#like i am so not qualified for this LOL

[made-nondescript]

If u still want ideas to draw..... perhaps a hotguy? All beaten up and bloody? Give him a flower crown tho. Gotta balance the suffering somehow. /silly

No if u wanna I'd just love to see hotguy in general. Love ur art <3

HIIII STIFF :D hotguy is not having a fun time. i think this is the first time ive ever drawn hotguy so i totally was making this up as i go LOL

[vykio]

Aaron has just pulled his shirt over his head when he hears the stairs creak. He freezes, the shirt still stuck around his arms as something like apprehension burns its way through his body. He’s only still for a moment before he throws the shirt all the way off, chucking it blindly behind him. Whoever is climbing the stairs is doing so at a snail’s pace, but not carefully enough to avoid all the squeaky steps.

Aaron forgoes grabbing the snow globe on his desk to use as a weapon and crosses over to his bedroom door to jerk it open.

At the top of the stairs stands Kevin Day, somehow a bright spot in the completely dark hallway. He flashes a smile at Aaron that shows all his teeth, then slides his feet over the carpet in big strides to reach him.

“Hey,” Kevin says as he closes the door. He leans back against it and Aaron stares at Kevin’s goofy expression. He used to be more subdued—better at giving away his feelings with just the quirk of his mouth rather than the full motion of his cheeks. Now, Kevin looks far too happy to see him.

“Were you even trying to sneak up?” Aaron says, partly to distract Kevin and to redirect his thoughts to safer grounds.

It works. Kevin squints at him. “I was. I did,” he tells him, gesturing to himself, here, in Aaron’s room, a little triumphantly. “I was careful.”

“Sure…”

Kevin huffs at the suspicion on Aaron’s face and ignores it to rake his eyes over his torso. He looks more serious doing this, like mapping the constellation of freckles on Aaron’s body is very important business. Aaron flushes all over, hot everywhere he thinks Kevin’s eyes land. He is suddenly very aware that he’s without a shirt.

Kevin presses the pad of his thumb on Aaron’s hip and curls his fingers around him.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Aaron announces, barely concealing the shiver that wracks through him.

Kevin glances his thumb over Aaron’s stomach and says, “Alone?”

Aaron gives him a deeply unimpressed look. Kevin must know it because he breathes a laugh before he even looks up to see it. “I thought you were worried about waking up the house,” Aaron says.

He takes a take back when Kevin takes a step forward to lean off the door. He keeps his eyes level with Aaron’s as he takes off his own shirt and discards it. “You’ll just have to be quiet, then, won’t you?”

They both know Aaron is not the one they need to monitor.

[zombiiefactory]

TREE FRIEND HEADCANONS BUH

im rlly bored so dropping like ages/jobs/prns & whatnot for funsies loll

giggles

- 25 years old + she/her lesbian

- works as the waitress at russell’s diner, also sells her homemade baked goods there

- wants to study for nursing

- engaged to petunia

cuddles

- 24 years old + he/they nonbinary homosexual

- town mailman (mailbunny lol)

- dating toothy

toothy

- 22 years old + he/him asexual bisexual

- local grocery store cashier/manager

- dating cuddles

petunia

- 25 years old + she/her trans [ mtf ] pansexual

- owns her own boutique

- engaged to giggles

nutty

- 28 years old + he/it greysexual bisexual

- stocker/general associate at same local grocery store with toothy

- adhd

- dating sniffles

sniffles

- 30 years old + he/him trans [ ftm ] homosexual

- is a scientist/inventor but also serves as emergency medical against his will

- autistic

- dating nutty

shifty

- 28 years old + he/him heterosexual

- con-artist/scammer as well as thief

- adhd

lifty

- 28 years old + he/him homosexual

- con-artist/scammer as well as thief

- adhd

- incredibly closeted trans girl

- dating mime

truffles

- 27 years old + he/him heterosexual

- fisherman who sells catch to russell, captain of his own ship

- lives out of town

lammy

- 23 years old + she/her bi-curious

- unemployed but currently attending college

- lives out of town

mime

- 26 years old + he/they/it nonbinary pansexual

- street performer/for-hire party entertainer

- autistic

- dating lifty

pop

- 47 years old + he/him homosexual [ recently out of the closet ]

- stay-at-home-father during the day, works at russell’s diner at night as a bartender

- undiagnosed autistic

- married to disco bear

cub

- 1 1/2 years old + he/him

- undiagnosed autistic

flippy

- 49 years old + he/him bisexual

- used to be retired but went stir crazy, now works as librarian/book club organizer alongside flaky, babysitter at night for pop + cub

disco bear

- 52 years old + he/him homosexual

- flashy hairdresser (or furdresser in this case)

flaky

- 38 years old + they/she nonbinary [ amab ] demiromantic

- owner of their own flower shop,mostly sells what she grows themself, also book club organizer alongside flippy

handy

- 33 years old + he/him heterosexual [ closeted homosexual ]

