#the understanding of Othering/Otherness is so ridiculous stupid

[darlingdaisyfarm]

I remember on ao3 you mentioned you wanted to post Stan and Ford reacting to readers death, I wanted to ask if you could share it please?<3

grief wears your name | Stan and Ford react to reader's death

Grief hits everyone differently and the Pines family is no exception. Old men arent supposed to outlive you

a/n: certainly! thank u for reminding me, tw: death

Stanley

you'd think that a man who’s been through as much as Stan Pines would’ve learned how to process grief by now. but the thing about Stan is, he doesn’t process it, not really. he pushes it down so deep that even he forgets it’s there, until it sneaks up and slams him flat on his ass.

fuck that, fuck everything, fuck this world

hell, he wasn’t supposed to outlive you. not you. not with all the shit he’d done to his body over the years, the cigarettes, the cheap booze, the sleepless nights every time he looked in the mirror. it was supposed to be him first. the old man with bad habits and a lifetime of regrets weighing him down. that was the deal, wasn’t it? you're too young, bright, stubborn, alive, you were supposed to outlast him. supposed to be there when his time came, rolling your eyes at his dramatics and holding his hand as he went. that’s how it was supposed to go, fucking fuck

he got the call from someone he didn’t recognize. a voice muttered words he couldn’t make sense of. your name. your fucking name. his ears rang, his head spun and his fingers gripped the receiver tightly

“what the fuck do you mean, gone?” the person on the other end tried to explain, but Stanley slammed the phone back onto the hook before they could finish. no. no.

you couldn’t be gone.

he saw you last week. he watched you smile at him across the counter, teasing him about his fez like you always did. he swore you winked at him before you left.

and now you were just. . . what? erased from existence?

grief had a way of making him ugly, uglier than he already saw himself. his hands shook as if he’d been drinking all night, but the bottle on the table was full and untouched. even the burn of whiskey couldn’t numb this, so what was the point?

Stanley thought about the kitten he’d brought home when he was ten. it was starving, ribs like piano keys beneath its dirty fur, the meows little animal let out were so pitiful. he'd sworn he’d take care of it, even made a little bed out of an old shoebox and named it tiger. he fed it milk behind his dad's back. tiger died three days later.

Stan felt useless, he couldn’t save anyone.

Stan hasn’t touched the fez since you died. it’s sitting there on the bedside table, gathering dust. you used to steal it all the time, yanking it off his head with a grin. “this thing’s ridiculous, Stan,” you’d tease, shoving it onto your head crookedly. “i’m the boss of scam now. bow to me.” and he always played along, rolling his eyes, calling you a pain in the ass, but you only laughed at that. that laughter was gone.

when Mabel asked him about you last night, he had to get up and leave the room because he wasn't ready for that. she was just a kid, trying to understand why the world was so unfair and he couldn’t give her an answer because he didn’t have one.

“grunkle Stan? do you think. . . do you think they’re still watching over us?” how could he tell her he didn’t believe in anything like that anymore? that you were just gone, snuffed out, like you’d never been here at all?

Mabel’s curled in his lap like she’s five again, clutching her sweater-covered arms around her knees, her face a swollen mess of tears and hiccupping sobs. her little voice is hoarse from crying and she tries to explain, through broken words, about the stupid sweater she’d been knitting for you. she just finished it. it was supposed to be a surprise. she was going to give it to you tomorrow.

Stan wraps his arms around her, calls her “pumpkin” in the softest voice he can manage, but it trembles. he squeezes his eyes shut so hard it makes his head hurt, he hopes if he can just keep them closed tight enough, none of this will be real. but it is. it fucking is. and he doesn’t know how to tell a twelve-year-old that the world is this fucking cruel. he doesn’t know how to admit he feels like that little boy again, the one with a kitten dying in his hands and nothing he could do to stop it.

he buries his face in Mabel’s brown hair and mutters some useless lie about how “it’s gonna be okay”

Mabel's face against his chest as she sobbed. Stan held her tighter.

