#to make way for a long one tomorrow....

[hannahssimblr]

It’s a while before I talk to her again. I spot her strolling past the arcade one day, eating an ice cream while I’m coming out of the supermarket across the road. The street is thronged with tourists, so she doesn’t see me. A relief. I’m plagued by this irrational fear that she’ll be able to tell from looking at me that I’ve surrendered to my teenage urges and fantasised about having sex with her about eight times already. It’s quite an insane thing to be concerned about, but I’m paranoid, and just watch her go, purple phone poking out the back pocket of her little denim shorts.

Another time, early in the morning during a run, I think I see her swimming. Her brown hair spills over her shoulders as her face turns toward the horizon. I’m too far to know for certain if it is her, so I never call out to her. I turn at the end of the beach and run home.��

It is this morning, the morning I see Evie bobbing serenely in the sea like some kind of mirage, that I find a missed call on my phone. 

It’s on silent, it always is, but after several minutes of standing in front of the mirror scrutinising the darkening tan lines on my arms, I lift it to see the notification. 

One missed call from Alison Littler, 9:12AM

I frown. For as long as I’ve known Alison, she has been a late riser, and contacting her before noon, an impossibility. She used to say “good morning!” in her texts at one in the afternoon, but who knows, maybe she has turned over a new leaf. 

I hit the return button. It rings just once. 

“Hello?” 

“Alison?”

“Jude.”

I smooth the top of my shower-damp hair. “You rang me.”

“Sorry… I did, and then I realised you’re away on your holidays, so.”

“Yeah, but I don’t mind talking if you want to talk. All good?”

There is a long pause on the line, and I only know she’s still there because I can hear her breathing, shuddering and unsteady, like she’s afraid her voice will crack if she speaks. 

“Alison?”

“Can you come over?” She manages, “I know, you’re far away, so if you don’t it’s fine, but,” she exhales thickly and sniffs, “I’d really like it if you could.”

“Is everything alright?”

Another sniff, “... um.”

“Alison… Tell me.”

“Okay,” she says, “but please, you can’t tell anyone else.”

Beginning // Prev // Next

[zoroslost]

When you have to chaperone your first mate and your adopted father to a concert and run into your friend ex-ally and have to help him out of another insane situation

[harpoonsnotspoons]

I will ruin you

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy Pride month everyone B*) Allow me to reveal a little behind the scenes detail behind my Banner and Icon. Love was always winning <3

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

My hot take is that marcanne has as much potential for toxic yuri as any other calamity trio ship and it's not nearly as soft and fluffy as one may think

[illgiveyouahint]

Who are you, Ino?

[becky5203]

Something I find really interesting about Colin as a character, and something I think a lot of people miss about him and his character arc, is his place within his sibling’s birth order. He is the third born boy in a family of 8 children with three sisters between him and his brother 7 years younger than him. He has a unique position within his family in that he is sandwiched between his two older brothers who are closer in age to each other than they are to him and the first born girl of his family who is only a year younger than him, and because of this he falls into this category where he is considered a “baby of the family” despite actually only being the third oldest. You can see it in the way his family acts towards him and talks to and about him. They love him dearly but they don’t respect him as the adult man he is. He wants to grow up and mature and be seen as someone other than as a young boy within his family but he just doesn't know how because his family doesn't treat him like it and they don't expect him to.

It's even been mentioned in interviews that he struggles with being a third son in a world where all you need is "an heir and a spare". He doesn't know where to fit in. Unlike Benedict and Anthony, he was still a child when he lost his father, leaving him feeling somewhat stunted, I think. Anthony was expected to become the head of the family and Benedict was probably expected to take on more responsibility as well, but Colin seemingly became a mama's boy who his mother would lean on and would try to bring cheer and joy to his family in their time of grief. Colin, Eloise, and Franchesca all seem to have their own unique brand of "middle child syndrome", and they deal with it in different ways. El is the second girl, she's not the first to enter the marriage mart but she knows its an inevitability for her, and she's terrified. She, like Colin, wants to find her place in the world, but she does this by being as outspoken and definitive about her life as possible. Franny is also scared but she hides away from it all, trying her hardest to blend into the background. Colin, however, is just lost and drifting. Not being truly seen, not being truly heard despite trying to.

