#to whatever this place may be

[artsandstoriesandstuff]

Do you think the rain would melt the shapeshifters like it does with other creatures?

Tagging @geuretea and @esteebarnes94 as I'm really proud of this piece and think you guys may like it too!

[kas-eddie-munson]

cw: ableism, depression

~~~

Eddie always tried not to dream too big.  He grew up poor, with shitty parents, so he learned pretty early on to prepare for disappointment if he ever asked for or wanted something, even non material wants, like love.

It didn’t always work, though.  His teachers always said he had his head in the clouds.  He dreamed of becoming a rockstar, getting married with kids afterwards.  Moving into a big house with a dog and a yard.

And he knew, really, it was silly.  But he thought maybe he could get bits and pieces of that if not the whole thing.  Maybe he would never have his dream job, but he could do something similar.  Play his guitar at bars on the weekend, teach kids music lessons, or work at a record shop.

Maybe he would never find someone who could put up with all his dramatics and energy full time, but he’d have a girlfriend, eventually, for a while.

And here he was.  Couldn’t even sell weed anymore, couldn’t get out of bed without help sometimes, could barely get out of the house without help, certainly couldn’t drive.  The new trailer didn’t even have steps, it had ONE step.  And that was enough to stop him from moving up and down with a wheelchair.

ONE step.

The bathroom door was too narrow to fit through with it.  He had to hold his piss sometimes when he didn’t have the energy to get all the way there without his chair.

He knew he was a financial burden on Wayne.  The government paid off most of his medical bills, and for their new home, but that wasn’t gonna cut it forever.  Especially if Wayne kept insisting on him continuing physical therapy.

He wondered what they told him.  If Wayne really thought he could ever walk again, more than across a room or from the door to the car.

Eddie did, at first.  Again, dreaming too big.

The doctors were honest with him, even if his heart wasn’t.  He’d be in pain probably the rest of his life.  Things would get better, but he’d probably always need his chair, at least sometimes.

Things were awkward, with his friends.  They didn’t get it.  He didn’t expect them to, and it’s not like they ever talked about feelings and shit anyway.  They didn’t think he killed Chrissy, he was pretty sure, and they weren’t super weird about how he got jumpy sometimes, but they’d get so awkward.  He’d move past them in his chair, and they’d cast their eyes to the floor, trying not to look at it.  Stopped inviting him places when half the time they’d show up and there’d be no ramp, or the ramp would be too steep, or too narrow to actually get up it.  Or they’d have to talk to five different employees to find the one who knew how to work the automatic door in the back of the building by the dumpster.

Not to mention how he often needed help just getting out of the car.  And how he ALWAYS needed a ride.

So they stopped talking to him, more or less.  The Party did still, kind of.  Dustin was always going on about Eddie’s exercises, and telling him how he can still do anything if he sets his mind to it, that that’s what they always said at science camp.

He means well, but Eddie doesn’t know how to tell him he’s already trying so, so hard.  That this is him at a hundred and ten percent.  That not every problem is something you can fix.

So, Eddie spends a lot of time alone, in his room, exhausted, too tired to even write music or work on campaigns - stuff you can do lying down - half the time.

Except on Thursdays.  Thursdays, Steve drove him to his physical therapy appointments.  It honestly felt kind of pathetic how much he looked forward to sitting in a car mostly in silence for thirty minutes a week.  He tried putting on music sometimes, but Steve always turned it off, and Eddie?  He’s too tired to fight over stuff like that anymore.

And Steve didn’t want to talk, it seemed.  People didn’t usually ignore him when he spoke these days, but Steve almost always did.  And Eddie didn’t care, really.  Again, lowering his expectations.

That was until this Thursday, anyway.  Sitting in silence, Eddie noticed a plastic bag by his feet in Steve’s normally pristine car, and Steve snatched it out of his hands when he tried to pick it up.

“Sorry, I uh, forgot to clean that up,” he said, and stuffed it in the center console.

Parked at the physical therapy place, Steve got out of the car to get Eddie’s chair out, and one of the older women who went here sucked him into a conversation Eddie was half listening to through the closed doors.  He glanced in the rear view mirror, and noted that Steve was facing away from the car.

Eddie looked at the center console, considering.  He popped it open and inspected the bag.  Inside was a stapled sheet of printer paper and a brochure.  Eddie frowned, and stuffed everything back in the bin as the woman left and Steve popped the trunk.

The brochure was information about hearing loss.

Steve helped him out of the car, and held the door for him into the building as usual.  Eddie noted how, despite being unusually quiet, Steve still treated him pretty normally, compared to some of their other friends.

Eddie didn’t get much done during his appointment.

~~~

Edit: Now has a part two; part three; part four; part five; part six (final!)

[prismaticsaltedink]

Scoria and Sakura are best friends! It's so cute when I see the things they do together, and it makes me so beyond happy that they both came to live with me so that they could share their lives with each other. They absolutely insist on it, and does so much good for the other.