“i made them a sweater, grunkle Stan. i-it’s pink with little stars and they- they said they'd wear it when it got cold,” her sobs swallowed the rest.

what could he say to that? what the hell could anyone say? “they loved your sweaters, kiddo. you know they did.” he wanted to picture you in that dumb pink sweater, smiling like you always did when you wanted to make Mabel feel special. but all he could see was you gone. gone. and nothing he could do would change it

Stanford

when he got the news about you, his meticulously constructed walls crumbled in an instant.

he sat at his desk, the journal open in front of him, its pages blurred by the tears he didn’t realize were falling. his hands shook as he gripped the pen, but the words just wouldn’t come.

he’d been taught from an early age that emotions were illogical. when he was younger, his father had told him to “quit being such a baby” after Ford cried over a broken model ship. that lesson had stuck

he locked himself in his study, the same place he’d last seen you. everything was still exactly where it had been. the chair you’d sat in. the pen you’d picked up and fiddled with while listening to him ramble. he’d always been embarrassed by how much he talked around you, because words came so easily when you were there.

the guilt was eating him from inside

was it his fault?

had he been too focused on his work, too distracted to notice that something was wrong? had he missed a chance to save you?

he needed answers. needed to know. what had happened? why had it happened?

he buried himself in research, poring over every detail of the accident or the incident, as he came to call it. his obsession grew, consuming him. he didn’t sleep. didn’t eat.

Stan found him one night, hunched over the desk, muttering to himself about alternate dimensions and cosmic energy. “Ford, this isn’t gonna bring them back.”

Ford didn’t respond because Stan was wrong.

Ford wasn’t trying to bring you back. he was trying to rewrite the universe so you’d never been gone in the first place

Dipper tries to talk to him one day, pulling at the hem of his vest clumsily. “grunkle Ford, is it okay to miss someone this much? like. . .this much that it hurts? my chest hurts.”

Stanford doesn’t know how to answer that. he doesn’t know how to explain the way grief wraps itself around your lungs and makes it impossible to breathe. “it is, Mason, it means they mattered.”

Dipper doesn’t see how Ford presses his hands to his temples when he leaves.

Ford’s always been good at pretending he’s fine.

Ford’s grief was quieter, but no less consuming. the guilt, the helplessness, the horrible emptiness that stretched wider every time he thought about how he’d failed to protect you.

he couldn’t stop thinking about all the times you’d parodied him, mimicking the way he pushed his glasses up his nose or how he’d say “actually” before correcting someone. “actually, Stanford Pines, you’re so predictable,” you’d giggle, tapping the bridge of your nose in a mocking gesture

you used to drive him insane with it, in good way. his face would flush, his words would stumble, and he’d act all huffy while secretly loving every second. he never told you how much he adored the way you made fun of him

he found one of your notebooks the other day. it was tucked under a pile of his old research papers, pages scrawled with your handwriting. you’d doodled little caricatures of him in the margins, stick-figure versions of Ford with six fingers and exaggerated glasses, accompanied by sarcastic captions like, “the nerdiest but prettiest man i ever knew”

he stared at those drawings until his vision blurred from tears. then he shoved the notebook in a drawer and locked it.

...

Ford disappears the next morning.

he knows it’s selfish, leaving Stan and the kids to deal with all of this without him, a part of family, but he can’t be in that house another second. the walls are suffocating. so he grabbed his coat, your coat, the one you used to borrow when you’d say his was warmer and walked, his feet already knew where they’re going.

the woods. the same path you always loved, where the sunlight filtered through the trees beautifully, where you used to point out birds or mushrooms or anything that caught your curious eye. you’d tug on his sleeve to make him stop and look. and god, you were so beautiful when you smiled at him like that. Ford adored you.

