#so anyway. um. abouT THAT READING THING

[catastrophic-crow]

do people really not read in their dreams? I've been thinking about making this post for a while bc i keep having dreams and reading stuff in them and i'm finally doing it because right before i woke up i had someone in my dream type something into their laptop and pull up an article and show it to me like, "this you?" and i read the full title of the article off their laptop screen and—is this just not a thing that happens in other people's dreams? like, the not reading thing. that's got to just be an urban legend. ...right?

[dukeofthomas]

I can't find it now but there's a post about suspension of disbelief and how it's broken when the story starts trying to excuse it. "character gets knocked unconscious for hours but there's no further issues from this" okay 👍 "and actually this makes perfect sense because of this and that" um no it doesn't why are you lying to me. like i am willing to ignore the holes and the discrepancies!! all you need to do is let me and not bring unnecessary attention to it!!!

and all that is my issue with the whole robin child soldier argument. like i am willing to ignore it i am willing to engage with the fantasy literally all you need to do is NOT try to convince me that Actually It's Fine Because They Want To Do It or whatever. like literally just shut up about it and i can engage with the fantasy!!

[solaestial]

"Happy birthday."

[septimusmoonlight]

You doing ok?

hi

[jawz]

i saw the tv glow is legitimately one of the stupidest, most tryhard movies i've ever seen in my entire life. absolute dogshit. and everyone is pretending it's the most lifechanging thing they've ever seen LOL give me a break! the gall to claim this is inspired by fucking DAVID LYNCH??? i can't

[cloudysfluffs]

tickling your human host is SO unfair

(ns//fw and/or fetish blogs please dni🙏🙏)

[evansbby]

my opinion on the Blake lively situation

[ded-lime]

my attempt at lily versions

[harvestmoth]

more rejuv things but its. its just this guy again, im sorry shes all i can draw

[moregraceful]

i was rewatching buster posey's retirement video tonight for purposes and getting emotional every time his voices catches, like boy (me). they literally rehired him a month ago, he is literally running this entire giants organization at this very moment, It Is Literally Fine. i think a lot about sorrel saying buster posey is my blorbo bc i really had never thought of him as my blorbo but it is true that if you are crying at work over buster posey's retirement (circa 2021), you've gone so far past being normal about that old man. not even in like yaoi way yk like i have enjoyed a few dynasty era giants fics in my time but at the end of the day it's like that's my family lmao. that's buster posey, we came of age together...

i think for me the giants are always gonna be The Team, like the one team, and the reason i know this is less bc i want them to win every game (they Will Not) but bc no other team on planet earth can make me feel such a broad spectrum of emotions. not in a way where i get sore about them losing bc hello it's the giants lol but like the complicated emotions that come from being way too deep in it. like for me giants baseball is not even about winning or losing, it's just like...living

[twistedappletree]

Thinking about Lan Sizhui teaching Jin Ling how to play guqin.

Thinking about Jin Ling absolutely bored to tears by the fundamentals until he hears how beautifully Lan Sizhui plays and suddenly takes an interest (in the guqin, definitely the guqin, he’s interested in the guqin only, okay??)

Thinking about Jin Ling practicing outside of classes because he wants to impress Lan Sizhui by how much he’s improved and wants to make him proud and wants to see his face light up with a smile—I mean, what? No no no, he just wants to show initiative to learn, that’s all there is to it, nothing more. Nothing at all.

Thinking about Lan Sizhui finding Jin Ling asleep on his guqin after a night of wearing himself out with extra practice and gently waking him up to safely escort him back to his room so he doesn’t get caught by their seniors. Meanwhile, Jin Ling sleepily leans against him on the walk back to his room because it’s normal, he’s just tired, it’s obviously normal because Lan Sizhui slips his hand into his and smiles and Jin Ling’s heart feels like it’s on fire. Oh no.

Thinking about Jin Ling opening up to Lan Sizhui about his nightmares from all the trauma he’s endured and Lan Sizhui staying to play guqin for him until he falls asleep, each note chasing away every bad dream that tries to disturb him.

Thinking about them practicing guqin alone together the next day. And the day after. And the day after that—and they really are practicing but it’s a little hard to focus when Lan Sizhui keeps putting his hands over Jin Ling’s to move them to the correct strings, and Jin Ling’s face is a breath away from Lan Sizhui’s every time he leans over to help him.

It’s just guqin practice, that’s all there is to it, perfectly normal. 🩵💛

[trainingdummyrabbit]

Woe. Extended Cocoa Monologue Be Upon Ye.

So. Her name is Cocoa. Theoretically. She's been around for a pretty long time, if not the longest when going by current employee terms. She's the one who works with Nothing There because shes the only one who. Can. A bit odd, she's almost entirely mute aside from a handful of phrases and words, and occasionally mimicking things said to her recently. She's considered to be a bit airheaded, not really paying attention to her surroundings and more often than not just kind of... cycling around the facility when not on the job.

