#we all have our issues

[sharry-arry-odd]

"We all have our issues. I have a spare tire around my middle. His father is Satan. Nothing that can't be worked out if we try hard enough."

The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune

[linniewrites]

wahoi chapter 1 is so so fluff n cute :( id love to see more of them in the future!! ><

aahh thank you so much! I’m really glad you like it<3

[stinkybrowndogs]

I mean I get that’s it’s not the only contributing factor, but I’m curious exactly how much of the shelter dog over-population problem is actually due to poor dog ownership/management vs the housing crisis and economical stress. I’d be willing to bet by investing in social programs that give people the resources they need to care for their pets (cough cough affordable and free housing cough cough) that the amount of pets in shelters would dramatically drop. We can all sit here pointing fingers and screaming at each other until we are blue in the face, but if the owners basic needs are not being met, how can we hold them to a basic standard for their pets?

[knifearo]

ultimately when it comes to shipping and fandom space treatment of aspec characters i just don't accept "aro/ace people can still date/have sex" as an answer from nonaspecs. like yeah. mhm. okay. now i think we both know that you're not saying that out of real interest in the diversity of aspec experiences. so you can turn in your seventeen-page essay on why and how you plan to examine this character's aspec identity within the context of a romantic or sexual relationship complete with evidence from canon and peer reviews from multiple aspec people within the next week or i'm putting you in the pit from the edgar allen poe story

[inkskinned]

you were raised in comparison.

it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.

you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.

you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.

what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.

it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.

you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.

you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?

a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.

you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.

it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.

something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.

[arsenicflame]

happy "our marriage is never gonna recover from this" day

[izzystizzys]

Fox tags along on a smuggling bust one (1) time and subsequently wishes he’d never been decanted.

Well, he’s arrested the perp a lot more than just one time, actually, but that very first tackle into a chokehold and electrocuffs more than sufficed to turn the fates against him - the fates, and Cody, the insufferable twat. They’re not actually even batchmates, the lot of them, and going by numbers Fox was decanted long before them (long as in seconds or minutes, no one actually knows), but Seventeen put them all in a training room together and then stupid kriffing Kote looked him up and down, nodded, and hasn’t stopped calling him vod’ika since.

“Why is one of the Republic’s most wanted criminals asking to speak to you, vod’ika?”, Cody asks, without any preamble, almost making Fox cut the holocall on principle. He would, if General Kenobi wasn’t right there next to the little shit. “And why do I not like his tone?”

Fox has to resist the urge to close his eyes and scream, making do with a deep sigh instead. Force curse the day Cody decided to adopt-nap him, and Wolffe following suit immediately. “Weequay, shifty eyes, stupid fucking pirate bandana?”

Cody’s eyes narrow suspiciously, and Kenobi’s eyebrows raise simultaneously. It’s more than a little creepy.

Fox rolls his eyes so hard he sees stars. “Tell him he can go space himself, unless he wants me to do it for him. And then tell him that if he sends me fuzzy fucking socks again I might just hunt him down and do it anyways.”

Past the slide of the door, Thorn’s unmistakable cackle reaches Fox. And Cody, going by the narrowing of his eyes. “Don’t tell him that, ori’vod, he’s probably into that”, Thorn calls out, gleefully, and Force Fox really should’ve kept this to himself in the first place.

He would’ve, actually, but the constant stream of strange presents into Guard headquarters is hard to miss. It was Alderaanian chocolates, last week, which Fox pawned off on the Shinies. A box from a store with a blacked out label before that, which he launched out the window with burning ears before Thire could get a closer look at it.

“Actually”, Thorn continues, happily, “I don’t think it matters much if you do tell him anything - it’s not like the Commander has been the most graceful courtée, and that hasn’t done anything to discourage our favorite smuggler.”

“Marshall Commander”, Fox hisses, because he’s a pissy bitch, and then, because all professionalism has gone out the window anyways, “This is why Stone is my favourite.”

Thorn’s wounded gasp is lost over Kenobi’s thoughtful hum, and Cody’s patented I’m-going-to-do-something-incredibly-stupid-and-you-can’t-stop-me glare. “That would explain why we have Hondo Ohnaka accosting our troopers about your flavour preferences concerning fruit candies. But the one asking to speak to you is Cad Bane, Marshall Commander.”