Ford doesn’t remember sitting down in the clearing where you used to spend time together, his knees in the dirt, fists clenched in the grass. he hadn’t cried when he found out, hadn’t even let himself feel it because there were too many faces looking at him like he was supposed to have answers. now there’s nothing but the woods, only memory of you and the sound of his own ragged breathing breaking into loud sobs

Ford cries like a child. raw, aching grief pouring out of him in waves, making his glasses fog up, slipping down his nose and he doesn’t bother fixing them. his body doesn’t know how to process this kind of pain. his hands too busy clawing at the ground, hoping he could dig deep enough to find you again.

Ford Pines, the man who always thought he could think his way out of anything, is completely unmade.

he doesn’t know how long he sits there, crumpled against the base of a tree. his hands tremble as he takes the notebook out of his coat pocket, the one he used to write down little things you’d say or do that he didn’t want to forget. he flips through it now, pages ruined with his tears and it hurts worse than anything else. your handwriting’s there, little notes you’d leave for him.

“don’t forget your glasses!”

“your hair looks cute today <3”

“i love you, Ford.”

he shuts the notebook and presses it to his chest, it's the only part of you he has left.

the stars above didn’t care. the trees didn’t care. the world kept turning, indifferent to the fact that you’d been torn from it.

and Ford was left there in the cold void, feeling smaller than he ever had in his life.

[ruporas]

Hi there, this might be stupid but I don't have anyone else to spew this to so I suppose you just have to endure my self-indulgent ramblings. Sorry in advance!! I've been thinking a lot about, like, Wolfwood with wings? Not like, an AU where he's been a Plant all along but where something happened that forced them out of him, maybe something with the tincture/vials or being in the proximity of one of Vash's sisters when he takes one or perhaps even something the Eye of Michael did right at the beginning that was lying dormant until they felt the ned to active it, I don't know- this probably sounds so stupid. I'm just imagining this painful, confusing, otherworldly thing happening to Wolfwood that he doesn't understand, seeing the black feathers crawling across his skin and sprouting from his shoulders, thinking himself more of a monster than he already is because he obviously isn't human, he isn't Plant, he isn't even like Vash, so what is he other than another kind of monster, more fucked up than he used to think that Vash was?? And Vash just looking at Wolfwood with his sharp claws and his fangs and his glowing eyes and the feathers sprouting from his arms and face and chest, at the big black wings that extended from his back to stretch around him like a funeral shroud, understanding the pain and the fear and the feral instability of something unthinkable happening that he couldn't comprehend, knowing that Wolfwood was thinking about himself as a monster just like Vash did, and being in the unique position of being able to help him through it, helping him understand what was happening to him and aiding in dissipating the feathers and fangs and claws and helping him recover in the aftermath. I don't know, this might be stupid and crazy but. I can't stop thinking about it. Thank you for coming to my ridiculous self-indulgent TED talk, thank you for everything you do.

hello! omg, getting this was such a lovely surprise, i love seeing the passion in this au. i love the concept of wolfwood with wings too (specifically a huge #fan of guardian angel wolfwood or some sort of angel with smaller wings than vash).

wolfwood is such a meant to be human, made to be human character that it always makes me a little sad to dip him into the creature zone because the confusion and distress he'd inevitably experience hurts me afgmskgmsd but Regardess, it's always a good angsty concept. piling on top of the way he views himself already, it's as though those thoughts physically manifest themselves and air it out for everybody to see. unable to deny what he has become when it's presented in such a blatant way.

from the way it's described, i'm imagining this to be like… mid way through the story, close to vol 7 :3 i think something like this happening after vash got his big scare with his powers becoming open to the world, a monster now openly claimed and known, he'd be scared, wracked with guilt, and struggle to navigate his own vulernabilities to properly help wolfwood. at the same, wolfwood is understanding vash better, acknowledging the person he is despite his other worldliness and thinking of the impending doom on humanity if vash doesn't get to knives, i think amidst his own self loathing, it's touched by fretting over vash and wanting to not hold them both down with this abrupt transformation. he'd likely push down his own fear to try and find a direct solution to stop the height of the transformation, to which vash would likely shred a sliver of vulnerability to give objective advice/assistance.

