#two in present and one in past

[physalian]

When you spend a long time writing in one tense, having to switch back to the other to edit looks like bizzaro English. All my knowledge of grammar rules goes out the window staring at some sentences that look so jank, I've been consulting my mental dictionary of English verb tenses to make sure everything's correct for days now.

[nausikaaa]

i don't think terfs realise that this means the police can now refuse any woman, including cis women, their right to be searched by a female officer, if they think the woman is trans.

back when i had short hair in school, i was often called "young man" by teachers and mistaken for a boy. short hair, that's all it took. even when classmates would laugh, the teachers wouldn't be able to figure out why. i looked enough like a boy.

so if you're a cis woman with short hair, or a flat chest, or broad shoulders, or a square jaw, you could be denied your rights. unless you're willing to somehow prove you're cis, that is. i'm sure we can all imagine what that would entail, and it would be just as invasive as being searched to begin with. and even then, the police could just say that they think you've had gender reasssigment surgery and search you anyway. but hey, it's not as if cops have a history of sexually assaulting women or anything...

protecting women my arse.

[fatehbaz]

weekly navel-gazing update: this week is most consequential event in long time. keyword search: "scared" "is it ok to be scared" "beaten and tortured by the ogre"

[dennisboobs]

:) i certainly have no issue dressing in drag :)

^guy who has no issue dressing in drag btw

glenn said that dennis' drag name is victoria von hemen btw

(Source)

[journey-to-the-attic]

i've been staring at these for too long so i'm just shooing them out the door now. newspaper club demon forms!! (don't look too hard at the wings)

[ringmaster-pixie]

note to self: change bandaids BEFORE meeting any fans. That. That did not go well.

Unrelated but my head hurts :(

I’m kinda bored now that circus shows are postponed. I can probably still do it if I have like- a chair!! Maybe I’m just not cut out for this all in the first place

@mizisua-enthusiast @acrobat-harunii @themanedbish

The autograph incident…

[kvothes]

New follower so maybe you've previously answered this - but how did you get into poetry?

hum, you know, i’m not sure i’ve ever explained it on here. i admire people who choose poetry, who get into it in adulthood—because i didn’t. i have to give a lot of credit to my mother, who raised me and my siblings on a lot of fairy tales and a lot of poetry. children’s poems in abundance, garrison keillor on the radio in the car, recitations of byron and tennyson whenever we were looking at the stars (which was often: my mother teaches about the night sky). there are a number of poems i’ve had memorized since childhood simply because i heard them so many times—sometimes without ever seeing them written down!

so poetry was just another way of engaging with the world. a way of noting the sight of stars or daffodils. i remember irritating my sister by writing a haiku about her when i was, hm, eight? (and i remember that when i learned about haiku in third grade i found them frustrating at first and liked my own poems more.) and then this got encouraged as i went through school, and then it sort of became my Thing, the Thing i was known for was being good at writing, and that kept being my thing and still is. i didn’t get into it; it has been a part of my life from the start. my relationship to it has definitely had stages and gone through many changes—my mother, bless her, doesn’t read any contemporary poetry, which is mainly what i focus on now—but the overarching presence of it has remained constant.

like i said. i have a lot of admiration for people who chose it later in life—i find that nobler. but i’m very goddamn grateful to have had it in my life the way i have.

[flowercrowngods]

🤍🌷 @stevesbipanic and @the-winged-doe asked to see ugly unpolished unrefined words, soo—

cw & tags: past major character death, grief, attempted time-travel fix-it(s), eddie&robin besties || potential wip

Eddie takes a long drag of his cigarette, the biting hot smoke hitting the back of his throat and clawing its way into his lungs, going as deep as he allows and leaving a permanent mark that brings neither relief nor calmness tonight. His fingers shake where they’re pressed to his lips, but the rest of him is unmoving where he sits on the front porch of their new trailer. 

It’s quiet out here. It’s always quiet in Hawkins these days, the city a fucking ghosttown. 

And he knows it’s not because of the one they lost. He knows it’s not because of him. But still the emptiness is stark and the silence oppressivem more so than it ever has been. 

Everyone still looks for him, months later. Dustin still begins to speak, cutting himself off mid-sentence, and Robin still stands with enough space to either side, like she expects him to just show up and invade her space like the home he made for himself in there. 

And somewhere among all that is Eddie. With his very own history. Or, non-history, as it turns out. But history and non-history leave wounds alike, and the memories feel just as real. A small mercy, at the end of the day, for them to feel real when they’re all he has left anymore. 

He takes another drag, not quite exhaling before he obliterates the cigarette and fishes for a new one before the butt even hits the ground. 

Fumbling with the lighter in his pocket, he only gets as far as placing the butt between his lips before a hand snakes into his field of vision to snag it from his mouth. 