The string of curses Fox lets out at that is loud enough to have Mauler stick his head in the com room to ask if everything is alright, and Thorn roll on the floor with howling laughter.

Force curse the day he ever slapped electrocuffs on Hondo Ohnaka, and double-curse the one he threw Cad Bane to the floor with a scissor leg takedown.

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

another crazy thing about having been a prostitute is to realise how little difference there has been in how many of my male sexual partners have treated me and how sex buyers treated me, especially since i was an escort where often you get paid to simulate dates. i even had sex buyers beg to see me again meanwhile men in real life often ghost or keep me at armlength especially when there are no romantic feelings involved.

this is why i dont want to have sex without feelings and care for each other anymore - it almost feels like im prostituted all over again, bad in a different way because i actually like the men i sleep with and want them to like and appreciate me too and consider my desires (dont get me wrong obviously prostitution is always worse than sleeping with men im actually attracted to and want to have sex with but it hurts in a different way to realise that ive often also been just a means to get off to them).

like for example, since sex buyers often pay for time instead of sex act (or both combined), they want to get the most out of their money and do the most to you in the set time - but as a prostitute you want to get it over with as soon as possible and it feels like torture. meanwhile so many heterosexual men who dont pay for sex try to reach orgasm as soon as possible and then its over, lmao. like the direct comparison between having been prostituted and having voluntary sex with men will make you feel absolutely crazy but it also made me realise why i thought i didnt even like sex for so long. because i was always treated like an object, not a person. men will do the bare minimum to keep you around for sex if they dont see you as wife material (and then they also do just little more than the bare minimum up until they reached their goal of marriage then usually start neglecting their wives as we know).

which brings home the point that we need a cultural and legal shift. as long as men treat sex as masturbation with another person, and women as objects or tools, there will always be demand for prostitution, and there will always be (privileged) women deluded into thinking „might as well get paid for it“ or even „at least now im being appreciated“, paradoxically. thats how bad heterosexual men treat women in bed.

this also emphasises that yes, #allmen, because even the men who dont buy sex contribute to the system of sexual exploitation with their behaviour. the reason ive heard men say most often why they dont buy sex is not care for women, but pride. they can convince women to get them off so why pay for it? same with porn, they dont stop watching because they care about women, but because their dick stopped working. and then of course you have a lot of sex buyers who dont even want to do the bare minimum mentioned above so they buy sex to go immediately to using a womans body with no „hassle“. the state of heterosex is fucking dire because i know im by far not the only one experiencing this.

and even before prostitution i could feel it but not really put my finger on it, now with this horrible experience and a radical aligned feminist view on things i realise and its really dark. and dont even try talking to men about their inadequacies in bed because they will act like youre the problem and an annoying nag for voicing desires.

[fromtheseventhhell]

I love how people are only ever interested in defending Arya's right to be weird-looking. It's never defending her intelligence from people who claim she's incapable of thinking for herself, highlighting her importance to the plot and refusing to see her as just a prop, acknowledging how much of her story gets stolen and given to other characters, talking about her trauma or how often it gets erased and overlooked, seeing her as more than just an attack dog/bodyguard, etc. Nope. It's just a "why can't people let Arya be ugly/unconventional looking? :(" post every other week because people are, for whatever reason, obsessed with how Arya is visually perceived. One of the most misinterpreted characters yet the issue is only ever with her being portrayed as "too pretty" or the wrong "type" of pretty. This fandom will entirely rewrite a character's motivations, values, and role in the story to the point that they consider references to canon "hate" but! The true injustice to canon is we acknowledge that she is described as pretty several times. Arya simply existing as her pretty, important, and non-conforming self is too complex and confusing for people to comprehend 😔.

[humming-fly]

This 4th of July I’m stealing the patriotism euphoria that’s usually associated with assholes idolizing the worst attributes of this country because fuck ‘em I live here too and remembering the things this country actually got Right is an important exercise when trying to rally anyone to want to defend it in November SO putting my money where my mouth is I’ll start easy and say I really like National Parks!! It’s rad how many of them there are and how they’re actual set up to preserve some of the most beautiful wild areas in our country while still letting people visit to enjoy and experience nature!! (Less important but I love how they put national parks on the quarters I think that’s real fun)

Feel free to add on if something speaks to ya!

