#pre AIDS

[circuitmouse]

Tom Bianchi captures Fire Island Pines in the 70s

[saintaviator]

been doin redraws as warmups w these two dorks ^^ ID in alt text!

[erlandious]

Do yall think Silco gave Jinx that hairstyle or it just kinda happened and he went “oh lmao I did that too”

[kas-eddie-munson]

whelp, there's a part two now

Part 1

~~~

Eddie always loved Halloween.  He liked dressing up and putting on a persona, pretending to be someone else for a while.

He wasn’t expecting to have fun this year, but there was that twinge of hope again.  Henderson and his friends decided they were too old to trick-or-treat, so them and some of the older teens were meeting up at Steve’s house for a party.

Honestly anything to get him out of the house had to be better than nothing, right?

Steve told Eddie he’d pick him up at 6:30, which he did.  He explained in the car that the kids might get there early, and that Robin was guarding the snacks so they wouldn’t all get devoured before half the guests arrived.

Eddie watched Steve as he drove.  Tried to get a read on him.  Tapped his knuckles against the window, a habit he’d been told by multiple people was irritating over the years.  No response.  Bounced his leg a bit so his boot would tap against the floor.

Steve glanced over at a stop sign.

“You okay?”

Eddie stopped moving his leg and told him he was fine.

Eddie wondered whether he heard or saw him moving.  Noted the way Steve looked directly at him while he spoke.

He wasn’t sure why Steve didn’t say anything about it.  He didn’t have a lot of time to inspect Steve’s appointment summary the other day.  Didn’t spot a date.  It had to be pretty recent, though.  He supposed it’s not like they were super close.

Parked outside his house, Steve got out and brought Eddie his chair, leading the way down a sidewalk to his back patio.  The sliding back door was nearly level with the ground, though Eddie still had to move his chair over the bump backwards.

Once inside it was clear the party had already started.  Loud music blasted and all the kids talked over each other.  Dustin called out for him from across the room and soon Eddie was surrounded by the kids, telling him they were glad he made it to the party.  If he was alone he might have cried.

It took a minute for the kids to realize he was trying to move further into the house, but eventually they moved over, and he found the table with food on it.

On the way back he lingered in the doorway as Steve stood off to the side, eyebrows furrowed.  He asked a couple questions about the conversation that were lost to the teens talking over each other, if someone could repeat that or if he heard a word correctly.  His hand clenched around his drink.

Maybe Eddie wasn’t the only one who felt alone in a room full of people.

Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5 ~ Part 6

[howgalling]

ambulon and first aid!!! more of a cyber look than my previous designs for them, hehe. first aid is a first responder- and considering its cyberpunk, the body armor is ESSENTIAL lol/

[shellsinadune]

thinking about how in falsettos, hiv/aids is portrayed the way real illness often is: a sudden, devastating interruption to someone's life. march of the falsettos never brings up hiv/aids, and it's not until halfway through falsettoland that we get any indication that something's wrong. no foreshadowing, just immediate and unexpected pain.

we know these characters, there's time to love them for who they are before this happens to them. whizzer isn't just The AIDS Patient, marvin isn't just The Partner or The One Who's Next, charlotte isn't just The Doctor. they're people, and they had whole lives before any of this, and we as the audience get to see that. we see their friendship and their petty fights and their eventual love story and their redemption from their flaws.

they all have a trajectory their lives are on. and then disease comes along and crushes it and any hope for things to return to how it was. it's painfully realistic. by not talking about hiv/aids until it hits, it tells a more complete story of the aids crisis than a story that starts after the character's illness does.

[kindaeccentric]

The subject of the painting is Gauguin's 13-year-old native "wife" Teha'amana (called Tehura in his letters), who one night, according to Gauguin, was lying in fear when he arrived home late: "immobile, naked, lying face downward flat on the bed with the eyes inordinately large with fear [...] Might she not with my frightened face take me for one of the demons and specters, one of the Tupapaus, with which the legends of her race people sleepless nights?" Gauguin was suffering from advanced venereal disease when he came to Tahiti, and he passed it onto Teha'amana, who was his first sexual partner on the island.

'The Adoration of the Shepherds With a Donor.' Palma Vecchio. A contemporary of my maker, Marius De Romanus, also a fine painter, albeit one of lesser skill. In fact, the donor in the title was my maker. The canvas painted in my maker's studio. And in this case, the donation was…What is the modern word for it? In kind. This is Amadeo.