It's brought up in season 1 how Anthony sees him compared to Daphne, who, again, is only a year younger than him, but because she is the eldest girl, and is the first responsible for marrying into another family instead of providing for her own, she is expected to grow up and leave as soon as she can while Colin is expected to take his time, "sow his wild oats", and put aside the notions of leaving his family and starting his own for many years. But he doesn't want to, he wants to grow up, be "taken seriously" as he put it, and find a purpose for his life. He thinks he can do this by getting married and starting a family because he just saw Daphne do it, but Daphne had something he didn't: Love. In season 2, he deals with that fallout by looking anywhere and everywhere for purpose and answers. Trying to ask who really sees him, how he should've handled the Marina situation better, what is his purpose. His hero complex leads him to protecting Penelope and her family, not even realizing that by doing this he's protecting the one who holds his heart, and he has found his purpose, and for a short time he feels fulfilled. But then he's off traveling again, and when he returns he is seemingly overcompensating for how he still hasn't found his purpose by pushing his sensitivity and emotions down, becoming even more flirty and charming to the women of the ton but not making any serious attachments and overall avoiding who he really is. He's putting on a facade because he thinks that's the way he'll finally learn how to grow up. He's been traveling the world to find his purpose only he hasn't realized yet that it's been right across the street this entire time.

While I have my own problems with the idea of the "Bridgerton glow up" within the fandom, that is probably deserving of its own post, I do think that even his costuming throughout the show reflects this characterization. In season 1, he is boyish and sweet looking, still young, naive, and finding his way in the world before his heart is broken. In season 2, he comes back more grown up looking, but in a way so drastic and different to the previous season that it comes off seemingly forced and ill fitting to him and his own style. From what we've seen of season 3, he SEEMS to have finally captured a style, look, and personality that is right for him. But it almost seems too perfect, TOO 'grown up', again, like he's trying to force a change he hasn't fully felt in himself yet.

[marley-manson]

Comrades in Arms has so much gender role stuff going on and I'm very into it.

Brief preamble, masculinity and femininity aren't 'traits that men have' and 'traits that women have,' they're socially prescribed attributes that can vary from society to society and are forcibly assigned to men and women. I feel like I should mention this because in addition to good things I describe a few pretty negative things as feminine and that's because they are. Because most societies, especially 50s military society, want women to have traits such as passivity. Not because they're inherent to men and women.

So anyway, I'm just gonna dive right in. A lot of Hawkeye and Margaret's bickering in the first episode revolves around Hawkeye not being masculine enough. Margaret calls him a coward when he doesn't press forward through the shelling, Margaret gets angry when he can't fix the jeep ("How can a grown man be so mechanically incompetent?"), and she asks, "What kind of man are you?" in the next scene.

Hawkeye's attitude in return is wry self-awareness. "If you don't mind, I'm going to go into a mild panic," after the coward remark. Pretending to know what he's doing with the jeep with an exaggerated casualness ("Oh sure :) no problem :) I'll have this thing going in no time :)") before kicking it and then going "that's this right?" when she tells him to open the hood. Singing a jingle and joking that it's a civil war marching song and he's just trying to be military. And my favourite, Hawkeye's answer to Margaret's what kind of a man are you is, "Certainly not a serviceman," followed by, "There's a YMCA over here. Act like you got a moustache," and topped off with calling the hut he found "cute." There's also a moment where he is aware of something military (strategic significance of the hut), which surprises Margaret, and he pointedly downplays it by claiming he saw it in a movie.

