that, he can’t hear how much pain he caused him and most of all he doesn’t know how to fix something he broke so thoroughly. “I am so sorry, Hizashi,” he then mutters and it’s been years since he last cried but he finds tears gathering in his eyes now. “I don’t know how to fix this,” he admits and it feels as if the words are carving him open.

“You don’t have to fix anything, we can just—”

“I’m scared,” Shouta interrupts him and he can’t muster the courage to look at Hizashi but he knows his gaze is on Shouta. “I’m terrified and I have been ever since Oboro died. I should have saved him, I was right there and didn’t do anything. We lost him because of me. And I kept thinking, what if I lose Hizashi next?” Shouta takes a shuddering breath.

“You didn’t lose me. You actively pushed me away,” Hizashi reminds him and it cuts Shouta deep but Hizashi is right.

In his fear, he did everything wrong.

“And I thought it would be easier like that. You and Oboro, you were my best friends. Losing one was unbearable. I couldn’t fathom to lose another one, so—”

“You made sure there was no best friend to lose, because we wouldn’t be friends anymore,” Hizashi finishes for him and hearing it out loud like that is so stupid, it’s so irrational that Shouta is upset with himself.

“It wasn’t a conscious thought,” Shouta admits. “It wasn’t so precise. I just knew that it would hurt and I tried to protect myself.”

“And how has that been working out for you?” Hizashi asks and it’s not as mean as it could be but still, Shouta lets out a desperate laugh.

“Horribly,” he confesses, because underneath all of that fear he has missed Hizashi. “I did everything wrong. It hurts anyway, differently than it does from losing Oboro, and I fucked us both over. I fucked everything up.”

Hizashi doesn’t refute him, because he can’t and Shouta wonders where they are supposed to go from here.

If there even is anywhere for them to go, together.

“What do you want, Shouta?” Hizashi asks him and he sounds so tired. “What do you want from me? Why are you here?”

“I want us to be friends again,” Shouta gets out and he hates how his voice shakes. “I want—to not be an asshole and to be a friend you deserve. If—you want that, too,” he adds on, because he would understand if Hizashi told him to go fuck himself.

It’d be well within his rights, after all, and Shouta would accept that, too. It’s only fair.

“If we do that,” Hizashi thoughtfully starts and Shouta hates the emphasis on the first word, “then it can’t just be me, shouldering this friendship. It can’t just be my stubbornness keeping us going. You need to contribute something, open yourself up. I can’t do this again when it’s just on me. If you shut me out again—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence but Shouta nods anyway. He understands.

“I know,” he rushes out. “But it’s not just you, Hizashi, I haven’t shared my life with anyone in so long and it might take me a while to learn how to do that again,” Shouta says and it’s only when he says it that he realises how true it is.

No one knows things about him anymore. Shouta didn’t just keep Hizashi at arm’s length, he’s doing that with everyone.

“I’m not asking you to spill everything or be an open book or whatever,” Hizashi says. “I just need you to try and to want this. It’ll be a learning curve for both of us, because we haven’t been friends in so long. I don’t need to know everything. Just enough to know that you want me in your life.”

It should be an incredibly low bar, but to Shouta it feels daunting and scary and that is precisely the reason he fishes out his phone.

“I adopted a cat,” he says and it’s a peace offering, a first step and Shouta just hopes Hizashi will take it. “Do you want to see some pictures of him?”

“What’s his name?” Hizashi asks after a moment and comes closer so he can see Shouta’s screen and it feels monumental to Shouta.

Monumental enough that he has to close his eyes and just breathe through it for a moment. Hizashi stays silent, gives him this moment, which is probably more than Shouta deserves in all honesty and he promises to do better.

Hizashi deserves a friend, deserves the best friend, and Shouta is going to try and fill that spot again.

“Snapple,” he finally answers Hizashi’s question and pulls up some pictures. “Because he keeps snapping at me whenever I eat an apple.”

Hizashi lets out a snort.

“You’re still horrible at naming things,” he almost fondly says and Shouta remembers with a start that it was Hizashi who named him Eraserhead, who gave him that identity when Shouta couldn’t be bothered to care and how did Shouta thank him for it?

“I am,” he agrees, his voice coming out shaky and thick as he tilts the phone so Hizashi can see better.

It’s not much, really, but for them it’s a whole lot and to Shouta especially it’s scary enough that his hands shake but he has to try.

For Hizashi, and for himself, he has to do better.