i like the idea of them settling down later and both of them being in the "what the fuck do we do now" phase and having no answer but can only discover the answer by navigating it slowly. having something like this happen would forcibly open a conversation of their experiences, i think, especially for wolfwood who might have to talk a bit about his EoM experience to give an inkling on how something like that could've happened. it's both kind of sweet and depressing how they'd get the chance to communicate more of their life to each other through this :'] an almost parallel experience… and i think vash would have to think about what could define a monster, he'd certainly view himself as one but not wolfwood.

i wish i had more creative fuel to churn your vision out into a drawing but i couldn't come up with anything cool enough to match the descriptions…

i'm not sure if you've seen it from me yet, but i did do a plant-related thing that follows a similar horrified discovery for wolfwood / being changed into a half-human half-plant sometime ago, in case you might want to see more feathery woowoo! it has trimax spoilers (post trimax) so heed warning, but here's the asks:

thank you for sharing this with me! it's fun to think about it, always a joy to wolfwood in Situations… just constantly experiencing the horrors, but at least he isn't alone..!

[plaidos]

i've always read Dave as transmasc because his narrative arc and gendered anxieties just feel so... utterly foreign and opposite to my own growing up as a transfem. a lot of what you discussed in that earlier post about his relationship to masculinity in particular is what i picked up on, the constant anxiety and the way his pressure-cooker environment emasculated him while simultaneously forcing normative masculinity on him and making fun of him for trying to live up to the very same standards it was enforcing, it all just felt very like... wow... i felt like i might understand what trans guys feel and think somewhat, reading his lines and stuff. that said, i was about 16 when i read Homestuck, so maybe that was just an objectively bad reading due to me being a stupid kid, LOL; either way, thoughts?

i just feel like all the things you just said are just... more true for people who grew up after being coercively assigned male at birth? like Dave's problem is the inescapable, ever-penetrating masculinity that he's been forced into. that... sounds like the opposite of a transmasculine experience to me? Dave isn't exactly escaping assigned femaleness is he? like what we're supposed to think Dave has realised who he is, has come out, Bro respects Dave's name and pronouns and got him on testosterone at age 13, but is still ridiculously violent & abusive to him about his gender in other ways to the degree that Dave doesn't even consider he might like men until he's sixteen? idk it doesn't track for me at all.

like that emasculating, pressure-cooker environment simultaneously forcing normative masculinity... i'm glad if that wasn't your experience growing up, but that sounds exactly like growing up whilst transfem to me, personally

[radlymona]

I feel like this person accidentally perfectly described what the meaning of "q*eer" is nowadays, without touching on how removing it from its initial usage as a slur against gay men is homophobic. (Presumably) Gen Zers have a fundamental misunderstanding of lgb history because larpers have appropriated the word for their own cause, and this is just normalised????

The secondary, terrifying aspect of this, is that anyone perceived as not ~normal~ is now being lumped in with lgb people, something activist groups have spent decades fighting against. That's why kinksters, furries, polyamorous people, and heterosexual men incapable of romantic love are now considered q*eer regardless of whether or not they experience same sex attraction.

[aliciavance4228]

"Medusa x Perseus" Why don't you guys ship Bellerophon with Chimera? Or Heracles with the Hydra?

[girlivealwaysbean]

pata hai last kuch din i was very busy with my project kyunki final dena tha and binding karni thi etc to wo karwayi then i went to the bookfair bekaar tha then parso submit karne jaa rahi to subah accident hogaya (bhai ki bike skid hogayi and we fell down) and now i have a big ass blue bruise on my upper thigh and my parents don't even know lmao and kal ek science conference thi to i had to sit in an auditorium for 6 hours listening to accomplished people speak. that's what you missed now your turn

omg i knew everything in this except for the accident cause i stalk your blog vigorously everyday are you okay!!!!!!!!!! did you get tetanus shots!!!!!!!!!! also on your upper thigh oh no that's where future jiju is supposed to write MINE na as per our beloved song guilty as sin?