My point being that the vibe is Margaret being consistently irritated that Hawkeye isn't performing a certain kind of military-flavoured masculinity, and Hawkeye knowing it and poking fun at her frustration. Margaret wants Hawkeye to be more military and more masculine in ways that go hand in hand, Hawkeye is resistant to that and plays up the opposite, both to bug her and because it's more genuine for him. He doesn't know how to fix a jeep, he is scared of bombs, he does cruise at YMCAs, etc

There's the fun scene with the debris and Hawkeye's injured leg, where they begin the sequence with Hawkeye on top of Margaret, shielding her, and Margaret mistaking Hawkeye's injury for an innuendo when he says he can't get off of her. Then they swap positions when Margaret examines and dresses the wound in his leg, complete with deliberate innuendo this time ("Margaret, there's no time for that now, look at my wound.") Which again, kinda highlights, advertantly or in, Hawkeye being more comfortable the less he has to conform to masculine standards. Not literally ofc, Hawkeye's obviously got no problem fucking women lmao, but as a joke that serves as a continuation of this gender role stuff I think it's fun and works well.

You can make a case that they start to get along when Margaret acts more accepting of Hawkeye's nonconformity. When Hawkeye says he's tough when he refuses morphine for the stitches and Margaret sarcastically says "uh huh," before he starts screaming. When Margaret opens up to him about the letter when he finally asks sincerely and Hawkeye listens and tries to be as genuinely supportive as he can. And when they start making out after Hawkeye commiserates with her about being scared and joins her in screaming his head off about the shelling.

The next morning this gets exaggerated in an interesting way. In the first half Margaret was outwardly tough and cold the majority of the time, insisting they drive through the shelling instead of running back where they came, checking the jeep herself, arming herself before going to bed. Even when telling Hawkeye about the letter, she insisted she was fine and that she prides herself on being able to adjust to anything. Hawkeye may not be masculine, but she is.

When they wake up, she's the opposite. Warm and affectionate, exaggerating her femininity in some ways (insisting on "making breakfast," fishing for compliments on her looks by being self-depricating, sudden passivity when they see a North Korean soldier and she irrationally insists they'll be fine and he won't come in), and emotionally "open" to the point of blatantly lying about or at least exaggerating how she feels (eg saying she loves his sense of humour after not getting a joke and before castigating him for making too many jokes a few scenes later).

She's playing an overly feminine role that doesn't suit her, but that she sees as the natural state of affairs for a man and a woman in a relationship, and she tries to shove Hawkeye into the appropriate type of masculine counterpoint. Most egregiously while treating him like one of her soldier boyfriends while she's panicking about being discovered ("Oh my brave soldier, you're wonderful, you're my inspiration," and, "I love to see a strong man who takes charge like that," lol), but also when she says she'll buy him a new shirt, assuming commitment and monogamy on his part, asking if he ever shaves ("Just my legs," says Hawkeye pointedly.)

Hawkeye is still Hawkeye - unmasculine, unmilitary, unable and unwilling to be the man Margaret invented for him. As he awkwardly goes along with it at first for whatever reason, he constantly looks like he's staring down a poisonous spider, and eventually he starts getting actively sarcastic in response.

Anyway, yadda yadda yadda, after an argument Margaret reverts back to her usual self and drops the feminized roleplaying, and when Hawkeye comes to her tent after the welcome back party, she finds a happy medium in genuine emotional openness, begun and encouraged by Hawkeye.

Essentially this episode explores Margaret's relationship with gender performance with Hawkeye as a counterpoint and, in the brief moments when they connect, mainly when they're screaming in terror together and in the last pre-tag scene, a parallel. Margaret starts off the episode as her usual masculine of centre, closed off, brusque self to Hawkeye's pointedly feminine-of-centre, emotionally open self. Halfway through, to Hawkeye's terrified bewilderment, she puts on a performance of femininity that doesn't reflect how she really feels, and in no way complements Hawkeye's gender expression, which isn't masculine enough to suit her and not saccharinely feminine enough to parallel her.