“Hey,” he complains halfheartedly but makes no attempt at getting it back, watching instead as Robin comes up to sit beside him, grimacing at the stink of tobacco that must be heavy around him. 

“You’re disgusting,” she says with no real heat behind her words.

Eddie shrugs, because yeah, sure. He’s been called worse things. Robin’s called him worse things. This is her being nice. Her complaininig about his incessant smoking is nothing new. What is new is what she does next, placing the cigarette between her own lips and reaching for the light he’s been holding in a loose grip since she arrived. 

She starts coughing immediately, pulling a face at the disgusting feeling of smoke in her lungs and tobacco on her tongue. But she keeps going. Eddie can only watch in surprise and mild horror. 

“These things’ll kill you,” he says then in an echo of her usual sentiment, aware that he sounds as bewildered as he feels. 

“Well,” Robin says, aiming for casual, but quickly interrupted by a wheeze and a cough that’s almost adorable. “Let them try.” 

Eddie huffs, a pale little smile lingering on his lips as he leans back against the stairs behind him, resting his weight on his forearm to watch her. There is something captivating about her. Eddie always wonders what it is, wants to study her forever. 

Maybe it’s only the lingering traces of Everything Steve Harrington that clings to her every breath, her every move, her every fucking cell, with how much he was a part of her and she of him. Maybe it’s their shared grief that has made Eddie fall a bit in love with her and with the way the moonlight catches in her hair and in the smoke wafting from her cigarette. 

But somehow he refuses to believe that all he loves about her is merely the memory of Steve. 

Robin, in turn, is kind enough to let him stare. Kind enough to let him find out what it is between them. If this friendship is more than a misguided projection of grief and mourning and trauma; more than co-dependence and the obsessive will to keep this one person in your life. This one person who understands. 

After a while of Robin just holding the cigarette between her fingers, becuase no matter how strong her will to self destruct, she never quite got it right with the smoking, Eddie snatches it back before it goes to waste completely. As if pulled in by a string attached to his hollowed out chest, Robin leans back and into him in one smooth motion. It’s too calculated, though, and Eddie can feel how much she sags once she doesn’t have to hold herself up anymore. 

He’ll hold her. It’s fine. She gets to rest if she wants to. God knows she needs it. 

The night is warm for mid-September, but still Robin shakes against him. Eddie holds her closer. 

Silence settles over them, and it’s not an easy one. Silence is never easy anymore, especially with them. He feels so deeply hollow that even the silence echoes in there, creating an ever-present, uncomfortable thrumming of apprehension and anxiety within him. A certain sense of doom, one that can’t quite decide if it’s only an echo itself. 

“I wanna stop time,” Robin says at last, the cigarette long dead between Eddie’s fingers, but he somehow can’t bring himself to flick it away. “I don’t want tomorrow.” 

I don’t ever want a new day. I don’t ever want another tomorrow. I just want Steve. 

They ring in his head still, another echo that only hollows him out further every time it reaches him — Robin, overcome with hysterical grief, screaming and crying, curled up on that hospital floor, her cries quieting down and making Eddie wish she would be loud again, because the quiet was what killed him. The quiet, the whispered words, the declarations that tomorrow could go fuck itself if it came without Steve made him wish, irrationally, desperately, that their roles were reversed. That he could have died and Steve could have lived, and Robin would never have to wish tomorrow never came. 

He’s not entirely sure if she remembers the words, too. If she even said them in this world. 

So he takes a deep breath, breathes away memories and non-histories, feels the heavy weight of his guitar pick hanging around his neck, resting on the scarred flesh of his chest, and tries not to think of the one string left on his acoustic guitar. Tries not to think of his one last attempt. One last try. 

“I know,” he tells her. “Me neither.” 

He peers over her head, lifting his left wrist to check his watch. Ten minutes until midnight. Ten minutes until Steve’s birthday. 

“It’s not tomorrow yet,” he tries lamely, and Robin huffs — the sound wet and bitter and hopeless, making Eddie’s eyes sting. 

“It’s always fucking tomorrow,” she rasps, her voice flat and wavering, and Eddie knows her well enough to know she’s about to cry. And she knows him well enough to do it. 

“I know,” he says again, and reaches for his necklace through his shirt. One more attempt. One more try. One more chance. His eyes burn. 

She turns to him after taking a moment to compose herself, peering up at him through her lashes. 

“Tell me again?” 

His heart falls, the tense apprehension vanishing from the air, bur quickly replaced by something a lot more heavy. Something that looks and smells and feels like grief. 

They both know he’ll do anything she asks. He can’t really bear saying not to her. And not about this, anyway — she’s the only one who knows. 

She’s the one who should have had the chance. 

“Which part?” he asks, holding a new cigarette out for her to light it. She does, and the both follow the flame of the lighter Robin always keeps in her pocket these days. 

She leans forward and takes a drag. Eddie lets her. 