- handyman idk what else id expect him to be lmao

russell

- 45 years old + he/him bisexual depending on the day

- chef/owner of his own diner, slowed down on the seas due to bodily stress

lumpy

- 48 years old + he/him lumpy

- farmer for the town/main produce exporter, seems to also work in every other odd spot hes not supposed to for no reason

- lumpy

the mole ( mr. mole )

- 73 years old + he/him ??? [ wont tell you ]

- ex-spy currently retired, likes to take up random jobs for fun even if incredibly unqualified

- can speak chooses not too

more relationship stuff under the cut cause this is already long enough lol

giggles, cuddles, petunia, & toothy have been best friends since early childhood and are mostly all seen together. most residents deem them the “four horsemen of the apocalypse”

giggles & cuddles dated for a bit in their teenage years before mutually breaking it off realizing they werent attracted to the opposite sex

giggles proposed to petunia !!

mime & nutty are best friends, they met as young kids in school and instantly clicked. they have a bit of a gap in their friendship due to nuttys disappearance but are now back together and inseparable !

nutty was the only one to know about mimes secret admiration for lifty and set them up together

toothy, nutty, & lifty all play video games together over voice-chat whenever theyre free

flaky & nutty are each others sibling figure stemming from them being neighbors during youth. they see him as the younger brother they never had and he sees them as the older sibling he never had

all the younger residents ( mostly the four horsemen ) all see pop as a father figure. he watched them all grow up and hes their metaphorically adopted dad being completely comfortable to go to him any time they need any sort of help

giggles & russell have a very close relationship, seeing each other nearly every single day of the year. he sees her to be the daughter he never had and enjoys the moments where they get to just talk. even if he doesnt have the proper words at the time

pop & flippy are cousins but treated each other like close brothers before flippy left for the military. their relationship was rocky after his return 25 years later but theyre doing a great job at patching it up

flippy & flaky attempted to “date” for a bit but neither were ready for romance. they pushed the mushy stuff out of the way and are much much happier being best friends. they couldnt imagine a life without each other in it but cant seem to put their fingers on the fact theyre soulmates

russell & handy act like an old married couple they seem to be best buds having a laugh and a beer together one minute but then argue over nothing the next. still incredibly good friends though

lumpy is everyones friend !! even if a scatterbrain, his heart is filled to the brim with love and gets along with every resident he meets

pop & disco have had feelings for each other for decades. each others first love but pop wasnt ready to accept his attraction to men due to his upbringing. he hid himself and married a woman, started a family, pretended to feel happy. his wife unfortunately passed in a tragic accident but fortunately disco was there to comfort pop after the loss. pop at this age decided it was safe to not hide anymore and accepted his love for disco. theyve been married for a few months now

nutty had a love at first sight spark for sniffles after meeting the newly moved in anteater. flaky & mime helped nutty get closer to sniff as he was well too nervous to do so itself

truffles & russell have been buds since truff demanded russ to take him out on the sea and be apart of the crew as a young kid. russell admired the little pigs tough spirit not afraid of a pirate waving a weapon in his face after the rude order and decided to take him up on this letting him sail the seas. he was a good man for just a little thing being quickly taken up under the pirate wing. truffles grew on that ship to become the captains first mate even so much so when russell decided that it was maybe time for him to start thinking about taking a break, he offered the ship to truffles to be the new captain but he declined. a captain should always go down with his lady and russell admired this thought. even if the two dont see each other much anymore with truff being out on the waters, every time he comes back to the dock russell is waiting with big open arms

shifty does not have many friends unlike lifty. hes a small bit jealous of his brother over this. lifty is growing and managing his childhood trauma slowly putting himself together healing from the past while shifty revels having difficulties accepting what happened

lumpy, handy, & russell love hanging out ! lumpy seems to be the glue that keep handy and russell from bickering

pop, flippy, & disco all also love hanging out having laughs and beers together

sniffles isnt great at making friends rather putting his studies above socializing but bonds with toothy over their shared admiration for splendid/nerdy media

flippy & flaky met while flaky was employed as the librarian. flippy thought they were cute but was too anxious/not mentally ready to take that step. pop coaxed flippy into talking to her where they clicked almost immediately. flippy became assistant librarian before taking over with flakys departure

mime is the only one lifty is comfortable enough to be out to. mime buys her gender affirming clothes/does her makeup, they love their princess !!

