#like. i am NOT dating rn

[starbuck]

me: wow, being in a relationship could be fun…

also me: if one more person tells me they have a crush on me, i am going to SCREAM

[inkskinned]

you're grabbing lunch with a nice man and he gives you that strange grimace-smile that's popular right now; an almost sardonic "twist" of his mouth while he looks literally down on you. it looks like he practiced the move as he leans back, arms folded. he just finished reciting the details of NFTs to you and explaining Oppenheimer even though he only watched a youtube about it and hasn't actually seen it. you are at the bottom of your wine glass.

you ask the man across from you if he has siblings, desperately looking for a topic. literally anything else.

he says i don't like small talk. and then he smiles again, watching you.

a few years ago, you probably would have said you're above celebrity gossip, but honestly, you've been kind of enjoying the dumb shit of it these days. with the rest of the earth burning, there's something familiar and banal about dragging ariana grande through the mud. you think about jeanette mccurdy, who has often times gently warned the world she's not as nice as she appears. you liked i'm glad my mom died but it made you cry a lot.

he doesn't like small talk, figure out something to say.

you want to talk about responsibility, and how ariana grande is only like 6 days older than you are - which means she just turned 30 and still dresses and acts like a 13 year old, but like sexy. there's something in there about the whole thing - about insecurity, and never growing up, and being sexualized from a young age.

people have been saying that gay people are groomers. like, that's something that's come back into the public. you have even said yourself that it's just ... easier to date men sometimes. you would identify as whatever the opposite of "heteroflexible" is, but here you are again, across from a man. you like every woman, and 3 people on tv. and not this guy. but you're trying. your mother is worried about you. she thinks it's not okay you're single. and honestly this guy was better before you met, back when you were just texting.

wait, shit. are you doing the same thing as ariana grande? are you looking for male validation in order to appease some internalized promise of heteronormativity? do you conform to the idea that your happiness must result in heterosexuality? do you believe that you can resolve your internal loneliness by being accepted into the patriarchy? is there a reason dating men is easier? why are you so scared of fucking it up with women? why don't you reach out to more of them? you have a good sense of humor and a big ol' brain, you could have done a better job at online dating.

also. jesus christ. why can't you just get a drink with somebody without your internal feminism meter pinging. although - in your favor (and judgement aside) in the case of your ariana grande deposition: you have been in enough therapy you probably wouldn't date anyone who had just broken up with their wife of many years (and who has a young child). you'd be like - maybe take some personal time before you begin this journey. like, grande has been on broadway, you'd think she would have heard of the plot of hamlet.

he leans forward and taps two fingers to the table. "i'm not, like an andrew tate guy," he's saying, "but i do think partnership is about two people knowing their place. i like order."

you knew it was going to be hard. being non-straight in any particular way is like, always hard. these days you kind of like answering the question what's your sexuality? with a shrug and a smile - it's fine - is your most common response. like they asked you how your life is going and not to reveal your identity. you like not being straight. you like kissing girls. some days you know you're into men, and sometimes you're sitting across from a man, and you're thinking about the power of compulsory heterosexuality. are you into men, or are you just into the safety that comes from being seen with them? after all, everyone knows you're failing in life unless you have a husband. it almost feels like a gradebook - people see "straight married" as being "all A's", and anything else even vaguely noncompliant as being ... like you dropped out of the school system. you cannot just ignore years of that kind of conditioning, of course you like attention from men.

