#then forget i put me there

[cork-run]

the names of certain mob-involved trans women have been changed

[inkskinned]

she's singing in another room and my dog is asleep at my feet. my grandma asked me why i haven't found a man yet and i laughed. oh, you know. i like my house clean.

my girlfriend is also my man is also "my partner" if i'm in a professional setting. yesterday we went to a ren faire and a man mimed at me - you're together? and at my delighted nod, his baffled, you're gay? made me laugh. a woman with rainbow hair said i love the two of you together. you're both so beautiful it's absurd.

my dad introduced my partner as my "..... friend. or whatever" the other day. he knows we're dating. in the same way, i was never able to get my sister's husband to stop saying that's gay like it's 2008. he still uses the word fa***t, and my sister's defense of him has always been well, he's just kidding.

my lover and i dance to old music in a tiny kitchen. we judge new music together and take food critique very seriously. we watch love is blind before we fall asleep and agree that if they had a queer season, it would be bloody but also make for excellent tv. of fucking course queer people would know someone for only 2 weeks and agree to get married. what are you saying.

at a bar with friends, a man puts his hand on my wrist. got a boyfriend? and yes, i do have a boyfriend, she's amazing. i am texting her while i wander around a gas station named after geese. i am visiting a swing state for a wedding. in the candy aisle i overhear: she's actually like a lesbian it's disgusting. two teenage girls with packaged sandwiches in their hands, giggling. no literally, like. i'm not, like. okay with her being there while we're all, like, naked and changing.

my girlfriend and i tailgate, drink gin and cider out of cups. from the frat group beside us, a man corrects himself with one of his friends: bro, i mean, nonbinary entity, and it makes everyone around him laugh, myself included. he razzes his friend the same way i would have killed for at 19 years old - like nothing happened, he continues: you apply sunscreen like an alien. he does a little sassy (and fairly accurate) dance interpretation of the motion. his friend is laughing so hard they're crying.

i am lucky, i live in a safe neighborhood in a safe state. my masc passenger princess comes up from DC. i drive her for an hour to where all the leaves are a violent arrangement of color. we walk along the trails, letting autumn into our blood. in this part of the state, there's a lot of pickup trucks and trump signs. when we chastely kiss before getting into the car, i accidentally make eye contact with a woman holding her child's wrist. she looks disgusted. she looks fucking pissed.

two hours later my girl and i are eating dinner on a patio, soaking in the last warmth of new england sun before the chill of winter sets in. we are giggling and trying to talk through plastic vampire teeth. at another table, i see a young woman sit up straighter. i watch her watch us. she blushes and takes her partner's hand from across the table. shy, like the taste of evening has just become something deeper.

it's worth it for this moment, i think. my lover is still humming the same song she's been singing for four days straight and i don't want to kill her for it. her guitar is beside my bed. her toothbrush is in my bathroom. in a few moments i will make us lunch. we are lucky enough to have found each other. it is lucky enough to be in love.

[normalhorse]

i recently figured out (after 40 years!!) that i'm autistic as hell - i was talking to my burnout psych and said something like "i should just accept im autistic and think about what that means for me".

twelve hours later the back office analysts in my brain were like "hey, here's an annotated list of things you thought were core personality traits but are actually maladaptive coping/masking mechanisms. you don't have to do any of this shit if you don't want to!"

and boy howdy i don't wanna do those things and i'm not and it's honestly incredible how much more space there is in my head now.

this has significantly improved or fixed a lot of my actual problems, including some that i thought were purely adhd, like a comprehensive inability to think about the future in any meaningful way, which is super wild to me after so long being paralysed there.

the most surprising one, though, is that i stopped driving my body around like it was a shitty robot i hated and started being, you know, embodied in my body, all my physical tension, neck/back pain, tmj issues, etc - they all disappeared. i sat down on the couch in a symphony of joint cracks and creaking then half an hour later i stood up and i could touch my toes. flat-foot squat indefinitely. sit on the floor!! i can grasp my hands together behind my shoulder blades palm to palm which i stopped being able to do when i was 12 or so but i've never been good at sitting on the floor and it's fine now.

this sounds insane, of course, but it's not - i walked past my physio in the street and she stopped me because my gait has changed - my hips unlocked so my feet land wider and they engage differently and my arches aren't falling and - anyway i was not really ready for the range of things that turn out to be coping mechanisms/mask symptoms.

i should write a longer post about this but not today.

I was thinking "oh but I can't be autistic, I'm so good at eye contact and small talk! I know all the right ratios for looking/not looking and asking/answering questions! I even know the best posture to communicate low-stakes friendliness (about 15 degrees from facing them. weight on one leg. 70% eye contact. still hands.) everybody says I'm great!" before realizing I may be refuting my own point

[mellohirust]

they should invent a memory that works

[hinamie]

theyre soft your honour

[pupcha]

guess who 😈

and I have this art with beta—

I also have a lot of sketches that I hope to finish in the near future (don't pay attention to the fact that there're a lot of Howdy here....)