the four horsemen beg pop to babysit cub as they adore him! but only the girls actually take care of him, cuddles & toothy have more fun teaching him naughty words. they got caught once when cub repeated something and were suspended from watching him

flippy had a secret fling with disco bear years ago

sniffles & handy get along when they want to. handy does admire sniffles abilities but will come over about once a week to nag the anteater about inventing some mechanical arms. sniffles stated he can’t and if he could’ve, he would. handy never takes this for an answer and will be back next week

shifty has had a massive crush on petunia for ages that never goes away, meanwhile lifty is secretly incredibly jealous of her. both avoid her

mr. mole once moved in with handy for a bit as his home collapsed in. handy offered the extra bed and mole took it graciously. turns out, they both have a lot more in common than they thought and became good friends. mr. moles home was renovated allowing him to move back but still stayed in contact with the beaver. they still take roadtrips every now and then just to bond

flippy was unfortunately not invited to pop and his ladys wedding. specifically being banned from attending by her. after the incident, she wanted nothing to do with him. fortunately though, pop and flippy were closer this time and flippy was asked to be best man at he and discos wedding. flippy never agreed to anything faster, it was a great honor

[jessicas-pi]

it's actually, genuinely, honestly hilarious that in a fandom where popular ships include characters who are biologically related, characters with a 10+ year age gap who met when one was a teenager or even a child, and characters who have tried to kill each other, people hate on a friends-to-lovers ship with a <2 year age gap where the characters have a deep emotional bond and plenty of romantic subtext, because "they're siblings". my brother in the force they are literally not.

[recreationaldivorce]

i really don't think you should be promoting organisations from other countries on social media unless you have direct ties to them. like people unfamiliar with the context will just end up sharing stuff that's pretty contentious with the local left and they just have no idea. for some stuff e.g. the swp in britain, yes some quick online searching will bring you up to speed, but for some other stuff the issues w various orgs mostly just spread by word of mouth. and while im happy to say that eg a certain org is known for being transphobic, some of the issues we have with orgs can't just be shared on our public social media on a website that doesn't respect privacy like tumblr, bc to explain them means to reveal (& therefore reveal to the state if we're posting on tumblr) our involvement/past involvement with them as political organisers.

[ssaalexblake]

jodie ‘method acting’ whittaker growing another heart to play the role of a two hearted alien is what puts her at no.1 in the doctor actor competition and that’s that. 

[aeolianblues]

I'm not an extrovert. At all. In everyday life, I'm a yapper, sure, but I need someone to first assure me I am okay to yap, so I don't start conversations, even when I really want to join in sometimes! It's just the social anxiety acting up. God knows where from and why I lose a lot of my inhibitions when it comes to talking to people about music. I don't know where the confidence has suddenly sprung from. I've made a crazy amount of friends in musical circles, either just talking to people about common music or (since it is after all in music circles) talking to bands about their own music. I let out a sigh of relief any time an interaction goes well, because in truth it's going against my every instinct. I wish I could do that in everyday life

[izzyspussy]

deeply unproductive therapy visit today lads

[starbuck]

second night of Murder Mystery DONE all went well i am FREEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

[autogeneity]

hmm. there is an ML masters program. part time. whose applications close today. they require a CV, letter of motivation, and statement of research interest. I'm not even too sure what their research focus areas are. a CV usually takes me like a week. it is 17:30. am I to make bad life decisions

[devilsskettle]

i hate that this website has location based ads now like it's one thing to promote the local grocery store chain to me but i am seeing ads for my workplace now :/

[compacflt]

I have an anecdote about when I worked for a company and a co-worker left to work in a different state on military aircraft. He had to get a TS clearance and because we had worked for several years together he asked if I would be okay with being interviewed for his clearance. I said sure and an interviewer w the gov, arranged to come to my place of work and conduct the interview there. I was asked questions about him like how well did I know him, and whatever answer I gave led to more specific questions like if I answered a question about knowing his wife, they would ask if I thought his marriage sounded secure etc.

This memory of that experience was on my mind while I read your story and I wondered who Iceman would choose for his TS clearance interviews (and who the gov would choose for him) and what would they say? I feel like their "secret" would be uncovered in even a low level clearance (years later I had to submit names for a low level Public Trust clearance for my job) It was so embarrassing because I did not have many friends I was comfortable submitting for that as I kept my work and home life very separate.

Anyway, that is my "cool story, bro"

Thank you for such a great and well researched story!

this is indeed a cool story bro and touches on what is literally my story’s fatal flaw, which is: Yeah, a shitload of people would’ve known about it. I am going to hijack your question to talk about that, so my apologies, though i will get around to your question by the end. This is gonna be a really long post. I have a lot to say and a lot of ground to cover.