"so let's talk boundaries." he orders more wine for you, gesturing with one hand like he's rousing an orchestra. sir, this is a fucking chain restaurant. "I am not gonna date someone who still has male friends. also, i don't care about your little friends, i care about me. whatever stupid girls night things - those are lower priority. if i want you there, you're there."

he wasn't like this over text, right? you wouldn't have been even in the building if he was like this. you squint at him. in another version of yourself, you'd be running. you'd just get up and go. that's what happens on the internet - people get annoyed, and they just leave. you are locked in place, almost frozen. you need to go to the bathroom and text someone to call you so you have an excuse, like it's rude to just-leave. like he already kind of owns you. rudeness implies a power paradigm, though. see, even your social anxiety allows the patriarchy to get to you.

you take a sip of the new glass of wine. maybe this will be a funny story. maybe you can write about it on your blog. maybe you can meet ariana grande and ask her if she just maybe needs to take some time to sit and think about her happiness and how she measures her own success.

is this settling down? is this all that's left in your dating pool? just accepting that someone will eventually love you, and you have to stop being picky about who "makes" you a wife?

you look down to your hand, clutching the knife.

[astradyke]

my girlfriends

[qaze]

BOUND LORE SPOILERS 1/26

“It’s just another one to add to the pile!” SHERBERT AND VEN WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME???

[hijinxinprogress]

Coffee addict Never sleeps Tim drake ❌ 

Solving cases in his sleep off 87 energy drinks Tim Drake ✅

The coffee addict never sleeps perpetually tired Tim Drake thing is a widely accepted headcanon however that was elementary school tim but after he stayed up for a week straight subsisting entirely on coffee to decipher the bat weekly patrol schedule and how it aligns with rogue attacks/Arkham breakouts, he crashed then when he woke up it was fucking wednesday so he missed his chance to commemorate his discovery with pictures of Robin and he decided that shit would never happen again and made himself an ‘efficient’ sleep schedule so he could run around doing fuck shit, add to his robin shrine, and stay on honor roll bc he was even more pissed to see the gotham gazette had pictures of Robin with an on site interview credited to Vicki Vale (listen bowl cut tim had a one sided beef with vicki vale that included tim judging who gets better pics of the bats but she isn’t even aware that she’s competing with a whole ass child 😭 he’s sitting at the table with a mug of orange juice and looks at the newspaper snorts and goes ‘fucking amateur I could do better’) 

Regularly unsupervised tiny businessman in training Tim ‘Ten hours of uninterrupted sleep?? That’s so inefficient not to mention fucking stupid’ Drake is so pissed he missed getting shots of Robin dropkicking a rogue from 6 six stories up (for absolutely no reason dick just thinks it’s fun) that he just takes at least 3 hour naps every eight hours 😭 he refuses to spend almost half a day sleeping ‘for no reason when he could be doing something productive’ 

And he still does this as a bat but it’s just easier to tell if he didn’t take his nap bc he has less than zero impulse control and he’s just fucking done with everything like the gcpd is terrified bc tim’s saying shit like ‘This guys a fucking moron, I could’ve done this in half the time without killing anyone fucking loser doesn’t he know if you keep them alive you can prolong the torture?’ and ‘you’re like all hysterical and for what 🤨 ‘you blew up 83% of Bristol waah’ stfu and fucking rebuild it?? It’s only rich mfs that live there, it’s just a matter of them opening their fucking wallets’ once a new recruit made the mistake of asking if robin had adult supervision regularly and Tim responded with ‘well if you’re gonna snitch to cps like a little bitch then yeah’ and that cop did snitch so tim fucking doxxed him

Yj has just accepted that sometimes they will find tim in an air vent, on the roof, in one of their closets, or something just fucking knocked out then an alarm will go off and he’ll just get up like nothing happened but for the first couple of months they were probably concerned bc ‘I’ve never seen you sleep?? wtf are you on man’ and Tim’s confused bc ‘I slept next to you this morning wdym??’ and that’s how yj discovers tim sleeps with his eyes open

But one of the worst things about Tim’s ‘time efficient sleep schedule’ nonsense is that it fucking works he’s one of the most well rested and coherent bats even after back to back Arkham breakouts however the absolute worst thing about his sleep schedule is the likelihood of going into the cave and seeing tim staring in a daze but wide eyed yet somehow never blinking at the batcomputer with 57 tabs open on top of being unresponsive and thinking he has a fucking concussion or he’s been replaced but he’s just doing case work while muttering nonsense in his fucking sleep for some reason

[astrum99]

Do you think bugs fall in love?