“All of them.“

Eddie sighs, pain welling up inside him, and he closes his eyes against the night sky. “Robbie,” he pleads, but he doesn’t finish his plea. He’ll do it. He’ll do anything she asks. 

But before he starts recounting the tales of how he almost saved Steve Harrington, he finds himself saying something he never thought he’d tell her. 

“There’s one more.” The words hang in the air, and Robin doesn’t react. Has no idea what’s coming; what he’s about to tell her. The guitar pick is heavy on the necklace around his throat. “There’s one more try. One more chance. I’m… I have one more—“ 

He can’t even finish the sentence. Can’t bring himself to say it, lest it all be jinxed forever. He doesn’t want to hope. Wants to carry this weight for all eternity and never think about all those times he failed to save someone he was never meant to save at all. People like Eddie, they’re not made to save anyone. Hell, they can’t even save themselves. 

Steve was supposed to be the one doing the saving. 

And he did. God, he fucking did. But he was never supposed to— 

Cold fingers wrap around his own as Robin fits their hands together. 

“I hate you a little bit for telling me.” 

Eddie nods, trying to focus on the cold hand and the nicotine in his lungs, trying not to let panic and grief and guilt and the heavy weight of one more chance win. “I know.” 

“Hey, Eddie?” Robin says after a while, the silence stretching on, and it’s almost midnight now. “Can you— Would you do something for me?” 

He turns his head, flicking the butt of his cigarette out into the darkness beyond them. “What’s that?” 

“Don’t— Don’t try to, to save him. Don’t— Just… Just maybe, could you celebrate his birthday with him? Make sure he knows he’s… God, make sure he knows he’s loved? Last year, no one really made time on his birthday and we just moved it backwards but God, could you— It’s almost midnight, and—“ 

“Robbie,” Eddie interrupts her, his voice hoarse and wavering, his eyes burning with tears as he tugs her close and holds her to his chest. “You should go. Don’t you wanna…” 

But she’s shaking her head against him with a vehemence that can hardly be misunderstood. 

“No,” she cries, and it’s more of a sob than anything. “I think if I ever saw him again, I’d… I don’t know what I’d do. Burn the whole fucking world to the ground for him or some shit, I can’t— I’d probably just cry all the time and that wouldn’t be helpful, really.” There’s a weak, wet laugh that bubbles out of both of them, and Eddie’s wiping at Robin’s face, drying the tears and making way for new ones to fall. 

“I’d light a fire for you,” Eddie says, the same weak smile on his lips that Robin meets him with now. “Nineteen fucking fires, you hear me?” 

She laughs again, then buries her face in his neck in a way that never quite fit. In a way that Eddie always knew was supposed to be someone else’s neck. 

But he’s not here anymore. And Eddie can’t get him back. No matter how much he aches for it, no matter how much he learned over and over and over again how easy it is to love Steve Harrington and how hard, how fucking impossible it is to lose him. Over and over and over again. 

And to live without him. This one fucking time they all get. It’s not fair. 

And now Robin is asking him to go back one more time and make sure that Steve knows— That he knows. 

Somehow the thought of that feels nobler than any attempt to save him, to bring him back; to rewrite history from a lonely boy’s perspective and hope that no one else is reading along. 

It feels right, too. Fundamentally and suddenly, and with such an intensity that Eddie knows the decision has been made the second he started telling her. 

Still he hesitates. Robin’s sobs have calmed down, and Eddie’s hand finds its way into her hair. 

“Do you really mean it?” 

She nods.

He nods, too, but slower. Like he’s trying to sway himself. Which way, he doesn’t know. 

“Make him happy.” 

“Okay,” he decides after a while, feeling hollow and desperate, but feeling purpose burning underneath his skin again. “One last time.” 

He unwinds his arms from around her and heads inside to grab his acoustic guitar. The last remaining string, badly untuned because he never dared to touch it, stares back at him in both mockery and invitation. A dare. A chance. A promise. 

Outside, Robin is waiting for him, looking anxious. Eddie wants to hug her. He doesn’t, only tightens his grip around the guitar’s neck. 

“Listen, Eddie, if this is goodbye or something—“ 

“It’s a birthday party, Robsie,” he interrupts her, aiming for light, aiming for brave. “I’m coming back right here.” 

“I know,” she rushes to say, taking a step toward him and wringing her hands. It’s endearing. It’s genuine. Eddie really is a little in love with her. “But, y’know, you don’t mess with time, and I don’t know what all you already changed before and I don’t wanna know but… If this is goodbye, if something happens, I just wanna tell you that I’m gonna miss you. And that I think you’re really cool. And that Steve’s— he’s really missing out, okay. Okay?” 

Eddie breathes, taking in her words and letting them soak into his body, his every last fibre. 

