#this is beyond words

[chaiaurchaandni]

have humans developed a language that can accurately describe the intensity of this grief?

[camgoloud]

have the last five years been just a complete blur for anybody else

[mewvore]

Sometimes you need to read something twice to get it. You might need to watch a movie three times to understand it. You might have to have that album on repeat for a week until the lyrics make any sense. You're allowed to engage with it and can keep engaging with it until it means something to you. People will see a painting at a museum and laugh about not getting what the big deal is but like you can come back, you can see it at another time, and maybe that next time it'll be different for you. I'm of the belief the "media literacy crisis" would solve itself if more people just sat down and did it again. Watched, read, played, listened, etc like I don't think people are getting more ignorant necessarily I just think we're not glorifying personally replaying things nearly as much as we should be.

[dirtytransmasc]

the men and boys are innocent too.

we cry "the innocent women and children" to appeal to the masses, to try and force their sympathy, but the men and boys are innocent too.

I have seen sons crying out for their mothers, their fathers, their siblings. I have seen them break down at the loss of their families. I have seen them cling to their dead and grieve.

I have seen fathers cradle their dead children, seen them kiss their faces and hold their little hands. I have seen them faint with grief when asked to identify the dead. I have seen them carry their sons and daughters. I have seen them fasting to provide what little they can for their families.

I have seen men and boys digging through the rubble with just their bare hands, I have seen them comforting strangers, playing with children, rocking them, hushing them, even if the face of such imminent danger. I have seen them cry, seen them grieve, seen them break down into each other's arms, seen them be selfless, beyond selfless, becoming something I don't have a word for.

I have seen the men who are doctors refuse to leave their patients, even when they have no medicine or supplies to give them, even when they're threatened with bombings. I have seen fathers who have lost all their children pick orphans up into their arms and proclaim them their child so they are not alone. I have seen men and boys digging pets out of the rubble.

the men are innocent too. the men and boys are being hurt and killed too. the men and boys are grieving too. the men and boys are scared too. the men and boys are fighting to save their people too. the men and boys deserve to be fought for too.

[martyrbat]

the memes and jokes about biden dropping out are all great but PLEASE dont turn away and forget the victims of him directly funding a genocide. these are real people that are still being impacted by his cruelty, their tragedies are still ongoing and they need our support more than ever.

if I can suggest a Palestinian family to support, I'll highly recommend Yusuf and his family—who has been vetted for [here]. The GoFundMe breaks down the costs, including the urgent need for an eight year old child to have a kidney replacement, but only €8,404 is currently needed for his family to pay crossing and coordination fees!!

[palettepainter]

He is my son @chibifox2002 I can't help it

[keferon]

THE NEW CHAPTER OF MISTAKES ON MISTAKES UNTIL IS OUT AND YOU ALL KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS~~~~~~

Spoilers for ch 74 below >:)

Head in hands. And then they all happened to be self sacrificial idiots.

Infinitely delighted by the fact that Optimus automatically decided to catch whoever was falling and only look who that was afterwards. 100/10. Peak Optimus writing.

[presidentalpaca]

[aeolianblues]

in the best case scenario my asexuality is a ticking time bomb that will have to be dealt with family-wise sooner or later. In today’s society it’s just not a normal accepted thing to simply be by yourself your whole life. Especially as people start breaking off into the family structure and friends who were once your community and support system become a smaller presence in your life because spouses and kids take precedence— I don’t know any ace people who haven’t worried at some point about dying alone. You don’t simply ‘have a housemate friend’ you live with where e.g. there is someone there for you if you have a sudden emergency. What if you can’t move? What if you’re ill and can’t get out of bed? I’m glad our worlds are better connected today, but the chances that you’ll be with someone safe and known if that happens are smaller than if you’ve got your own family, right? Or is the bleak best case scenario that an ace person has an emergency while at work?

Aces are a pretty small % of the population in general. To say you’ll find another ace person and cohabit is a really small chance. As most people start to move in with their partners, single people, ace people kind of find themselves either priced out of housing options unless rich, or being forced to find other strangers in unusual living circumstances.

I don’t know. I just feel like you are left more on your own in a societal structure that prioritises two-parent-and-children households. Or more generally, that sets you up for marital and couples living rather than necessarily community living, at least in the west.

So what I’m saying is that maybe ‘oppression’ isn’t the word to bring to the advocacy table. It is saying that maybe the thing to remember is that ‘oppression’ won’t look the same for everyone. It’s a reminder that comparing the weight of apples and watermelons doesn’t even make sense.