She does a lot of things that would Seem normal on first glance, but are just.. kinda strange, when you actually pay attention to her. Like background actors pretending to be passerby, but when they get a lil silly with it and start like. Putting whipped cream on a carrot and eating it raw. Y'know. Girl Things. Most folks don't give her much mind aside from common pleasantries-- mostly because she just doesn't answer anything else. She just kinda stares blankly, no thoughts head empty, as if she doesn't understand. She's just silly that way though, so nobody minds.

When shes given a task, though, she's just. Entirely Different. Shes very methodical, cutting straight to the point-- oftentimes literally. It's where her experience with the whole Being A Lobcorp Employee really makes itself obvious. She can take a Lot of shit and just... Wont Die. She just gets back up! Easypeasy. It's almost mechanical-- and she barely seems affected at all by any of the Horrors(tm) that come with the whole... y'know. When it comes down to it, shes a little scary.

Nobody really Knows this necessarily, but before she was an agent, she was actually a clerk ! :] She just kind of... did her job. Was polite and enthusiastic, all that good stuff, model employee or whatever. but then, evidently, there was a pretty bad abno breach at some point, and she completely managed to hold her own, going so far as to be Almost Helpful! Astounding ! So they moved her around to being a fully functional agent! Something that has absolutely no consequences whatsoever !

. So, the horrors, right? Stepping out of exposition speak, Cocoa is an exploration on the split between human, monster, and object-- and what it means to define yourself within those terms. (It's honestly a common theme between the group as a whole, but they all tackle it differently.) Cocoa-- previously known as Holly-- was pretty much always a Highly Volatile person. Not that she ever showed it. A lot of her hinges on her desperate desire to be seen as Worthwhile, to be worthy of being kept around. Truthfully? She was always terrified of death.

She knew how the world worked. Either you made yourself useful and did what you were supposed to, or you were thrown out to the cruel whims of what the world does to people like her. She was, functionally, a Nobody. And she knew this. So she did her best to fit into the vision of somebody Useful. Polite, easy to herd around, noncombative-- all that stuff. It was grating, sure, but anything to keep her out of the bad books of people who could so easily crumble her already fragile life without a second thought. It was just what she needed to do.

So um. Unfortunately, pinning your entire identity on the whims of a conglomerated image of "other people" was never really sustainable. Not even remotely. Especially not for somewhere like the city. These sorts of things contradicted themselves, looped around, formed uncrossable chasms of expectation that she could never live up to even if she tried. And god, did she try. Constantly putting up a front was exhausting, but rewriting yourself completely every time you moved somewhere new? god can you even imagine.

She was just about Always tiptoeing a thin line between roles, teetering delicately between the gazes of those above her. Any action or expression or emotion contradicting from that image had to be immediately smothered, every step out of line earned a warning shot from herself that nobody else could really see. So like, no pressure!

So, going into Lobcorp, she was a model employee, secretly harboring the unstable energy of a dying star. Easypeasy. The abno escape was, as the kids say, "the last fucking straw in her miserable life," and she kind of just. blacked out, woke up, and it was over. She helped about as much as a clerk Could, but the fact that she was alive was an anomaly. Again, she is very very good at just... Staying Alive, when she shouldn't. So that was a pretty good vouch for her skill, even if she didnt present that at first. She, obviously, was pretty nervous about the whole thing, but if this is what she was being told to do, then so be it! Easypeasy! No big deal ! I'm sure Lobotomy Corporation is just an office comedy! She is very normal.

So, again, the thing about Holly is just that she. Doesn't Die. But the people around her sure do!! What happens around here is a bit of a blur, both to me and to her, but the long and short of it is pretty much this. Through the course of her acting as a full-title Agent, it did, shockingly in fact, Make A Lot Of Her Issues Worse ! Now not only did her Own life rest in her hands, but also a bunch of other people's! Crazy how that works.

She seems perfectly fine, mostly just because her immediate instinct in stress is to just. shut off. Panic, fear, anger-- none of that has any place in the role of a Useful Employee. She can't have doubts, cant have regrets, she just has to Move. So she just lets her body do what needs to be done, and tunes back in when everything is over again. It's not Easy getting to know people in a situation like that, but somehow she Did actually manage to make a friend! Though, I suppose, not that difficult, because "being friendly" is a very good Employee Trait to have, so obviously she has it. But, well, it Was nice! Was. Lobotomy Corporation Is A Tragedy ! Whoops.

So obviously, having a small bit of solace taken away from you is, to put it lightly, Not A Great Experience. But well, it wasn't exactly just that necessarily. To her, that person was everything that any model person Should be. Effortlessly. Intrinsically. They simply Were, and through the plain act of Being A Person, Unapologetically, was... well, it was refreshing! Silently, it was everything Holly Wished that she could be, but just couldn't gain the courage to reach. It wasn't even any huge event that killed them, it was just... some stupid mistake. The core of it simply came down to... well, if they couldn't do it, how could she? Her, hoping to be better than someone like that? Was that even possible? And this is about where things start . going sideways.