Their small bodies host even tinier brains. Built to crawl through soil and rocks bigger than itself. Running on a simple software bouncing between eat, sleep, fight, flight, and copulate.

V1 is smarter than a bug. It must be. It’s a war machine, so it must be. Its programming is complex enough to fry several motherboards; the internals are heated from constant, unrelenting processing needs. If it updates its optical data intake to any greater degree than these rough, messy polygons, it’d surely perish from the overwhelming information.

V1 is built to kill first, survive second. To be fair, survival would ensure more killing, so it’d be more effective. Moving through the battlefield, culling lives, drawing blood. Perfectly aligned with its programmed objectives, then.

Gabriel is smarter than a bug. He must be. He’s an angel, so he must be. He’s one of the best soldiers in the heavenly realm. Armour and swords glistened with pride and justice. He sees all. He judges all. His loyalty and perfect track record have earned him a high rank within the order. Leaving behind the creaturely "it". His light burns hot and bright within his constitution.

Gabriel is built as a messenger of the Father, then a judge of Hell. To be fair, the role of a judge was assigned to him by the council, so he supposes that his placement can be summed up as the bearer of the divine authority to bring right to all other creatures. Perfectly aligned, then.

Bugs… Well, they’re the same. I suppose. Small beings. Running pre-programmed orders derived from centuries of evolution: eat, sleep, fight, flight, and copulate. No role. No responsibilities.

Bugs are built naturally and fully, unlike humankind; but formed and ready to go within seconds from their births, like machines and angels.

So. Do they live?

When the machine and the angel escape their chains, do they see themselves in bugs?

Bugs are born to live, temporarily, fleetingly, yet live nonetheless. Do they, then, deserve to live, freeing and meaninglessly. No role. No responsibilities.

So. Do bugs love?

Do they learn that they can go beyond their basic structures? Do they see their own reflection in each other’s compound eyes? Do they recognize each other’s bodies, scents, heat? Do they feel the desire for closeness?

To flutter wings like a dance of waltz. To brush antennae like butterfly kisses. To greet and caress and lie next to each other near their death.

To move through the sky in battle, in passion. To clash swords and fists and bullets. To greet and caress and lie next to each other near their death.

The same cells in the same blood coursing beneath the same suit of exoskeletons.

Machine, angel, bug. Boiled down to the barest essence of existence; crisp simplicity.

To live, to love.

[read-write-thrive]

Charles Rowland Week Day Five — Earring/AU

Yes this is late but shhhh this ficlet was not working with me!! Still not happy with it but here we are. TW: slurs for South Asian and queer people mentioned (aka paki and fag) as Charles recounts what some of the awful other guys were saying to him. Take care of yourself as always :) hope you enjoy!!

Charles knew it wasn’t fair of him to slam the door open. He came back practically right after class, for once, and he knew that Edwin would be doing homework at his desk. Sudden sounds were worse for Charles than Edwin, for the most part, but it was still a dick move on his part to just bang the door open, storm in, dump his stuff, and then immediately set about taking a shower. In his defence it had been a truly awful day and he figured it was better to take his anger out on inanimate objects than snap (or worse) at Edwin himself.

But, again, this was completely unknown to Edwin, who jumped and twisted in his seat to see what the noise was. He calmed a bit at seeing it was Charles, but still tore his headphones from his ears to start up, “Charles! What the devil has gotten into you?” When Charles dropped his stuff off without responding, Edwin continued, “Is everything alright? Are you alright?”

Charles whipped off his top, threw it in the vague direction of his hamper, and started pacing and taking his socks off at the same time (which doesn’t work very well, but he was too angry to think that through), “It’s those dicks in my woodwork class again! I swear to fuck I am going to drive one of those hammers through their fucking heads, nail their empty skulls together so they might have some fucking use!”