“Okay,” he smiles. “Thank you. You’re… I’m kind of in love with you, Robin Buckley. So there had better be no change in the universe, ‘cause that would really suck.” 

They smile at each other, Eddie with his guitar and Robin with her lighter, and somehow this feels like a deja-vu. The antithesis to a moment forever burned into his memory.

Make him pay. 

Make him happy. 

Eddie tugs on his necklace and plays the string before he can think about it too hard; before he can decide otherwise. 

Distantly, he hears the church bells announcing midnight as the world around him fades. 

🤍 permanent tag list gang: @skiddit @inklessletter @aringofsalt @hellion-child @cryptic-cryptid @hotluncheddie @gutterflower77 @auroraplume @steddieonbigboy @n0-1-important @stevesjockstrap @puppy-steve @izzy2210 @itsall-taken @mangoinacan13 @madigoround @pukner @i-amthepizzaman @swimmingbirdrunningrock @hammity-hammer @stevesbipanic @bitchysunflower @estrellami-1 @goodolefashionedloverboi @awkwardgravity1 @devondespresso @bookworm0690 (lmk if you want on or off, for this story or permanently)

[mollysunder]

Maybe I'll say something longer later but I love sinco because I LOVE when characters get divorced and don't get back with their ex. I love when people in stories change to the point that they can't go back to the way things used to be. I love when characters can't love their ex like they used to. They don't fit anymore, they've changed too much.

I don't care if the change was good or bad, I care that it happened. I want to see a couple that's rooted in the present and build a future for themselves together. If they make eachother worse? Sure, whatever, just keep going and don't stop til someone dies.

[maya-chirps]

There's gotta be some piece about how the fandomization of the conclave has affected the initial response the public had about the cardinals and the new pope or something like how people did treat the conclave was strange and like I get it was spillover from the conclave 2024 fandom, it's still odd to me in hindsight and heck even right now

[goldensunset]

you know how in school they’d always make you (still make you) like choose random topics to give class presentations on while everyone politely clapped even though they didn’t really care about your powerpoint on fungi or whatever bc they’re too worried about getting their own over with. tumblr is like if every single person in the room was paying full attention and was absolutely stoked about it and gave you wild applause and wolf whistles at the end. you can just get on stage and talk about coelacanths and you become a celebrity for a few minutes. like on tumblr it’s on your own terms so it’s like oh snap education is actually supposed to be fun

[sleepysak]

WAIT I CAN FINALLY SHOW OFF THIS CROCHET BLANKET I MADE FOR @cantodelcolibri & @halohampster !!!!!

im VERY proud of it and im SO happy i got to give them such a gift 💕

[residentialsinyomakai]

NO BECAUSE THEY BOTH LIKE PUNS DJJDSJ i need to go to bed

(Frowns I did NOT get notified for this, glad I checked >:( )

WAHAHDDJCFD UNFORTUNATELY THEY DO...They decided to make it everyone else's problem too, I fear...

Ok man. Sure. Whatever. Throwing tomatoes at you both, awful/j

[nenoname]

Seeing that criticism directed on NMM:

Tbh an idea at the back of my mind to rework that Mabel subplot is... Actually substitute it by readapting the Wendy+Stan B-plot, by having them break into the NW Manor. Then perhaps the plot would be the girls trying to cover up for Wendy and Stan and not be tossed out or accused for inviting them in. And it could also tie in neatly between Wendy and her ancestor

On the other hand tho, NMM is already very tight with a very big revelation of the Northwest crimes and other crazy things going on. So I guess thats why the writers went with a rather basic B plot for the girls.

unfortunately i think the writers were set on having this be the last regular ep before nwhs, with an excuse to have the kids out of the house and for stan not to have a subplot... until mcgucket shows up at the last minute and it drops that "oh. this is actually the first time stan hasn't shown up at all. it's all happening next episode."

but yeah honestly that idea would've been soooo sweet cos wendy also missing that tie to her ancestor really does bug me! can't believe she had to be excluded from the ep for encouraging more violence kahsdkjhsak

i wouldn't mind a lighter b plot but the fact that they had to resort to the girls bickering over some guy (especially when they know we're tired as hell of mabel's crush of the week plots!!!!!)..... and sure it's like "yay grenda gets to be the focus and have a 'win'" but urgh does it really have to be at this cost......

(people also pointing out that it's a bummer that mabel isn't part of the last regular ep's main plot and we only get the stanchurian candidate to have the mystery twins properly working together in a non-apocalyptic situation after this and that's them just mind-controlling stan all ep 😭)

[dapperrokyuu]

If Hyuna and Luka dont have a duet in present time, we would HAVE to at least get one of them in the past.

[misiahasahardname]

in drama today we found an old recording of some half-improv in S3 on the pupil intranet and OHHHHH MY GOD i forgot how AWFUL it was 😭😭😭 actual shitshow