But at the end she finds she can still be herself, while adopting a little of Hawkeye's more healthy femininity in her newfound attempt to be emotionally open, and that's the place where she and Hawkeye click as friends. When they're sharing their feelings and commiserating and supporting each other. When she's not trying to be something she's not, and not trying to force or berate Hawkeye into being something he's not, and they can both just be a little gender non-conforming in their own ways that complement each other.

[famewolf]

for so long all I wanted to do was die but now that I'm older, all I worry about is dying too soon. too soon to experience all the things I didn't give myself time for when I was young. I don't want to spend these years overthinking what time I have left

[danielnelsen]

things aren’t going well with peach. while i think my dad’s very right to be concerned that she hasn’t eaten anything in nearly 60 hours (obviously i am too), im becoming increasingly concerned that she hasn’t slept at all in around 36 hours and prior to that she was under anaesthetic, which isn’t exactly restful, so it’s closer to 48 hrs

like dad took her back to the vet today and we’ve got injections for her painkillers now because she’s not eating, and also injections for fluids (because she doesn’t drink; she only gets water from her food), so the not eating is Bad but also kinda under management, but if she doesn’t sleep soon i’m extremely worried. dad was like ‘if she doesn’t eat by tomorrow afternoon we’ll take her back because the injections will run out’ but like. if she doesn’t sleep tonight we have GOT to take her back first thing in the morning so they can sedate her or something

[itspileofgoodthings]

Had a revelation this week that was so healing. just. gentle and life-altering.

[orbiyoo]

i havent posted about it since halloween because i literally havent worked on it since halloween but the clown is going well ^_^

[loumauve]

work colleague (the one who I'm working on a project with, who was supposed to be showing me the ropes - which she already barely did - who is supposed to be a superior while our boss is on parental leave) told me that I need to join the team leader meeting next week "so things dont escalate again" bc apparently her temper got the best of her (she told me this herself btw, which.. jfc)

and I feel SO uncomfortable at even the idea of that thats I've been feeling sick to my stomach over it since Friday. I'm still an intern ffs, I don't get paid to do her job, which is to explain what we're doing and to explain why we're doing it. I didn't decide on making this a whole thing, and I certainly didn't sign up to take her place while she throws me to the wolves (clinic admins who are pissed that change is being introduced to how they've been running things for years)

I know I need to address it, and at least tell my boss, I feel like shit reaching out to him while he's supposed to be on leave, but if I don't push back and give in now when there's also so many other ways she's been dodging her responsibilities then idk.

she barely communicates which is the basis for working with anybody, and even when *I* reach out she barely ever replies and leaves me hanging, unable to progress in certain tasks just bc I *literally* don't know shit yet bc I've been working there for a total of two and a half months max. just.. boss guy would be happy for me to stay on but honestly that lady has as bad a temper and worse social skills than the lady who made my last job hell enough that I was out of commission for almost three years, first on sick leave and then in various rehab/therapy programs just to make it back to being able to work again.. I really don't want to go down this road again

so I guess I do need to write this all down tomorrow in a message to him and hopefully he'll at least acknowledge that this is a shit situation to put me in and have a talk with her. but idk tbh. not sure what to do if he asks me to still join that group meeting on Friday, also terrified of her reaction if he does bring it up with her, ngl

last time she got "upset" she didn't talk to me for a whole day, didn't reply to my message before I left for 5 weeks and then still didn't leave a single message to explain where to continue in our project before being gone herself for another 2 and a half weeks.. that kind of childish pettiness idk. really don't want to have to keep dealing with her

lazy colleagues idk sure it's frustrating cleaning up after them, but this kind of behaviour is as close to intolerable as things get before I need to get myself the fuck away for good

[minamaybe]

anyone else feel all consuming dread the day before something they've been looking forward to is happening or is that just me?

[seaofreverie]

Anyway how is everyone doing

[icterid-rubus]

I’ve got a bizarre and predictable cycle of making friends getting very excited about hanging out and seeing them a lot and then becoming terrified and tired of hanging out and it’s annoying