(This isn’t even aimed at the shortsighted people that think pride is all about labels and being ‘in’ the club. This post is aimed at people that remember pride is a political struggle to improve the lives of people left behind by our current norms. It’s why e.g. disability activists also calling their advocacy disability pride is instantly understood by most.)

It’s why ‘[x] queer group is so not oppressed’ is the emptiest and most wasteful statement you could make in the context of queer rights advocacy.

[vaguely-concerned]

I still can't get over lucanis at the end of the wigmaker job -- having limped his way down the docks, nursing several broken ribs, dripping rivers of blood (some of it his own. most of it not) onto the floorboards before the innkeeper's horrified and irate eyes, having just Faced the Horrors frfr and cut a bloody swath through a party of tevinter high society as if setting out to contemptuously prove poe's red death a mere piddling amateur, in his fucking batman-ass black leather overcoat getup, presumably woozy with blood loss and fading adrenaline -- just standing there sadly like '🥺is my cousin here'

[lloydskywalkers]

impulsively buying ninjago books again but PLS look at this one its so cute...they are taking terrible selfies im crying

[crowscacophony]

okay we’re collectively still not over this right? right?

[strangersatellites]

posting this feels like I'm crawling out of my grave and gasping for air

anyway- inspired by this post by @inthedarknessofnight

here's 1.3k of concert photographer!Steve and rockstar!Eddie because I couldn't get this out of my head

gimme, gimme more

1.3k words | this is the most g-rated thing I've ever written, it won't happen again

Steve’s feet hurt.

They always do after a show, but this one was particularly hard on him.

He’s been at this venue for two years now and shot countless shows in that time. But never in his career has he been challenged so– athletically. 

The photo pit at this place is light years better than his last venue. There’s more than enough room for all of the photographers and their gear without stepping on each other. Usually Steve is grateful for this because surely there is only so many more beatings his 35mm can take before it kicks the bucket. Today though, he’s grateful for the space because of the full-tilt sprint this band had him in. 

He’s never seen anything like it.

Well, less so did the band have him in a sprint and more so the frontman but, semantics. 

The guy is everywhere. Steve could barely keep up with the way he ran around stage, jumping, climbing on equipment, leaning off-stage toward the barricade.

It was fun but Jesus, what is his deal?

Steve hadn’t even known who Corroded Coffin was 24 hours ago. Now he’s burned through two SD cards in an hour and a half. 

The guy’s hot and a good photo subject, sue him.

Well, he thinks he’s a good photo subject at least. He won’t know until he’s culled through every single shot. Steve’s a good photographer, took to it naturally the first time he picked up a camera. His downfall though, according to his college professors at least, was that he pays absolutely no attention to what he’s shooting while he’s shooting it. Hence the overshooting. 

On more than one occasion he’s gotten started on editing and someone is wearing an outfit he’s never seen before, someone’s got sunglasses on in every photo, a tag hanging off their jacket. All he’s concerned with is the framing, the lighting, and the focus. The content can be a problem for Future Steve. Everything can be fixed in post.

Almost.

Anyway, his feet hurt and he hates culling, so he pours himself a full glass of wine and plops down on the couch in front of an episode of trash tv with his laptop and props his feet up. Settles in for a long night.

2,461 images.

He throws his head back with a groan. Ugh. 

The first hundred or so are garbage.

They always are.

A few shots spent fucking with the exposure, a few the focus, some the flash.

He denotes the purple flag as his ‘good’ tag and orange as his ‘trash’ tag. The orange is stacking up fast. Around 163 he starts finding some good images. Ones that aren’t tainted by motion blur from his running around after this frontman. 

His photos of the drummer are pretty sick; he can't lie. The lights and the smoke and the near-manic smile on his face make for great photos. He’s not even this band’s personal photographer but he can imagine at least one of these will get posted to the band's socials. He’s good, what can he say?

He has a good bit of the bassist, his energy infectious enough you can almost feel it through the screen. Purple is making a comeback.

He finally gets through some crowd pics, some more drummer, some guitarist, some detail shots before he finally makes it to the frontman. 731 photos later. 

What did Wikipedia say his name was? Eddie, he thinks.

Weird, the very first shot Steve has of him he’s making fierce eye contact with the camera.

Ew.

No matter how long Steve does this, photos of people looking directly at the camera never get less jarring. 

Orange tag. Trash.

The next one is exactly the same.

Shit. 

He’s really bad to fall victim to the high speed shutter on this camera and often finds himself with a dozen copies of the same picture. Looks like he’s done it again.