[ficmeouttahere]

this is entirely atlabeths fault btw

[laughinglynx]

.

[k00ldino]

slamming my head against a brick wall WHYYYY WON’T IT LET ME FILL OUT THE FAFSA WHY WHY WHY WHY

[echthr0s]

it's Over the Garden Wall season and every year I think about how frustrated I was with that series for reasons I couldn't explain and no one else seemed to get until I finally figured out on my own that it was a combination of media illiteracy and cultural mismatch that was the problem

I have a much bigger capacity for Not Understanding media now because I can now figure out why I don't understand it (and I can usually figure out how to learn whatever I'm ignorant about OR make the decision to go by vibes and what it feels like to me instead), but the worst feeling was trying to enjoy something that other people seemed to think was the holy grail of the medium and going "what... what is happening though"

[lettersfromthelevant]

i swear, every pride month, i end up unfollowing like close to a dozen people--including mutuals--because everyone just gets completely politically unhinged and horrible. either it is aphobia, misogyny, or antisemitism, but soooo many people just go off the rails with it. i dunno what it is about this month, but where i used to look forward to it, i've begun to absolutely dread it.

i used to love pride online because irl pride is so hostile to jews (it isn't that much better here, tbh) and i could at least participate here, but where it used to be mostly sane, it has quickly spiraled into homophobia/biphobia/aphobia, misogyny, and exploitative regressive politics where the entire point of pride is sidelined to appeal to some fucked up groups that this website loves propping up as mascots. no one on here seems capable of being normal about forgotten marginalized groups, like women, aces, and jews. it even has a lead up sometimes; the lead up this year felt like pms, my dash has been so bad the past couple weeks and today the floodgates opened. i haven't seen this much unmasked misogyny and aphobia in a long time and it is only day one. this year is gonna suck, i can just feel it.

all this to say, if i end up unfollowing you and you're a mutual, it isn't personal. i'm just getting close to my wits end

[proximacentaurib]

I’ve noticed that people are very bad at seeing gray. Very, very bad. They’ll see gray and they’ll call it something else, anything but what it is

[inazuma-fulgur]

I will also defend trans men here, I see vitriol about both just by different people.

Men, and women keeping proximity to men in media/political circles, target trans women for being predators and for mutilating themselves

Same for trans men actually, just by women and men keeping a proximity to those women. This one is a little weird though, because trans men post transition are predators and trans men pre transition are always victims who are tricked into mutilating themselves.

This isn't just on tv, this is stuff my neighbors and coworkers tell me. Austensibly, in my experience, cis women are negative towards trans men and largely neutral or positive towards trans women, whereass cis men are negative towards both

Non binary people don't even exist because they don't touch on the framework people use to understand themselves, so they can just be denied and don't require any arguments beyond "lmao silly"

[girlivealwaysbean]

sometimes my bestfriend is like an angel in disguise istg

[nickyhemmick]

Everyone in my Arabic lit class is so fucking annoying I’m going to bang my head against the wall

[ms-spkhd]

It's not like there's anything inherently wrong with Steve. Just...weird. Odd. A wealth of other various synonyms to describe his decidedly bizarre behavior.

Well, Bizarre's a strong word.

But Eddie's point still stands! Steve's a little to the left and it makes Eddie feel endlessly awkward for noticing. The fact that he's uncomfortable about it compounds his unease over it.

"Wanna talk about it, then?" Jeff asks, riffling idly through the record crate. Of course, the one day off they spend window-shopping in Indianapolis results in Eddie getting the fucking 'let's discuss our feelings about things' talk from Jeff. He wonders how the man isn't green with sickness from therapizing all the goddamn time.