Edwin somehow audibly blinked, “Well. That’s a picture. What have they done this time?”

Charles managed to still himself to unbutton his jeans, “More homophobic, racist shit. ‘Charlie! Charlie! Is the earring because you’re a gross fag or a fucking paki?’ Absolute arseholes. Like it’s any of their fucking business—they wouldn’t know culture if it shagged their mums.”

Another blink, “They really got to you today, it seems. You should take solace in the fact that they’re uneducated as you can be and still stay at this school. Not only are they on the tutoring list—none of which I will ever touch, of course—but anyone with any knowledge of South Asian or gay cultures would know that you would need to have the right, not the left ear pierced.”

Somehow, this logic broke through Charles’s temper (which had to be a special skill of Edwin’s—most people manage to rile him up more). Charles paused in this process of emptying his jeans pockets and stared at his roommate/best friend, “Wait, what? Did you research that?”

Edwin didn’t blush often, but when he did it was always paired with the sternest of expressions and fiddling of his hands. Charles thought it was cute, not that he’d ever say that to another boy. But Edwin assumed that face and Charles thought about it anyway, slightly distracted as Edwin explained, “It was a long time ago, if you must know. Right when you came back with your left ear pierced, in fact. I was… concerned, that I may say something wrong or misinterpret any of it. I had no wish to offend you, which included not asking you outright. … So yes, I ‘researched’ it.”

Charles felt warm to his core in a good way for once, not how anger had been burning through him minutes before. Edwin had really taken the time to look it up, just for Charles? And—, “Wait, researched it how? The Indian ear piercing thing—which isn’t what this is, ‘n case that wasn’t clear—is usually for babies and they get both ears done. The gay thing— that’s not exactly in the library, innit?”

Edwin continued fidgeting, eventually pulling out his little personal notebook for reference of some sort, “In my research I found that which ear was pierced first was a gendered tradition—right ear first for boys, left ear first for girls. Following that was an awfully confusing description of some sort of thread used in place of an earring, which didn’t apply to your piercing so I chose not to pursue it further. As for the— the other, well. Do you remember the boy I tutor for mathematics?”

Charles wasn’t exactly following yet but couldn’t resist in of their usual jokes, “Monty or something, yeah? The one who’s gaga over you.”

As expected, Edwin rolled his eyes (and remained pink in the cheeks) and continued, “Monty, yes. One of his friends was in the area when our session wrapped up and came by to chat. Thomas, I think his name was. He had only one ear pierced as well, though his was on the right. I was pondering if I could naturally bring it up in conversation without being rude—“

“Aw, but you love being rude.”

Edwin’s flat stare caused giggles to flurry through Charles, who tried to quell them to better listen to the story, “—I had no interest in coming across as rude to a new acquaintance. He noticed me staring at the earring, unfortunately. He had already made some … interesting comments—“

Charles bristled, “Oi, what kind of interesting?”

Edwin somehow got redder and redder in the face by the second, “It’s unimportant to the story, Charles, now let me finish!” He waisted for Charles to nod before continuing, “Quite right. Now, Thomas had already complimented me and must have seen me as… I believe he thought that he and I were cut from similar cloth. He was all too glad to point out my staring at his jewellery, in front of Monty and all!, and tell me about its meaning. I was— mortified, to say the least. The proximity—“

“He made you uncomfortable? That wanker. What did you say his name was?” Charles couldn’t help himself—if someone was freaking Edwin out it was Charles who was going to bat, literally.

Edwin huffed, “He leaned in closer than I anticipated and whispered it to me. It caught me off guard. And considering he is a near stranger—yes, I was uncomfortable, but it is perfectly fine without any need for violence, Charles.”

Charles relaxed his grip on the cricket bat he kept at his nightstand, taking a deep breath to try and return to semi-peaceful. It was just him and Edwin, there was no present danger. If Edwin said it’s okay, he should trust him. Charles took another breath before responding, “Right. Well. If he ever does it again and you want to do something about it.”