[cowboysmp3]

there’s something sooo sickening about how dunmeshis whole energy is like sometimes something terrible and awful happens to you and it changes you forever and nothing can make you the person you were before but there’s still love and there’s still sharing a meal together and there’s still living

[atalana]

the curse of adhd:

i will remember with absolute clarity, when the thought strikes me that i have a text to send someone, that this is the fourth time in three days i've attempted to send this specific text

i will forget, in the time it takes me to pick up my phone, that i picked it up intending to send a text

[wishfulsketching]

I have finally finished season 2 of Arcane and can now enjoy your art without fear!!! They should be happy together 🥺

I take it "they" means zaundads because that is what I've been drawing the most BUT, lets be honest, applies to like 98% of the characters in the show.

They should've been a big happy familyyyy

[wardensantoineandevka]

is that piece of media actually bad, or is it just not following the blueprint you projected onto it? is that work actually not good, or are you just demanding something from it that is absolutely antithetical to its themes, genre, tone, and narrative goal? is that story actually poorly written, or do you just dislike that it is not the specific things you wanted from it that it never set out to be, never was, and never is going to become? is it actually bad, or is it actually well-executed and you just dislike the story it chose to be because it isn't catering to your specific desires and expectations?

[inbabylontheywept]

bad dating stories time: the shoe incident

so in highschool, my best friend wasnt allowed to go on dates unless there was another couple there to keep an eye on him. part of this was his parents being insane, but also, part of it was him being insane. in a problem with no reasonable parties, there are no reasonable solutions.

at some point in my junior year, my sorta-gf broke up with me, and i just wasnt feeling dating, which was bad for my friend, because he had a good thing going with a girl he met in court.

he kind of hounded me about it. kept pushing me to just put me feet back in the dating pool and i wasnt real thrilled about it, because i knew he was pushing me for his own benefit, not mine, so i kept telling him to fuck off, and after a few weeks of being told that i would date when i was damn well ready, he eventually said: okay. what if i paid for the date AND found you a blind date AND all you had to do was show up?

and i shouldve said no, i know, but i let him wear me down, and i will own my fault in that. a date starting on such a stupid premise could never have gone well.

but he still managed to find a way to make it worse.

i dont know how long he tried to set a blind date up. it couldve been multiple attempts. he couldve stooped to this immediately. but what happened in the end was that he called a girl from the ward he attended - a girl that he knew had a giant, mushy crush on him - and he said: hey! how would you feel about going on a date this weekend?

(you know, implying it was with him, but never actually saying it.)

and she said YES WOW I WOULD LOVE TO and he said great! and then he called me up and said he found me a date.

i did not learn about his crimes until several weeks later. i will die swearing before god almighty that i would never have allowed this travesty to happen if i had known.

that was on a monday. the date of the date rolled around that friday evening, and im sorry to confess, i really phoned the whole thing in. i showed up in my favorite comfy outfit, which was also a fashion crime: basketball shorts and flipflops and a baja hoodie. it was super comfy but it made me look kind of crazy. i picked him up first, and then i picked up his date next, and then we went to pick up my date, and thats where you're gonna get the play by play.

i arrived, walked across the yard, and knocked on the front door. she opened it almost immediately, like shed been waiting right by it, and i could see her expression go from OMG IM SO EXCITED to super disappointed, then disgusted and finally pissed. and because i didn't know about my friends sins, i thought it was from my outfit. which seemed... harsh. like, hey, im allowed to be quirky, fuck you. also its a blind date, i thought the deal was that we were both going to be sad broken sacks of mortality.

anyway, we looked at each other for several seconds before she slammed the door in my face.

i looked back at my friend. he was sweating bullets. i dont know what he expected from this, but there was this big long pause where we both tried to figure out what to do, and then the door opened up, and her dad invited me in, and he said she was gonna need a few minutes to finish getting ready, and that in the meantime we could sit and talk.

we did not talk. we did sit. i sat down on the couch, and he sat down in a chair across the couch, and then instead of talking he cleaned his pistol on the coffee table. i wasnt actually sure if it was a threat, or if it was just a fidget thing for 40+ year old republican men, but when i tried to help he got snappy so i just watched him put a pistol back together.

he was okay at it.

eventually my date came downstairs, still mad as hell for reasons beyond my ken, and i felt pretty guilty for being such a mess because i thought that was why she was so angry. i tried to make up for by walking her to the car and getting the door for her, just generally trying to be extra polite, but before i could make it back to the drivers side, her dad called me back to the door. so i flipped around, went to the door, and immediately regreted my decision.