I can't imagine how else they could have found happiness if things hadn't worked out exactly as they did. Scoria has basically been Sakura's "emotional support snake" while she worked through things from her past I'll never fully know that caused her a lot of issues with panic and fear. Sakura knows this too, and looks out for her sister, the only one she truly trusts and feels completely safe with.

The moment they wake up they both want each other to snuggle and play with. Scoria loves to be affectionate with both me and her sister who seems to have not had this earlier in her life- but Scoria is showing her how nice it is not only directly but demonstrating with me and Sakura also trying, copying what she has seen her sister do.

Sometimes when one goes to check on the other they'll join in on... I'm not even sure what they were doing. But they had a good time while taking a mandated union break from digging tunnels for the isopods.

So happy I get to share in the adventures of these two best friends! It makes me so happy to see them living their best lives together, and being beyond content snuggled together with their found family.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

There is a cyclic tragedy inherent to Mori's character wherein he's actually a deeply lonely man, but it's mostly because his resolve to do morally reprehensible things and think of people as pieces on the game board is something he prioritizes over his relations with those very same people, and this inevitably pushes them away (for very understandable reasons). And it kind of sucks honestly because the most frustrating thing about Mori is that he 100% has the potential to be a fantastic teacher and mentor, and more than that, I think he loves it! Just look at Beast! But for as long as he decides he needs to be the one to make "the hard calls" to "preserve peace", then Mori will inevitably continue in this cycle of alienating all the people he has a fondness for.

I do feel as though Mori's loneliness is something he views as a necessary sacrifice that he is making for the greater good (and if he is so willing to sacrifice, then Dazai's unwillingness to do the same comes out of left field because - "what do you mean? you're supposed to be just like me!").

Anyways.

Mori voice: "I'm so alone"

Also Mori: *continues to prioritize pure logic over the emotions of his people and himself*

The people: *get rightly angry and/or become extremely traumatized and leave him*

Mori voice: "I did what needed to be done"

Mori: "..."

Mori: "..."

Mori: "I'm so alone"

Sir. You are doing this to yourself.

[clownsuu]

Small detour of what I usually post, but I absolutely wish (other) clown the best of luck during these confusing and almost hopeless times- nobody knows how to deal with such amount of attention in such short amount of time- a blessing and a curse to behold

[nebuladreamz]

The voices are loud and I am WEAK

[ivanttakethis]

So like………………. what was the point of Round 6?? 🤨

[dykedvonte]

I think it’s so ironic that the Pony Express escapes a lot if not all blame in discussion. I can’t even say I am excused from it but it’s just how hard people circle back to the characters alone without considering the environment they were made to be in.

Why would they design a ship where only two of the rooms lock? Not the bathroom? Not the sleeping quarters? We assume that all the companies in the universe are this shallow and careless to their workers but we explicitly know the Pony Express in extra vile. They are fed processed slop pack they can’t even really cook and the ration of those pack is meager at best. They hired and made people with a plethora of conflicting demeanors and beliefs work together on a mission where cohesion is important if not an outright necessity and punish them for not being happy about it. There’s no social protocols, not chain of command other than Captain’s word/choice and the only way to enforce that is with a literal firearm. They don’t allow them to celebrate freely and even took away leisure activities that would make them less stir crazy. They are only allowed a few hours of sleep despite their being no other real responsibilities or work on the ship, no matter the position or its importance. With any crew, with any level of synergy, this was a powder keg waiting for a spark.

I’m not saying characters that made mistakes didn’t make huge ones, but I think part of the horror is that at least for some (this is targeting Jimathan) those mistakes are partly made by a force of the hand. There’s a running theme of lack of choice and being forced into something and the very nature of how The Pony Express expected them to function plays a big part.

[sealrock]

alt look concept for achille because I love playing dress up with him.

[nkim-illustrates]

My INSTAGRAM Account!

Hello! I made an Instagram account! Feel free to follow me there too! Link below.

INSTAGRAM

[bitsbug]

I don't know if this is an exclusively me thing, but I don't think I'll ever get over how just, completely pleasant tumblr is. People leave nice comments on my art & I get to see funny tags in my notifications & I get to make more friends & I'm allowed to gush/infodump as much as I want & there's no pressure to keep up with others ... Even with all the janky design, it's a very calm experience.

[nanamin-nah-nanamine]

Babies first internship tomorrow!!!

[alaynestone]

yeah he gets to "complain" all he wants actually

[mistninja]

Idk man it's crazy that we all have to give a shit about the us because they get to decide who our global evil overlord is going to be and it sucks for you guys it's really scary and i feel for you but sometimes I wish the US could fuck itself and it didn't fuck everyone else too. But alas!

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[digitalpomegranates]

Where was her comfort. Carpenter deserved her comfort; someone like Acantha or SOMEONE please; she was so close and yet she didn't die until it was over

The closest she got to a comfort was the idea that there was more work to do, more people to help, more jobs to be done. And that may be comfort enough but she deserved more