So. Her whole deal with Nothing There. It wasn't anything big. Not really, in the grand scheme of things. In all honesty, it was more of a Resignation. At this point, she'd already been kind of spacey and distant-- even for her own standards-- so of course, nobody would really notice much of anything. (Again, another good trait of a Useful Employee.) Working with NT for the first time was. odd. Nobody really knew what to make of it at the time, but Holly hadn't died Yet, so she was as good a choice as any. And seeing the damn thing, well. yeah, it was disgusting, but it wasn't what affected her the most. Rather, it was when it tried to start Speaking.

Calling it Horror isn't exactly correct, but it wasn't exactly... incorrect, either. All she could really do was watch it try to form words over and over, messy and stilted, inherently flawed. A crude imitation of something she should understand. Disgusting, sure, but not for the right reasons. Because all she could really see was a microcosm of herself. A horrible little excuse for a creature trying to pretend to be human, pulling itself together by the seams and stumbling over and over, painfully close yet uncomfortably alien to those it was trying to imitate. And she could only watch, as emotions she'd done her best to suppress slowly clawed their way back up.

It was then she had a choice. To confront what exactly it was that she'd been desperately locking away, that raging sensation of emotion, of desire, of anything-- or to resign herself into disappearing completely, letting herself drop all of the baggage of that flawed facade of "humanity" and allowing it to be replaced with... for lack of a better term, a Variable. an Anything Else. But... she was never very good at confronting herself, was she? So she sat down, and began correcting the entity's speech, forming both It and Her back into the shape that they "should" be. And at the same time, letting go of a "self" that could no longer exist anymore.

The thing about her, simply, is that-- again-- she doesn't die. Not the way that people do, not the way that people Should. But then again, "Holly" hasn't existed for a long time, by the start of everything. Anyone who Knew who she was never really had the chance to, with the way she was-- not that any of them were alive to be able to tell. She never answers anyone asking what her name is. or what her job is, or... well, much of anything. So people just call her Cocoa, because that's the only thing she seems to like :) And well, people say it confidently enough that others just Believe them, and Cocoa doesn't care enough to correct them, so like. whatever. Cocoa is here to do her job. Nothing more, nothing less. And nobody is going to stop her, because she's damn good at it. Nobody knows there was even a problem to begin with. Silently, wordlessly, the "person" she used to be simply... disappeared. And nobody was there to hear it. Which makes things... difficult.

Because she doesn't remember any of that. None of her peers do, either. She feels "fine," simply enacting whatever it is she needs to do. And because of that, people simply just Believe Her. It was as if "she" had never really existed at all. And at the end of it all... she was entirely indifferent. There was work to do, you know? No use worrying over some kid who couldn't handle the pressure. Happens all the time, right? And so the world moves on, without a second thought.

Not a second thought at all.

[rowanisawriter]

when you’re writing some random fic and reread a part to check the flow and then accidentally unearth some buried trauma lol lmao

[tiddiesoutwhenthetisout]

not me curling my laptop charger wire the way you curl band equipment cords HAHAHA god i miss it

[steelycunt]

an um. snippet. from me. for the first time since. july :-)

[jichanxo]

(late) sunday six

thanks for the tag @passthroughtime and @overdevelopedglasses! not gonna tag anybody because i'm late to the party as is :P i've mentioned sensei au/fic a lot in passing but i think this is the first time i'm actually talking about it properly in a text post as opposed to like, tags on my art... anyway, it goes without saying that this has lost judgment spoilers. part of the premise for this fic is that kitakata never becomes kuwana because he only barely manages to fix everything at the last possible moment. mitsuru lives, but only because he gets lucky. something like that. the main fic takes place long after this, but i recently had a go at trying to write mitsuru and kitakata on the roof together, since it's obviously integral to kitakata's character even if mitsuru doesn't fall into a coma. i'm still feeling it out, but it's been an interesting one. very different from what i'm used to. but also cathartic in some ways.

anyway here's an excerpt. putting another warning here for lost judgment spoilers and mentions of suicide.

Kusumoto looked away, sat up. He didn’t really seem to care that Kitakata was there, aside from the knowledge that he couldn’t do anything rash with him here, which he resented.

He wiped at his chin, his eyes, but the movements were clumsy, and he couldn’t clean himself off properly. His hair was still a mess, though he’d tried to make it presentable again. Kitakata suddenly wished he had a handkerchief in his pocket instead of a packet of cigarettes.

“I’m not going to kill myself, Sensei. You can leave if you want.”

He wanted to relieve Kitakata of any responsibility to be here. He thought Kitakata was only doing any of this to cover his own ass.

Kitakata hadn’t given him any reason to believe otherwise.

“Oh, well.” He fished for the first excuse that came to mind. “Haven’t had my smoke yet.”

He pulled one out, took his time lighting it. It’d buy him some time. It didn’t matter what Kusumoto thought of him, and he wouldn’t delude himself to expect that he might think that Kitakata was here because he wanted to be. It wasn’t entirely untrue, after all, that he was just trying to cover his ass. He’d made a mistake, and he was desperate to fix it.

He took a drag. Exhaled. Looked to Kusumoto.

“Do you mean it?” He asked.

“Mean what?” Kusumoto mumbled.

“When you said you weren’t going to kill yourself.”