soon as i was within range, her dad got waaaay too close to me, leaned in, and said "whatever you do to her, i will do to you," and my brain went into overdrive making three consecutive realizations.

realization one was, damn, the pistol thing was a threat. that sucks. what an asshole. realization two was, wait, im autistic and even i know theres a 0% chance me and my date even hold hands, least of all boink. does this guy actually think there's even a 1% chance of anyone in that car getting laid tonight? is he an idiot? and then realization three went through, which was wait, is this guy threatening to fuck me? and unfortunately, with my brain doing so much processing, my mouth was left to run amok, so somewhere between realization 2 and 3, i said:

"i can't get pregnant"

which, i swear, wasn't actually me trying to be a smartass, it was just me pointing out that he couldn't actually follow up on that threat. it just wasn't possible. we do not live in the omegaverse and im not scared of you.

still, it was an insanely catastrophic thing to say, and the moment we both heard it, we bluescreened. that single sentence obliterated both of our momentary streams of consciousness like a saltine in front of a sand blaster. problem was, he'd probably gone his whole life not even realizing someone could say something that stupid, and making that realization was going to cost him a lot of thinking time. me though? i had been saying shit like that for 17 years, i didnt have to rewrite my expectations of human nature, i just had to plan an exit and start striding. so i was already halfway back to the car before i heard "hey. hey come back. Hey. Hey. HEY. HEY WAIT. HEY GET BACK HERE. HEY-"

and then i was in my car, and i drove away.

if this happened today, he'd have called her, and the whole thing wouldve imploded then and there, but back then, there were still a decent number of teenagers without cell phones. especially the teenagers of insane, gun toting parents. so she just said: whoa what was that all about? and i said: dont worry about it, he'll tell you about it when you get home.

and she said: ok and went back to staring daggers at me and my friend.

WHICH SURPRISINGLY isnt even how the story ends.

we went to an improv comedy show, and it was a disaster. it shouldve been like, 7/10 tops, but between my date being mad, and my friend having a good time, and me having the existential terror of knowing that a guy with a pistol was probably waiting outside his house for me to come back, it was easily 11/10. i laughed way too hard at everything. especially the jokes that flopped. id sit there in this mostly silent room and laugh until i dry heaved a little, and my date was absolutely disgusted, and even my friend was a little embarrassed, which would just make me laugh harder. i laughed so hard that night i could barely talk the next day. and then the show ended, and my friend said, you know, that was a good time, but i think we should maybe do something a little chiller? who wants to walk around the park? and his date said yeah, and my date said no, and i finally had mercy on the poor woman so i said, look, im gonna drop you off. and i am so, so sorry about this, but im dropping you off like a block away. super duper sorry.

do talk to your dad about the pistols thing if you dont want this happening more in the future tho.

and she said: okay. so i dropped her off, and she walked a block down, and that was that.

then i drove my friend and his date to a park that was good for wandering. i figured they wanted something more private, so instead of following them around point blank, i chose a park with this 30 foot rope tower, and i climbed to the top and i said: hey i can see you anywhere from up here, you are officially chaperoned from a distance. get panopticoned idiot. except my friend really is an idiot, and he didnt really get the whole 'now i dont have to third wheel so insanely hard with you guys' thing so he climbed up the tower too, and then his date followed behind him, so there are three people basically sitting together on top of a telephone pole.

and then they started making out.

i was close enough to hear it.

i didnt really know what to do so i was just kind of sitting there, dissociating, when some college kids came around and started shaking the tower. my friend's date went aaaaaaaaaa im afraid of heights :( and my friend went oh, dont worry, ill hold you tight ;) and i went hey, im gonna climb down and ask them to stop.

so i did climb down, and i did ask them to stop, and they flipped me off, which i wasnt even mad about. at that point i was i was like yeah, it would be weirder if this wasnt a mess. gods plan has been to fly this day like a 747 into my metaphorical twin towers and brother he is close enough for me to see him grinning through the cockpit window. still, eventually the college students got bored, so they climbed up the tower, which gave my friend and his date a window to climb down, and together we walked back to my car.

now, i cant explain why this is, but sitting back in the drivers seat was my carriage-back-into-a-pumpkin moment. i'd been chill about all the chaos, just rolling with the punches, but sitting down made me realize how much of a shitshow the day had been, and while i couldnt go back and fix all of it, i could go back and fix one thing.