Orange.

More piercing eye contact.

What? He squints and flips back and forth between the last two photos.

They’re not even remotely similar. As a matter of fact, Steve was in a completely different location in the pit for the second one. 

Green tag. Come back to this.

Taking a long swig from his glass he shifts so his laptop is closer to his face. Thinks that surely he’s not seeing this right. 

He takes to forgoing his tagging system and just flipping through every photo as fast as his fingers can press the arrow keys.

He’s clicked through about 200 when he starts getting worried, his heart rate speeding up. Surely he got something usable.

“What the fuck?”

He’s clicked through 50 or 60 more when he decides that, no he did not fall victim to the shutter speed at all. This guy is just making direct eye contact with his camera in every single photo.

Steve’s not mad, the opposite really. He didn’t spend much time looking at the guy during the show and now he gets to have an eyeful while he works. What’s there to be mad about? 

He is, however, mildly concerned that he won’t have a single decent photo to use for the venue socials when he posts about this show.

Whatever. Maybe fans of their music are also fans of uncomfortable eye contact. Who knows?

He finishes sifting through the rest of the photos, Eddie staring directly down the lens in every one, one’s where he’s not the subject included. Throws them all in an editing software and mass edits them all at once. He’ll detail edit later.

While the eye contact was a little unsettling, he did get one photo he’s particularly happy with. One that makes it look like the staring was on purpose.

It’s during the second to last song, a ballad– or as close as you can get with a metal band. Eddie’s standing center-stage and Steve had snagged the spot directly in front of him. He’s looking straight down, backlit with red spotlights, surrounded by smoke pumping from side-stage, and just close enough that Steve can see the sweat dripping down his neck. He looks a little bit scary, but that’s how Steve likes ‘em. 

That’ll be the cover photo for sure.

He shoots an album link to his boss to review before he distributes them anywhere, then spends  the next twenty minutes laughing to himself while he collects the goofiest photos of Eddie staring straight at his lens.

He puts them in a new album and copies the link.

When he opens up Instagram and searches Corroded Coffin he lets out a low whistle at the six million followers. Maybe he really should know who these guys are. With that many followers he doubts they’ll even see a message from his personal account, but whatever. He clicks on the message button on their profile and hits paste.

@ steveharrington.jpeg Great show tonight! Somebody tell this guy that he is allowed to look away from the camera though…

He only waits a few minutes for the reply.

@ corrodedcoffin HOLY SHIT THAT WAS YOU

@ corrodedcoffin Wait hang on

His phone pings with a message from a new account.

@ whoiseddiemunson HOLY SHIT THAT WAS YOU

@ whoiseddiemunson Sweetheart I wasn’t looking at the camera

Steve furrows his brows, confused. Starts typing a response but gets interrupted by another message.

@ whoiseddiemunson I was looking at the smoking hot guy behind it. Kinda hard to get a good look when he’s hiding behind the camera though.

Steve feels his cheeks flush and huffs a laugh to himself.

@ steveharrington.jpeg Well the guy behind the camera did manage to get a few good ones even though he was under surveillance the whole show. Wanna see those?

@ whoiseddiemunson Hell yeah I do. I just scrolled through your profile, your work is amazing. Do you want to show me the rest? Maybe over coffee tomorrow?

Steve smiles. His earlier heart palpitations replaced with butterflies.

@ steveharrington.jpeg Is this a date?

@ whoiseddiemunson It better be

[chiquilines]

Okay small confession to make. Im obsessed with rarijack

[heathersapples]

x

[joyfulhottubfuntik]

One of my favorite things in GF fics is when Stan throws something Ford has said/ written about him in his face.

Like, for example, some time during their travels Stan somehow reveals that this whole time he's had this creeping thought that Ford only wants him around out of guilt or obligation. Ford is naturally taken aback by just how far from the truth it is and, more importantly, very hurt that his brother can even think that about him.

And so Stan says something along the lines of

"Am I supposed to believe that you suddenly give a shit about me now? Or is it just that I've done something worthwhile for the first time in my life? That I was useful to you?"

And Ford's immediate reaction is

"God, Stanley, why'd you even think-

-oh"

Like, the whole thing of Stan still thinking about those words that were said years ago, now when everything is fine and when Ford is actively doing everything he can to show his brother that he loves him. Meanwhile Ford never thought much about those words, never placed any importance on them and only perhaps meant them the moment when he said them, when he was angry and very tired. He didn't even really regret them because he didn't remember about them, that's how little they mattered. But they mattered to Stan, still do and haunt him every day