Edwin’s soft smile returned, “Thank you, Charles. Though I do not believe it will come to that. But yes, that was my research at the time. I believe it was sometime during the infection that you admitted it was all for aesthetic purposes.”

Charles would usually get playfully riled up at that, but he was still keeping that anger bolted down in the basement of his mind so he decided against it. Naturally, he decided to return to jokes instead, “I can’t believe you were researching earrings just in case I was, what, a very late to the party traditional Indian baby? Or decided to pierce my eat instead of telling you I liked blokes? C’mon mate, have more faith in me than that!”

Charles must have said something wrong—Edwin’s fidgeting was back. The soft smile was all but gone, too, “Of course I do, I just— this was a while ago, and I—“ He sighed, running his hands through his usually perfectly gelled hair, looking directly at Charles for only a second, “Charles, I refuse to continue this conversation while you stand there in your boxers.”

Although tempted to poke fun at Edwin for being prudish, that was one of the issues he’d learned not to push—between his fucked up family and his general Edwin-ness, Charles had learned nudity, sex, and the like weren’t well-received. Maybe one of these days they could discuss all of that, but not today. They’d both had quite a lot of Feelings for today.

Charles resumed his usual grin, grabbing what he needed for a shower, “Well I’m showering before we continue, then. Am I all set to use the bathroom?”

Edwin waved him on, replacing his headphones and returning to his homework. Charles took the dismissal without issue and went to take his shower as intended—only stopping to stare at (the earring) himself in the mirror for a tad longer than normal. He’d never regret it based on how cool it looked, obviously, but still. Being kicked around for so long sometimes makes you wonder if it’s be easier to join the team.

Nah, fuck that. Those poor sods can’t even spell aesthetic, let alone understand it. The earring was part of him, and he still cuddled the warm feeling of Edwin’s care to his chest. Going through all that effort—well, not really effort to get flirted with by some bloke called Thomas—to make sure he wasn’t going to hurt Charles’s feelings? For not the first and definitely not the last time, Charles took a second to appreciate it—he really was lucky to have Edwin around.

[takohebi]

reposting winter azujamiyuu

[puppppppppy]

started stardew valley for the first time. born to remember villager likes and dislikes forced to immediately forget it the moment i take my eyes off thw wiki

[izzyzalezbian]

Levi's the kind of guy to get back from a 12-hour shift from the local restaurant, and almost immediately hop on Cool Math Games to play Papa's Pizzeria

[laurmaus]

all my pdh s2 doodles i need u guys to keep in mind i didnt know All That was gonna happen😭😭😭😭

[bluewolfangel01]

Idk if anyone else has thought or mentioned this before but...

Im calling Beel, "Beely-Bub" and I shan't be stopped

[astonmartingf]

you know what energy fernando alonso is giving? homewrecker energy. imagine dating mark webber or like jenson button, it doesn't matter because fernando alonso will come sweeping in, and it ends in a throuple? huh? do you see the vision?

[thechibilitwick]

did u see this yet. kazui squared

guy who gets his throat tongued by other guy but says no homo

[todayisafridaynight]

old man yaoi sketch commission........

Commission Info

[emilys-mich]

Something about Emily being called rude and harsh for the way she handled Eldon basically harassing her, before being guilt tripped for hurting his feelings and then pressured into going on a date with him.

Something about Emily trying to gain Amanda’s trust by pretending to turn against the team, having to to portray herself as incredibly cruel and selfish, and struggling to cope with how easily everyone believed it.

Something about Emily saying goodbye to Michelle, tears streaming down her face, admitting to thinking she’s not kind or compassionate enough on her own, and scared that she won’t be able to be a mentor and a role model without Michelle to guide her.

Something about being a good person at your core, but nobody ever acknowledges it so you don’t even know that you are.

Something about this character who, despite the countless number of times she’s felt it break, genuinely believes she might not have a heart.