(hum)beta!Wally (eechy pspsps 🫴)

I don't know what else to show you, so I'll show you (the old ones) art for my mutual :]

Margo for @//thelone-copper ; (I don't know his name 😔🥄🥄🥄) for @//dxkjf

[the-great-papyru]

i think the thing a lot of papyrus takes get wrong is that they forget that, among other things, papyrus is funny. in my experience writing papyrus, i often find the most funny line is the most in-character one. an unfunny papyrus doesn’t ever feel like an accurate papyrus to me. it’s more than part of the game, it’s part of his character. and disregarding that is what messes up a lot of otherwise good impressions of him.

[iwantmochisoup]

HAPPY 11.11 POCKY DAY!!

[welcometogrouchland]

♫ I do what I want/Crying in the bleachers and I said it was fun/I don't need anything from anyone ♫

(ID in Alt) you guys ever think about your own posts and get upset?? Anyway Damian Wayne I love you I'm so sorry your life is like that

[tahopo]

we truly regressed when people started buying into the genderbending is inherently transphobic thing. yeah that twelve year old being inquisitive and having fun on deviantart was your enemy all along.

[itsdefinitely]

local man loses his sense of self more at 6

closeups:

[casualavocados]

Learn from who? Learn from you?

Chen Bowen as CHEN YI & Chiang Tien as AI DI KISEKI: DEAR TO ME (2023)

[ryllen]

x

[starrystevie]

steve's desperate, okay?

he's officially running late for his first date with linda because he couldn't find his car keys and the shirt he wanted to wear just wasn't working so he had to grab something out of his hamper and throw it on blindly which then messed up his hair and he almost forgot to brush his teeth again but remembered as he opened the front door and-

he only realizes he forgot to put on cologne once he makes it halfway to her house and smells himself. the shirt from the hamper smells stale, not bad, just stale. and steve in his normal, non-rushed state wouldn't have noticed because his trusty calvin klein would have covered it up but today is apparently not a day for things to go right.

with a sigh of frustration, steve pulls into the hook's drugstore a little too quickly and it makes his stomach lurch the tiniest bit before sliding into an open parking sport at the front door. he rushes in, pushing the door open with too much force and books it to the fragrance aisle.

"this is so fucking stupid," he mutters to himself, unable to be heard by any surrounding shoppers over the annoyingly loud jingle playing through the speakers.

steve skids to halt in front of the cologne section, crouching down and scanning quickly over the tester bottles for obsession. once he spots the amber bottle, he yanks it towards himself, spraying as much as he can onto his chest given the awkward angle he's at. as he stands back up, steve pulls his shirt collar up towards his nose and the ball of nerves in his stomach loosens at the familiar smell. he may be late but he feels like he's back in the game.

checking his watch, he sees just how late he is and makes a beeline for the door, nearly running into an older lady with far too many rolls of toilet paper in her tiny arms. as he dodges around her and extends his arm to push open the door, he hears a loud voice over the intercom.

"you're not going to buy anything after stealing cologne?"

steve stops, freezes where he is and frantically turns his head around to spot the cashier grinning at him. he has long hair and a bright red hook's drugstore vest over a denim vest which doesn't look very comfortable. he has chains in his jeans and handcuffs holding his belt closed and a smirk that is trying to kill him and oh-

"wait, stealing cologne?" steve shakes himself back into existence as the old lady pushes by him without dropping a single roll on the way back to her car. "you're going to call me putting on a few sprays stealing?"

the cashier's smile just gets bigger, like a cat hunting down a canary. steve's never felt like a canary before but can't deny that it's an exciting feeling.

"well, on a good day i wouldn't. but i'm bored and you didn't buy a single thing so technically, yes. you're stealing, pretty boy."

steve fights the urge to roll his eyes and put his hands on his hips, so instead he crosses them over his chest, cologne wafting up from the movement and reminding him that he doesn't have time for this no matter how cute the cashier may be.

he makes his way over to the counter, grabs a pack of gum and slams it on the counter. without breaking eye contact with eddie, as his nametag suggests, he throws him a salty smile of his own and pulls his wallet out from his back pocket.

eddie's eyes are a deep brown with a glimmer of something behind them and his hands are covered in rings making his fingers look long and strong. the jeans he has on are ripped on one of the the thighs, showing a hint of a tattoo to match the ones crawling up his arms. steve's no stranger to thinking men are attractive but this guy? he's on a new level. his heart thumps painfully in his chest when eddie's grin grows larger as he watches steve give him a once over. it thumps even harder when eddie gives him a once over of his own.

the clock above the register shows that he's officially 20 minutes late to picking up... laura? lisa?

no, linda. damnit.

eddie looks down at the gum and then back up at steve, quirking up an eyebrow. "i hardly think this monetarily equates to a bottle of cologne but-"

"oh come on!" steve huffs. eddie laughs and it's clear and bright, ringing off the cinderblock walls louder than the annoying jingle that's still playing. whatever fight steve may have had left in him drains away at the sound and suddenly he isn't thinking about the clock anymore. he feels his shoulders fall down to a more relaxed state, feels himself shift his weight on his feet to look more natural than ready to run at a moments notice.

