#going to tag this as

[shirleyjacksons]

[hirakiyois]

christopher is going to have the weirdest perception of romantic love when he grows up because his parents were broken up or fighting or in and out of the picture when his mom was alive, and then when his dad finally started dating again he kept his girlfriend an arm's length away at all times and had panic attacks whenever someone accurately perceived that relationship as romantic. but this strange guy that his dad made his best friend on his first day on the job in la now helps chris with his math homework and with baking cookies for his class and takes care of him when his dad is hospitalised and organizes holiday get-togethers so chris can spend them with his dad and is literally always a call away for both of them and keeps the doors of his house eternally open for them and takes him to the zoo all the time. and you'll never believe which of these people eddie apparently actively tried to kiss.

[pencildragons]

biblically accurate alice dyer ???

[corvidexoskeleton]

So because I'm an incurable sap and have been discussing with @rockshortage the possibilities for how marriage could work in nevarran culture, I feel obligated to share some of the headcanons and ideas that have coalesced as a result

So the basic idea is that marriage in nevarran culture is something that is typically a private moment between two people and a skull, because of course there has to be a skull involved

And why a skull, you might ask? Well, when two people wish to be married in nevarra, they must find or borrow a marriage skull. A marriage skull is usually shared communally by small towns or villages, passed down through families, or kept in publicly accessible crypts or spaces in more urban or densely populated cities. They can be identified by a small sigil or summoning circle engraved on the forehead

Once a marriage skull has been acquired, the couple recite an old nevarran incantation in order to summon a spirit of devotion to inhabit the marriage skull, where it will act as a witness as the couple recite their vows to each other. It's also not uncommon for a couple to exchange pieces of jewelry with each other during the ceremony - typically pieces of grave gold, to serve as a representation that the other person is becoming someone you will share your grave with, as the nevarran word for spouse or partner can be loosely translated to "one I share my grave with" (although this step is not always followed if the couple have no grave gold or jewelry to exchange, or don't wish to exchange anything)

After vows and gifts have been exchanged, and having served as a witness, the spirit ingrains a memory of the marriage into the skull itself to serve as a record after the ceremony ends, which physically manifests as the names of the recently married being magically inscribed in grave script into the bone of the skull by the spirit. After this is done, the spirit departs

A marriage can also be annuled by calling forth a spirit and asking that it strike the record from the memory of the marriage skull, causing the inscribed grave script corresponding to the marriage to become blackened and burned out, obscuring what it used to say

Eventually, a marriage skull will be retired when it no longer has any room for names on it, whereupon it will be enshrined in a local crypt, family tomb, or a dedicated room in the necropolis. In the event that the validity of a marriage comes into question, a spirit may be summoned into the skull in order to ask if the marriage in question really took place, but the memories may also be coaxed forth by a corpse whisperer without the need of a spirit

[51-queer-frogs]

Unstable reality zone warning sign

inspired loosely be the never found warning sign and. of course. the good old office for the preservation of normalcy. it maybe could be better executed but ehhhhhhhh.

[enjoyjellime]

Sorry for posting so much about Death Mark lol

It's not even a brainworm anymore, it's a full on brain butterfly that messes with my circuits every time it flutters its Yashiki-patterened wings.

Like... it's worse than my pokemon phase in middle school. How.

[lesbianlenas]

going to watch the melissa show now if i flatline & die it’s bc of melissa know that.

[petercushingscheekbones]

people with who you respect ridiculous non-existent boundaries because they never indicate where their boundaries are at

[penumbraphantasm]

ordering a pup cup for my chikorita in lumiose

[neosatsuma]

jury-rigged. even keel. by the board. three sheets to the wind. loose cannon. son of a gun. pipe down. taken aback.

[pookapufferfish]

[princehendir]

Everyone clap for non consensual body modification everybody loves a character whose body has been altered against their will

[rosenkranz-does-things]

some attempts at vintage pulp covers style

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[heyitsnaardi]

it's too early to be provoking this way ffs

part 2??