#this is like. almost love

[ratkingwizardudecatboydeluxe]

Something about smoking. Something about smoking *with Eddie*. It might be a joint you're smoking, or a cigarette. It doesn't really matter. What matter is that you're hands are too cold, too red, shaking too much to hold the cigarette still and it slips out from your fingers down to the grey-green ground. It lays there, over all the leaves. What matter is that Eddie picks it up for you, back bent softly infront of you and gives it back to you, your fingers brushing. He stands infront of you and you put the cigarette to your lips, reaching out for the lighter again. He stops you, simply and quick with a 'let me'. He put his hand around the cigarette, turning it upwards, making it straighter. Your teeth clamps down immediately at it, not letting it go, not letting it leave your mouth. He puts the matches onto the cigarette and the lighter's light flickers and for a moment the only thing you see is Eddie.

Eddie, with his curly long hair that falls way too often into his eyes. Eddie, with his self-made jeansjacket and patches of bands on his pants. Eddie, who is now staring at you with a focused look- trying to light the cigarette up. Eddie who, with the shadows around him, standing in the shadow of the old factory, looks like a villain from a superherocomic. (When Eddie said he knew a spot you hadn't expected it to be the ruin of an industry). Eddie, who stands close, close to you, you feel the warmth of him body cluster onto yours.

"Its wet," he simply says and you nod at him. The "of course its wet, it has been on the ground, everything is wet right now" from you gets unsaid. The things this man makes you do. He fishes up a new one, it shines orange and small in the grey afternoon, from the packet he keeps in his shoes. You let the wet cigarette fall from your teeth onto the wet ground, the wet leaves and you stomp on it, presses it down, down to the ground with your boot. He hands you the new one and you take it, your fingers slightly brushing against eachother. Puts in your mouth, gestures for the lighter and he hands you it. You grab the lighter, clicks on the button over and over again but it doesn't light.

"It doesn't light," You say, complaining and scoffing.

"Lemme try." He says and you passes him it. You're standing close, close, you feel his breath on your cheek, you feel the warmth of his body onto yours. The warmth of his fingers on your cheekbone as he holds you into place, the cold of his rings. The lighter coughs and flickers before finally, finally, lighting in a stable light so your cigarette can be lit. It lights up and you inhale the smoke from it, taking it out, blowing it out.

"There," he says and steps back. You chuckle.

"It likes you more than me." You say, newlit cigarette in your hand, wet leaves and mud around your feet and an Eddie Munson close to your body.

He smiles. "Well it is mine, after all, so-"

"I bought it for you!" You had, infact, bought it for him. But he was with you when you chose it, saying yes to the good ones and no to the bad ones. You had scoffed that entire afternon. It ended with a darkgreen one. He had picked it out, a belated birthday present, but you had bought it. Taken it up from the plastic bag as soon as you got out from the store and passed it to him with a 'happy birthday eds'. He had smiled that cheeky tilted smile, slid it down in his pocket and said 'thanks man'.

It's a grin now, on his face. That tilted, cheeky one that makes you go apeshit when you're mad. He shrughs. "Tough luck?"

You laugh.

(He warms your hands on the bus home, warm hands against cold. He calls you a fridge and you laugh and say "if I'm a fridge then you're a radiator goddammit". He chuckles and you lean against him, head against shoulder and plays with his hair- curling it up in your fist and uncurling it again. He let's you do it, with a smile and closed eyes, his head against yours, and you watch the orange leaves, the wet ground and the dead trees of the outside pass you by as the bus drives on)

[izloveshorses]

what's meant to be is meant to be. if you even care.

(pls click for higher res i worked really hard on this)

[wasabi-gumdrop]

local ladies man’s signature move totally useless against autistic monster enthusiast. more on Kabru’s fumble era at 6

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF nightmare foxy is a huge fan of Roxanne Wolf,,

[fernsnailz]

been rewatching owl house w my roommate and wanted to sketch my favs

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[bixels]

me too, luna.

[botanicalbasilly]

I hate being a person who loves bugs, I can't say anything without the person I'm talking to reacting with disgust. Today I had to literally beg a coworker for the life of a spider, and then after I put it in a nook outside she thought it'd be funny to show me a video she took of her killing one. Like idk man. Birds scare the shit out of me but I still get why people love them. They come in pretty colors and they sound nice and they're interesting to observe. I don't understand why people don't feel the same about bugs. The rich amber color of a cockroach, the iridescent glow of a fly, the intricate hydraulics that power their little legs, the chirp of a beetle, the art of the spider's web... It's all so beautiful. Why is it the habit of so many to destroy?

