#coworkers too. the entire time

[freckliedan]

i love weed and i miss my best friend so fucking bad

[chiquilines]

Ochako my relatable academically exhausted queen

[salt-baby]

I just don't understand people who don't do a COVID test when they get sick

[quotidianish]

I love extrapolating ideas about the merc’s parents based off of what little is mentioned of them (me w/ heavy’s dad lol). Don’t let your boy drink, even though he’s already 13 (big boy number).

[yellobb]

If things could stop going in exactly the wrong wrong direction that would be excellent

[c0rpsedemon]

oh yeah. the reason why i decided to reread tbhk (and thus it was able to hit me like a truck this time around) was actually not bc of mitsukou going canon but actually bc i maybe accidentally started a tbhk book club w my kids at work and wanted to check the contents of it justttt in case before i put the books in their hands

[pa-rou]

First shift at work DONE (just a 3 hour one but still)

I need someone to beam the technical knowledge of how to store stuff in the back and organize it there into my mind STAT. At one point the scanner thingy for the tags started beeping super loud when i tried scanning a buncha shirts and i just about shitted myself :’))

[batemanofficial]

.

[nomairuins]

i just fucking hate having ptsd all of it. so many stupid fucking things send me into fucking hysterics it sucks and i hate it and i dont want itttt anymore i dont want it.

[oetscop]

lonely and depressed > i do drugs > they reduce me to a walking corpse with nothing to offer another human being > it makes me lonely and depressed > i do drugs to cope > they reduce me to a walking corpse with nothing to offer another person > it makes me lonely and depressed > i do drugs to cope > they reduce me to a walking corpse with nothing to offer another person > it makes me lonely and depressed > i do drugs to cope > they reduce me to a walking corpse with nothing to offer another person > it makes me lonely and depressed >

[beauzos]

ik we talk a lot about the way being unable to drive limits people's autonomy and self-sufficience but have we talked about how isolating it makes things socially. i can't go anywhere without my parents. my parents don't want to do anything with me (my dad) or can't because of disabilities (my mom). i have no friends i can see regularly aside from people i get along with at work. i can't go anywhere most of the time. so i just stay home.

when you start to get older or when your friends move out of your area, it makes your life very lonely, i think.

[bluejaybytes]

@snowshinobi Hiiiii :3 I'm responding to your tags on a new post and not the original since the original was already somewhat lengthy, and I plan on being LONG and RAMBLY, but I have sooo many thoughts on what you said and I'm going to say them. Also my browser crashed TWICE (TWO TIMES. 2) when trying to write this post so I'm really fighting for my life out here to get my silly little OC posts done. Also it's under the cut because it's looooong as hell LMAO

Firstly, you're so nice to me forever <3 Secondly, I think you've basically hit the nail on the head. The majority of the issues Maggie has coming back from death and her 9 years gone are really tied almost exclusively to her close family, because she... never really had anyone else. While in-universe it's only 9 years, realistically the jump in technology and culture is around ~20-30 years (Maggie died in the 90s/early 2000s essentially, and wakes up in a just barely futuristic city), but... the most jarring thing to her in terms of what she missed out on is just. Flipphones are no longer popular. Other than her family, she's only close with one other person... who just so happens to be a ghost, and therefore both 1. Wouldn't change much over the timespan due to how long she's been a ghost and 2. Unlike her family, was aware that something happened, since she could see the ghost-of-a-ghost Maggie left behind (The ghosts name is Opal, she positions herself as a sort of "guardian angel" figure, though she's not actually, and serves as just another parental figure for Maggie while also getting after the ghosts that constantly harass her to pass on messages to the living). Maggie has no real relationships outside of her family, and while her relationships with her family are massively impacted by her unknowing death, other than that... the timeskip itself doesn't weigh on her because she had no one regardless. Her struggle to adjust to everything thats happened would've happened regardless of the timeskip for her, because she was such an isolated shut-in that it's the same whether it happened the next day, or nearly a full decade later

So another very interesting thing is that you've actually completely seen where I was going with everything, in spite of everything I said being very surface level and not actually delving into the plot at all. I completely skimmed over Jenna (She's very important to the plot, but she's by in large a regular person as opposed to Maggie's... everything), but for some additional context, Jenna has a horrendously shitty homelife, so her moving in with Maggie is both a gradual process (It goes from spending time there, to spending nights, to eventually just never going back home and moving in fully), and also serves as an escape for her. Part of that is also, so vitally, the food aspect. For some additional additional context, souls essentially serve as a persons lifeforce, practically every bodily function is improved by a soul that's stronger, though the "strength" of a soul is essentially entirely random, and not dependent on the individuals actions of any kind. Maggie had a generally weird soul before (Seeing ghosts inherently means she has to have something going on with her soul), but when she wakes up after her death, her soul is now even weirder, and part of that is that it essentially lets her get away with bad habits she absolutely should be seeing more consequences for. She barely eats, and when she does, it's basically exclusively crackers and whatever other safe foods she has around the house, because actually making food is a level of care and effort she just... doesn't give to herself in the slightest. Part of Jenna staying with her is that Jenna, without really discussing it, entirely takes up the mantle of caretaker of the apartment, with the biggest task being food prep, Jenna sees Maggie's unwillingness to take care of herself and silently steps up and starts making her actual meals so she's eating properly.