"just kidding, man." eddie rings up the gum quickly and hands it back to steve. "sorry, you looked like you were in a rush. i shouldn't have created a scene just because i'm bored."

steve chuckles. "i'm already supremely late for my date so what's another five minutes. especially if it gets me..." he looks at the gum packet to look at what he even picked up in the first place. "... spearmint freshen-up gum."

"well there you go," eddie says, grin smaller than before, "a perfect thing to get for a date. everyone likes their date to be minty fresh for that first kiss."

it strikes somewhere in steve that he isn't expecting. the beemer is still out in the parking lot running so he didn't have to waste time, his watch on his wrist feels heavy, the scent of obsession overpowering. but he can't make himself move. he wants to stay and talk to eddie, wants to learn about what makes him tick.

"can i borrow your phone?" steve asks. eddie's eyebrows furrow but he reaches for the store phone and places the console on top of the counter.

"for what?"

steve look through his wallet, finding the piece of paper with linda's number on it. holding the receiver between his shoulder and ear, he dials in her number and holds his pointer finger up at eddie, signaling that he'll need a second. steve then brings the finger to his lips and shushes with his cheek pulling up in a smirk. eddie's eyes zero in on the motion and it feels like steve's gone from being the canary back to the cat.

"linda? hey it's steve."

he watches as eddie mouths steve back at him and then nods to himself when he gets the confirmation that it is indeed his name. steve throws him a wink for good measure.

"i know i'm late and i'm really really sorry to cancel last minute but-. oh. yeah, sure. have a good time. okay bye li-."

on the other end of the line, linda slams down the phone without waiting for steve to finish talking and it makes him wince with how loud it is in his ear. he gives eddie a sheepish smile, all toothy and guilt-ridden, and gently puts the receiver back down.

"what was that?" eddie asks with a disbelieving look on his face. steve shrugs.

"she got tired of waiting so she already had another guy lined up to come pick her up."

eddie sucks in air through his teeth and mimes getting shot in the heart. it has steve laughing as he falls over on the counter, hair covering his face. he turns his head to peer up at steve through the curtain of curls, the one brown eye that's visible twinkling in the harsh overhead light.

"was it true love? are you just absolutely heartbroken?"

steve thinks about it for less than a second. watches how eddie curls back up one vertebrae at a time before placing his elbows on the counter and leaning over. watches how eddie's eyes flit between his own and his lips. watches how he focuses on the latter for a little while too long.

"why would i be heartbroken," steve starts. he's being too forward, too brash, but with eddie looking at him that way, he knows he can be. "when you'll probably be on break soon and can make it up to me? you know, for making me even more late and all."

eddie's grin grows wide again. "oh really?"

steve shrugs once more with a playful look of consideration on his face, resting on his elbows to match eddie on the counter. "yes, really. this is your payback for being bored and taking it out on me."

it's later when eddie's on break and steve hasn't left the drugstore in over an hour and they're sitting in his car with bowie playing through the speakers that eddie looks up at him with a look steve knows well.

"you do smell really good, y'know." his voice is softer than steve's heard it all day.

"so are you glad i came in to steal cologne?" steve leans closer over the center console to get into eddie's personal space. there's a hand curling over his bicep and pulling him even closer, their faces only centimeters apart.

"i guess i'll let it slide this time, thief."

and when they kiss for the first time, it tastes like the freshen-up gum they both had been nonstop chewing ever since steve paid for it.

[inkskinned]

i keep thinking about hobbies and how i often spill over myself to pick up new ones. i have adhd, i end up trying something for like a month and then just getting far enough in it that i move on, satisfied.

and that should be fine; but it's never fine.

i am a pretty decent artist; but i can't just make art for my dnd campaign, i should be selling dnd maps and character designs and scene setting pieces. i can't just make my friends matching earrings, i need to get an etsy and ship them internationally and take bulk orders. i make pretty good props and decorations and use them to throw my friends parties - but i should be running a party planning business and start taking paying clients and networking and putting my skills to actual use.

for some reason, i never figured out the specifics of pottery. it was a fun class and i enjoyed myself - and still, i'm embarrassed, years later, that i put in all that useless effort. everything i make has to be stunning. stellar. i should have applied myself more. maybe i'm too lazy. maybe i'm broken and selfish and needy. actually creative people would have kept going; they would be bettering themselves at every possible opportunity.

we find ourselves in this trap, even accidentally: we need to commodify our time, because it is a commodity. if we spend our efforts and our time not earning, isn't that the same thing as burning free money? and god forbid you ever take up a hobby that ends up being more expensive than you thought. you sit in your car and you look at the receipt and in your head you hear a conversation that isn't even happening - your mom or your friend or your partner all saying oh great. not this shit again. it's always something with you, and it never actually means anything.

i have realized this horrible thing, recently - i'll get excited to start a project, pick up a new hobby. and then i just... stop myself. i start thinking about the amount of time it will take, and how it'll look in my monthly budget. what if i can't even produce a good enough final product. sure, it's exciting to think about how i could make my friend her own custom dice. but i'm just polluting the earth if i don't get it right. better not bother. better not try.

restless, i get caught in the negative space. the feeling that oh god, i want to create. and that horrible sense - yeah, but i don't have the time to just put to waste.