He's 20 years here. He was rescued from a brothel when he was 15, named… named Arun then, I think. I cannot be sure. The abuse in the brothel was such that he cannot be sure that's what his… parents named him. Arun. The parents that sent him to work on a merchant boat in Delhi when in actuality they had sold him…into slavery to the ship's captain. All… fragments. Shackled on the boat. The brothel. My maker's purchase. His renaming me.

His reluctance to share the Dark Gift, knowing what it would do to his beloved Amadeo. I served him with all my heart. Basked in his mercy, his worshipful mercy. Still… Amadeo had a skill. And if a friend wandered into town, I was occasionally… donated.

Meatier in the forearms, but then this was… seven years before I was stricken with illness, before I was turned, and imbued with my powers.

---

don't mind me, I'm just thinking aloud about art as a form of colonial violence when artists take part in the sexual exploitation of underage people of color, name changing, orientalism, monstrosity, and blood+sex-transmittable diseases in the context of Armand

[worst-aids]

SG ambulon and his mentor before the autobots got him ;33

I just really wanted to draw hook.. and her little buddy too I guess

And also a doodle

[wombywoo]

I just wanted to say I LOVE your addition of Johnny having hearing aids in some of your art (I'm guessing it's in the sorta post-marrige timeline ? Still trying to figure out your little timeline out in my head LMAO) but I think it's such a nice little detail+I'm always love a little bit of like. Casual disability rep in art .. :]

Johnny to his haters: I can't hear you 🥰

asdfgh but thank you! I love peppering in little stuff like that~

as for the timeline...hm. I tend to. ah. make it up as I go 😅 one day I'll try to line them all up accordingly...

[er-cryptid]

Common Medical Emergencies

Patreon

[icantalk710]

Wish the party loyalist "stop making Harris look bad bc Trump" people would realize that a) denying reality is exactly what the right does and b) it is on the candidate to win votes by not being a genocide enabling sellout moderate getting endorsed by the fucking Cheneys for her hawkishness on foreign policy while promising little for people at home, not on the voter disillusioned by said issues that the candidate could rectify

[eepylesbean]

ALL MY STUCKY BITCHES

IF U HAVE HULU OR SHOWTIME WATCH THE NEW SHOW "FELLOW TRAVELERS" RIGHT NEOWWW!!!

ITS THEM IN A DIFFERENT FONT I SWEAR TO YOU!!!

[malenipshadows]

"Zelenskyy's meeting with Tr*mp and V*nce unravels into an extraordinary clash"

from NBC News

WASHINGTON — A White House meeting that was intended to kick off negotiations on a deal over Ukraine’s rare earth minerals devolved Friday [02-28-2025] into a remarkable confrontation, with Pres-ident D*nald Tr*mp and Vice Pres-ident JD V*nc*, chastising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and telling him he wasn’t grateful enough to the United States.

The Oval Office shouting match has for now shattered hopes for the minerals deal, which Tr*mp and his allies had presented as an important step forward for Ukraine on the road to peace with Russia more than three years after the war began. ...

Despite Tr*mp’s assertion that Zelenskyy “doesn’t have the cards” to negotiate, the Ukrainian leader remained adamant Friday night that security guarantees be included in any agreement to end the war, as well as the rare earth minerals deal drafted by the Tr*mp administration. ...

The verbal skirmish in the Oval Office began after Vance said that the path to peace between Russia and Ukraine is diplomacy. Zelenskyy disagreed, noting that Russia had broken agreements with his government in the past. [Remainder omitted.]

[miidnighters]

@recitedemise | continued from ☾

A bed. It's but a singular bed, Greer.

God, Hartley's exhausted and the adrenaline's still coursing and this was the last thing she wanted to deal with. She had very definitely booked a room with two twins.

"I'm sorry, darling, this wasn't intentional-"

Gale, however, seems just as exhausted - to the point of acceptance, rather than arguing, as he corrals her in and sits her gently on the bed. Hartley watches him where he kneels before her, keen eyes cataloguing him for obvious signs of injury.

He slips off her boot with a gentleness Hartley is entirely unused to, and in turn she reaches out to card fingers through his hair to cup his jaw and raise his head from where he's very pointedly not looking at her. "Nor am I, Gale darling. Share with me. I'm not suggesting anything more than just sleep," unless he wants it, but that thought gets pushed out of her mind quick-smart. "but neither of us should spend the night on the floor after the day we've had."

Oh, wait, what? "Am I? I didn't even feel it. There's a first aid kit in my overnight bag."

[cielosuerte]

so fucking busy the rest of the year. being alive is awesome :]

[mariocki]

The Black Room (1982)

"I just want to know one thing up front: are there any restrictions?"

"Restrictions? No, none. This isn't the YMCA."