Eddie rolls his eyes. "I'd look like an idiot."

"Would the idiot keep running or confront his problems head-on?"

"This feels like a trap."

"Oh yeah," Jeff says simply.

"Like the ones with the cardboard box and the stick."

"Pre-cisely."

Eddie's shoulders slump in defeat. Better the idiot who speaks, he supposes. "He's very smiley about me being gay."

"Smiley."

"Smiley. As in he's acting like I vomit flowers and shit rainbows." Eddie shakes his head in frustration. "I'm not opposed to the support and everything...it's just that. He's like an octave higher than usual about it."

Jeff purses his lips in thought. "Like, his voice?"

"No--like...like, he's very enthusiastic about my sexuality."

Eddie leans back against the shelf behind him. Steve's a nice guy, really, but the way he goes about his support of Eddie feels like he's trying to compensate for something. A lack of empathy when he was younger, perhaps.

"He always asks if I have a boyfriend, or if I've been hooking up with any guys lately--which, hello, does he not know that queer metalhead nerd isn't a very hot item here?"

Jeff pulls a face but nods in understanding.

"And when I tell him obviously no, he says he can hook me up with his, what? Fucking father's brother's cousin's former roommate? It's like he's begging for a double date with him and his new squeeze, it's goddamn ridiculous." "New squeeze?"

"I'm hyperbolizing." Eddie blows a raspberry and shrugs. "He says it's sad that I don't have someone for how good-looking I am. You're making the face again."'

Jeff snaps out of whatever trance he's in, his drawn eyebrows shooting up to his hairline in surprise. After his gawking mouth clacks shut, he cautiously gestures at Eddie to continue.

"It's stupid," Eddie concedes, "but I really don't understand what changed, y'know? He used to be this cool, confident guy with a dorky side, but now he's just so...I don't know."

Jeff smiles lightly and knocks Eddie's shoulder with his. "I have a theory."

"Go on."

"I think Steve isn't being supportive."

"Uh-huh."

"Far from it, actually."

"Yeah. Whatever you say, chief."

"He isn't smothering you," Jeff points out. "He wants to fuck you."

Eddie blinks. Takes a moment to access and really take in what Jeff just said. "What?"

"Or at least, he wants you in an entirely non-friendly and possibly even carnal way."

"Excuse me?"

"Biblically."

"Dude," Eddie insists. "What. The. Fuck."

Jeff raises his hands placatingly. "Steve clearly likes you. A lot. He probably sees you being gay as an in for him."

"Okay, well, I don't understand. He tries to set me up with randos he knows all the time."

"He called you good-looking."

"While he was trying to set me up with said rando!"

"Guys like him have a really backward way of doing things." Eddie crosses his arms sternly. "Or he's straight," he says.

"Again," Jeff asserts. "Good. Looking. Dude, he's fucking obsessed with you! You said he's an octave higher around you now, right?"

"Because he's a well-meaning friend?"

"Eddie, remember when he crashed band practice last week?"

Oh yeah, Eddie remembers that. The man of the hour randomly parked in Gareth's driveway, leaned against his Beemer with his arms crossed, and watched Eddie play like he fucking hung the moon. Afterward, he'd sung his praises for the band and gave Eddie a yellow guitar pick attached to a sparkling silver chain. "Found the pick a couple of towns south with Robin the other day. Reminded me of you," he said softly. "Since you lost your last one."

It went unspoken where Eddie lost 'the last one'.

Eddie remembers smiling back at Steve with the force of a thousand supernovas, and thinking later in the night that it felt like a scene from a romance movie. Steve's favorite color is yellow, isn't it? It was like he wanted a piece of himself with Eddie at all times, right next to his heart.

Eddie didn't want to give himself that stupid hope. That Steve Harrington wanted in on his heart.

It doesn't feel so stupid anymore.

He looks back at Jeff and says, "Oh."

"Yeah, oh."

Part two