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

Viago, when playing as Rook De Riva: you IDIOT you were my favorite fledgling why did you have to make a mess of this now I have to jump through all these convoluted hoops to keep you safe. Teia stop telling Rook how much I missed them it's not funny they could have DIED. also your room is exactly the way you left it please come home

Strife, when playing as Rook Aldwir: Why hasn't this weird bug i kicked out of our camp ages ago died yet :|

[somerandomcockroach]

Have been reading Dratchrod fics, got disappointed, drew dratchrod

[egophiliac]

idia was an absolute treasure this update. you agree.

Idia really went "time for me to be a hero! but in, like, a super meta way" and if that isn't incredibly in-character then what is.

and of course we can't forget

I kinda hope he and Riddle get to do another game jam again sometime! it's nice to see them get along! and now they have, inexplicably...shared skills and interests???

[paintedcrows]

Had a silly thought about hypothetical cat curse shenanigans with @dark-lord-of-awesomeness's How to Cat Burglar a Family ;)

Bonus doodle!!

[reasonsforhope]

"For most people, a rat is at best an unwelcome guest, and at worst, the target of immediate extermination. But in a field clinic in Tanzania, rats are colleagues—heroes even.

Far from a trash bin-dwelling NYC street rat, the African giant pouched rat is docile, intelligent, easier to train than some dogs, and for East Africans, the performer of lifesaving tuberculosis diagnoses every day.

400,000 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) were estimated to have been prevented by these rats, whose sense of smell would make a bloodhound take notice. As [TB is] the number-one killer among infectious diseases worldwide, many of those 400,000 can be translated into lives saved.

“Not only are we saving people’s lives, but we’re also changing these perspectives and raising awareness and appreciation for something as lowly as a rat,” said Cindy Fast, a behavioral neuroscientist who coaches the rodents for the nonprofit APOPO.

“Because our rats are our colleagues, and we really do see them as heroes.”

APOPO uses giant pouched rats to sniff out traces of TB in the saliva of patients. In parts of Tanzania, a saliva smear test under a microscope by a human may only be 20-40% effective at detecting TB.

By contrast, a giant pouched rat like Ms. Carolina, a now-retired service rat who worked for APOPO for 7 years, raised the rates of detection on TB samples by 40% in the clinic where she worked.

Pictured: An APOPO employee with one of their trained rats

It would take 4 days for scientists to analyze the number of samples that Carolina could screen in 20 minutes. For that reason, when Carolina retired last November, a party was thrown at the clinic in her honor, and she was given a cake.

TB is sometimes thought of as a thing of the past—a disease for which doctors used to prescribe “dry air,” leading a modern sense of humor to muse at the antiquated, pre-antibiotic medical advice.

But it remains the number-one cause of death globally from a single infectious pathogen, and Tefera Agizew, a physician and APOPO’s head of tuberculosis, told National Geographic that once people see what the nonprofit’s rodents can do to slow the spread, they “fall in love with them.”

3,000 times in her career did Carolina detect one of the six volatile compounds that can be used to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and she got a hero’s send-off to a special compound to live out the rest of her days with her closet friend and sniffer colleague Gilbert, in a shaded enclosure dubbed “Rat Florida.”

“We’ve made special little rat-friendly carrot cakes with little peanuts and things on it that the rat would enjoy,” Fast said. “Then we all stand around and we clap, and we give three cheers, hip hip hooray for the hero, and celebrate together. It’s really a touching moment.”

APOPO has made headlines for its use of these rats in other lifesaving tasks as well: landmine clearance.

One of the world’s great underreported scourges (a lot like TB, coincidentally) is landmine contamination. There are 110 million landmines or unexploded bombs in the ground right now in about 67 countries, covering thousands of square miles in potential danger. Thousands of civilians are killed or injured by these weapons every year.

GNN reported on APOPO’s demining efforts using pouched rats back in 2020. One rat named Magawa alone identified 39 landmines and 28 items of unexploded ordnance across an area the size of 20 football fields.

If at the start of this story you didn’t like rats, maybe Magawa and Carolina will have changed your mind."

-via Good News Network, March 31, 2025

[maxlovespigeons]

This time doing @mothnem's idea

I had it on my mind all week

Bonus

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

Suddenly, bell bottoms aren't so bad

Bonus sketch, because I had to vv

"Stop checking out my assistant, Stanley."

[heartorbit]

if we could stay connected, just like this