so i told my friend and his date, hey, you two, stay here and don't do anything weird. don't. then i walked back to the rope tower, and i started picking up the shoes the college students had left at the base in order to climb.

about halfway through this, i realized that if i took all their shoes, they might think i was in it for the money, and i actually wanted them to know i was in it specifically to spite them. fuck those guys. so i put all the right shoes back, gave myself a 100 foot headstart, yelled "nice shoes, assholes", did a little jig, and started running.

my advice to everyone is that college students are faster than you think. even with the headstart, and the whole climb down the tower thing, i was still only fivish seconds ahead of them by the time i got to my car. i flung the door open, looked in the backseat, didnt see anyone, flung the stolen shoes in the backseat, heard two "ow"s, took that as proof of presence, jumped in and pealed out of the lot.

my friend and his date popped up a few seconds later. they were, uh, doing something weird in the back seat. my one request - obliterated.

they climbed up to ask where the hell all the shoes had come from, and i was like yeah i stole them from the college students, and they were like oh. cool. hope you had fun. and i was like, i did. i did. but speaking of fun, what were you doing back there?

and for the first time in my buddies life, i think he was actually embarassed.

[chloesimaginationthings]

You know Henry’s final speech went hard in FNAF

[ahotknife]

the thing is that childhood doesn't just end when you turn 18 or when you turn 21. it's going to end dozens of times over. your childhood pet will die. actors you loved in movies you watched as a kid will die. your grandparents will die, and then your parents will die. it's going to end dozens and dozens of times and all you can do is let it. all you can do is stand in the middle of the grocery store and stare at freezers full of microwave pizza because you've suddenly been seized by the memory of what it felt like to have a pizza party on the last day of school before summer break. which is another ending in and of itself

[moncuries]

guess what i watched on new years (a redraw kind of)

[captainjonnitkessler]

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

[ladynynaeve]

had the wildest interaction today some random woman called me a slag and my dog a fucking faggot because I was using a pink lead/harness and he’s a boy like what the fuck lmfaoo

[uncanny-tranny]

I think so many people are so deeply alienated from themselves that they have no clue how to exercise their free will and autonomy. For some, this alienation runs so deep that they are afraid of their own autonomy and humanity. It is completely understandable why one would have those feelings, but it can be worrisome.

I want to help others who feel this way, so here are small things I have done to exercise my free will:

Add "guilty pleasure" songs to playlists and actually listen to them (I have a ton of late 1990s-early 2000s music I listen to now proudly that I never listened to in the past out of shame)

Getting the décor item, bath set, bed spread, ect. in the patterns you like, even if it's "childish" (I got a dinosaur-themed wastebasket from the kids' décor section and I adore it)

Taking a new route to get to a place you go to often

Eat dessert first

Celebrate well, and often

Collect things that are "odd" or don't seem like an "acceptable" thing to collect (somebody on my "for you" page collects dandelion crayola crayons and it was so cool!!!!!!)

Incorporate one new piece in an outfit you wear frequently (e.g., a new chain, a necklace, ribbons, bracelets, ect.). Challenge yourself to add onto the outfits if you feel up for it.

Sing along to songs without worrying that you sound "good" or your intonation is completely accurate

Read a book from a genre you weren't allowed to read as a kid (comics, thrillers, mysteries, anything!)

Walk without having a specific destination or goal

Pick up a new craft without expecting yourself to master it or to ever be "good" enough. Get your hands messy.

I don't want to shame anybody for not feeling as though they have free will or that they are exempt from exercising it. However, I wanted to give ideas so that you might read this list and find your own ways to express your intrinsic autonomy and will. You deserve to be a person, to feel alive, not just living. That is what our lives are for.

[ghosted-jazz]

I hope they got that microwave in the break room

Bonus version with different outfit colours:

[sherlockggrian]

let's do this dance again

[thepioden]

if you ever go to an art gallery and you see a painting and you think "that sucks. I could do that." maybe you can! I think a lot of people could do like. Matisse. Mondrian. Rothko. From a technical standpoint at least. Not everyone but a good number of people. But please consider: Artists™ aren't special people. They're just people. Just regular folks with something to say and a trained skill who showed that skill to the right people.

So instead of being like "that sucks! that's dumb! I could do that. It shouldn't be in a gallery." instead try, "I could do that. I should be in a gallery." and then do it and go and show your art to people.