So I wanna start out by talking about the structure of this story and its core conflict, because while I’d like to say this story is rooted in an accurate depiction of the US military, obviously that’s not true; it’s rooted in the dynamic of the story that i wanted to tell, which is the story of a guy coming to realize the truth behind a Big Lie—him passing as straight. And that’s a pretty universal story, but it’s made more specific by the fact that a) the guy canonically wants to be the best in an institution that enforces the Big Lie and b) the guy canonically is so successful because he follows the rules/orders of that institution. So, for character growth, to put it simply, the guy (Ice) has to come to the conclusion that the Big Lie is a lie by himself. He can’t be told/ordered that the Big Lie is a lie, otherwise he hasn’t grown out of “just following orders.” (I’ll get to the Big Lie in a second. I made charts and story structure graphs below.)

The only other story about a Big Lie I can think of off the top of my head right now is Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen, which is about a Black woman in Chicago trying to pass as both white and straight. It’s a great book and I’ll try not to spoil it, you should really read it for yourself, but the terminology I’m going to use in this post comes from an analysis of it, so just to bring you up to speed—Clare, the woman trying to pass as white, is recognized by a friend, another Black-but-passing woman, Irene, who is shocked that Clare has abandoned her heritage (the truth of her, that is) and married a hyper-racist white man who doesn’t even know that she’s Black. So the book sets up a dynamic of the Big Lie that I’ve outlined here (hopefully it makes sense):

I built on this dynamic for my fic. Ice is both a “dupe” and a “passing figure,” in that he believes the lie that he is straight and also passes for straight—but it’s also more complicated than that because he’s not actually straight (getting to that). Mav is an “in-group clairvoyant” and can recognize Ice as passing because he is also straight-passing. The Navy are a bunch of “dupes.” But…what is Slider, for instance, or your question’s hypothetical government official who, yes, will 100% find out because people always find out?

In comes my ginormous-and-overly-wordy WWGATTAI Plot and Character Dynamic Summary Graph. You don’t really have to read it all, the only important bits for this discussion are the leftmost column (“plot”) and the green quadrant (“out-group clairvoyants”).

To summarize—people who know the truth can’t actually act on it, because for Ice’s character growth to make sense, he has to come to the truth himself. This forecloses the possibility of any outwardly homophobic action (by which I mean someone like a govt official or one of my lame OCs actually challenging him on his illegal relationship) in the plot, because for 90% of the story Ice is so fragile that he would probably just cave immediately and double down on the internalized homophobia. So, for plot purposes, everyone—including Mav, as it happens—has to sort of tiptoe around Ice’s obvious not-straightness and give him an unreasonable amount of grace so he can figure it out for himself. 

And therein lies the fatal flaw of this story. It is, like, not conceptually viable. Of course people would find out, of course the government would interrogate him about it, of course he’d have to confront the truth much sooner than TWENTY-FIVE years after he first starts messing around with Mav.  Which literally breaks my heart because I didn’t realize it was a fundamentally busted story until long after I had finished writing the base plot & couldn’t fix the overarching problems 😭 The thing is, it had to be this way, because there is at least a thirty-year gap between TG86 and TGM22, and TGM is obviously the emotional climax of the series and my story had to match that. So—fanfic and its canon constraints, everyone. 

But also… I can explain away these logical inconsistencies with story structure & character dynamic graphs to make the story make sense, sure, but it doesn’t change the truth of the matter, which is that… I hadn’t ever really thought about things like security clearances, and therefore wrote around them because I didn’t even know to consider them. And I know there are a bunch of other details in this story that betray my immaturity (anytime I talk about alcohol, for instance—I still am not legal to drink in this stupid country & have only cheap bad experiences to draw on; THE HOUSE—if i could rewrite this story from the beginning they would not have bought a fucking house together, what was I thinking???) and the lack of thought about the real-life logistics and consequences of secrecy is one of them. 

And it’s exactly what I mean when I say “I look at this story and all I see are its flaws,” which is why I wanted to write this post & get it on record. I have just enough life experience to read my own writing and know that it’s fundamentally unconvincing, and not enough life experience to know how to fix it. :(

But, to answer your original question, you’ve got me brainstorming a scene where Ice is asking Slider to be his character witness & Slider’s like “Look bro do you want me to lie to the federal government under oath for you because I will” and Ice has to be like “Legally I cannot ask that of you but”

[corviiids]

i think this might be a little silly to say, but some of your posts and analysis of the illiad/greek myth really inspire me to read more about greek myth and stuff like it

that's not silly at ALL in fact you have no idea how happy that makes me. i have a lot to say about the iliad / related greek stuff in general that i tend to keep to myself because i think generally people mostly follow me for The Jokez? and might not? want? or care? to read my slightly more serious takes on classic literature? so thank you so much for saying this and i hope you enjoy reading more about myth if you do!!!

[rosylix]

me when. when uhhh

[keeps-ache]

got described as looking like a 'canadian lumberjack physicist' by my brother so. does anybody need an artist