The problem is is that this also kinda... just straight up sucks? Jenna doesn't think much of it, it's something that needed to be done so she's doing it, she wants Maggie to be well fed even if she won't do it herself, and she's already been responsible for making all of her own meals for years prior anyways, so it's just another thing she does. Except that's shitty! Maggie's seen firsthand how terrible her homelife is, and it really weighs on her how even in her escape from that, Jenna's still being put in a position where she feels like she must care for her or else she just won't eat properly. So food is such a massively important thing to both of them, it's this symbol of love for both of them, it's love on the part of Jenna, for stepping in and taking care of Maggie when she can't do it herself, and it's love on the part of Maggie, for realizing how her own bad habits impact the people she cares about and wanting to lift that weight by taking care of herself better. It's also very vital for Maggie because she just... doesn't... have hobbies. Learning how to cook becomes really her only hobby and she puts all of her love and care into it, because for the first time in a long while she's actually passionate about something! ...Unfortunately she also is very very bad at it. She's inventing new dishes like "Burnt Salad" and "Please Help I Fucked Up Kraft Mac N Cheese" and still having to have Jenna come in and help her. But it's the thought that counts, and it'll only be a matter of time before she can make something vaguely edible.

And finally, the stuff about names! I didn't post it here, but while idly talking about her in a Discord server I'm in, I definitely think that had I made Maggie like even a few months later than I would've done she would've been nonbinary. As it stands right now though, I'm saying she's probably some form of genderweird but too busy trying not to die to think about it <3 Growing up knowing that ghosts are real and routinely being shut down by authority figures in her life about it has made her very aware of how bullshit a lot of things are and how the people who claim to be knowledgeable tend to not know what they're talking about (Beyond just the "people don't think ghosts are real", she's also got ghosts willing to tell her when people are lying because they've got nothing better to do than just gossip) , so if she spent even just a moment thinking about gender as a social construct she'd instantly recognize that and probably take up some form of genderweird label, but as it stands she's just too stressed with Being The Protagonist to think about that

Now, the thing with Margaret. I'm not even going to lie to you, I think you made a better connection to how a name connects with community in terms of the narrative themes than I did. The thing with Margaret denying the name "Maggie" existed for two reasons, the in-universe explanation is that, with the little scrap of soul Margaret has leftover from Maggie, it's essentially working overtime just to keep her vitals working, it can't dedicate time and energy to making her an individual with preferences and a personality, so part of that is that she doesn't respond to "Maggie" because ultimately, that is not her name. Her name is Margaret and she's not going to respond to "Maggie" because "Maggie" isn't her name. Of course, out of universe the reasoning is that I wanted an easy way to distinguish between Maggie as she is the protagonist, and the version of her that lived in the years she was gone, so different names makes the most sense.

I think your connection to how name relates to community genuinely works on a level I hadn't fully pieced together myself yet and I really love that because I think that absolutely works with everything. One of the main conflicts of the plot is how Maggie is entirely disconnected from her family thanks to the years she was gone, with Margaret having no priorities beyond "survive", she basically never spoke with her parents or brother for years. While her family tried to reach out to her repeatedly (Especially given that, while they're unaware the truth of what happened the night Maggie was murdered, they do know something happened, and they believe that whatever it was severely traumatized her, and that's where the sudden and drastic shift in personality came from), there's a point where they just... gave up. She wasn't trying to talk with them or contact them in the slightest, so around a year or two after Margaret moved out, her parents gave up on her. Her brother would still be there a bit, but he also didn't really... try... anymore.

When Maggie wakes up, she tries to call her parents... and they don't pick up. They'd grown resentful over the years, and now that Maggie wants to talk to them, they don't forgive her for the years of not speaking to them, and aren't interested in whatever she has to say after nearly a decade of trying to reconnect with her and being met with nothing. It's her insistence that she wants to be called Maggie that actually gets her brother to realize she's telling the truth and that something happened. She shows up at his door, already something that Margaret wouldn't have done, and that combined with her being visibly upset when he calls her Margaret and tells him that's not her and that she's Maggie, it signals to him that whatever's going on is real (...though he would've figured this out eventually, given that she also literally 17 again and not in her mid-20s, and has a giant glowing stab wound in her chest). I think it works absolutely perfectly as being a symbol of community, her disconnect from her community is what led to her being called Margaret, and her desperation to be returned to that community is when she's Maggie again. So uh. Congrats on getting the themes of my OCs better than I did <3

And uhhhh closing thoughts! I honestly did still skim over the majority of the plot (Literally never even mentioned Eli or what's going on with her stab wound </3), but I think you reeeeally hit the nail on the head with everything I'm kinda getting at with these OCs, which is... frankly wild given how little main plot I actually got at. Basically everything I mentioned in my original post was the setup, not the main plot. But waaaaugh thank you for being so niceys to me and also giving me another excuse to ramble endlessly <3

[nat-20s]

Laying out a conspiracy board with pictures and string but it's just me trying to figure out which of my friends would like being friends with each other

[altruistic-meme]

it's genuinely disorienting to work in an area where we are all women* in a field that most people assume is dominated by men and to have my coworkers STILL tell me "oh that position is a MAN'S job, we need a MAN to come help us with that" like bitch no we don't!!!!! it's not even that hard!!!!! what, because it requires a little extra strength suddenly that means that we're INCAPABLE of doing something??? fuck off. i can and will find a way to do whatever I need to for my position and I will learn how to do it on my own.

(*no im not actually a woman but my coworkers don't know that)

[cuoredimuschio]

inputing my coworker's $5/hr raise about to send me over the edge for real 😙✌️

[red-eft]

it's my last shift in retail today (hopefully forever) and it's such a weird feeling.. trying not to cry at the thought of leaving my friends but also really happy i won't have to balance work & school anymore :')