[shadowqueendiangelo]

Not Grover understanding both Percy and Annabeth SO WELL that he was able to give them a whole ass therapy session at the end I am LIVING

[intheholler]

I'm a many-many-generations-Appalachian, and when I was a teenager, everyone assumed I'd leave, so I thought I should. And then when I did leave, someone called my mama and told her I was the most homesick child they'd seen in decades, that she should come get me. She didn't, because she wanted me to succeed that badly, but I got myself back to Appalachia PDQ. And then I never left again, because Appalachia is where I belong.

I know the stereotypes, but we can be happy here, too. I've got a good life, with a well-paying job I love, a silver anniversary spouse, wonderful children, and a nice house. My mama lives with us and that's just how we like it. Our quietly queer little family is proud to be Appalachian, and our children learn our history, like the recorded story from their great-grandfather who saw the Baldwin-Felts get off the train in Matewan.

Are there problems in Appalachia? Sure. But that doesn't mean we are all living in misery. Appalachian lives are more than poverty porn and strip mines and drugs and Dew mouth. We have our own festivals and music and art and foods and books to celebrate our shared heritage. We have our own holidays, too, like the first day of deer season. There can be a lot of joy in our Appalachian lives, if we let it.

And of course, we can all join together to remind folks that #heaintfromaroundhere ;)

.

[necrotic-nephilim]

au for the ask game: omegaverse where omega dick grooms ealry-presented alpha tim in "prodigal son"

dick is going through one of the worst periods of his life after breaking up his wedding with kory (maybe she, like a tamaran, couldn't understand the secondary gender of humans and during the breakup said something bad about dick as an omega) and then tim appears with stars in his eyes and believes that dick is the best human being on earth.

bonus points if the society has progressed enough and mating with children is strictly prohibited, even if they present early.

for the ask game!

gdfdsfdgbf anon i'm kissing you on the mouth. this is my favorite flavor of Omegaverse, especially for DickTim. i'm a proud believer in the dominant omega!Dick/submissive alpha!Tim propaganda. also a big fan of how terrible Dick's life is during Batman: Prodigal. and i just. man i love the Omegaverse concepts of alien characters like Kory not understanding secondary gender and it causing rifts.

what's fun about the Prodigal era is just how isolated Tim and Dick are during it. Bruce is off.. being fucking Bruce, and Alfred is also away, so it's really just Dick and Tim for a bit. they've always worked with each other and have a repertoire, but a lot of the conversations they have about each other's pasts are happening for the first time. so it's such a fun time for Tim to present as an alpha. and of course, his hero worship for Dick (especially after having to deal with Jean-Paul) makes it so *easily* for Dick to just. slip his fingers into. Dick's isolated from the Titans, he's lost Kory, he's on the rocks with Bruce, and so there's just something so nice about this kid who still holds utter faith in him. he doesn't see any of the societal stereotypes about omegas in Dick, he just sees Dick. and then, he presents and he trusts *Dick* with that information, lets Dick guide him through the most awkward parts of presenting. how can Dick not want to take advantage of that? a young, fresh alpha who he's currently in charge of mentoring, with no one to stop Dick or notice what he's doing.

it's still tricky, of course. Dick not only has to make sure he's not breaking the law, but he also has to keep Tim from noticing, immediately. Tim's hero worship crush is the most obvious thing about him, but that doesn't mean Dick can jump on him. it needs careful time and planning. Bruce might not be around, but Tim still has his dad who could notice the scent of an omega on Tim. so instead of marking Tim, Dick starts marking himself with Tim's scent. it starts small, using the same blanket Tim has used in the Batcave, grabbing a couple of Tim's oversized hoodies and wearing them. things with plausible enough deniability, but enough that Tim starts to subconsciously associate his scent with Dick. when he can't smell himself on Dick he feels like something is wrong. and when he's finally brave enough to bring it up to Dick, Dick is able to spin it on Tim. make it seem like Tim is the one coming onto Dick, assuming things. Dick plays it cool, pretending to be shocked by the idea of it. he gently explains to Tim what he could be implying about their relationship and Tim is *mortified*, apologizing and tripping over himself to try and fix it. but Dick just calms him down, promises Tim he isn't mad bc hey, Tim is a fresh alpha and he presented so *young*, it's difficult to navigate.

so you have Dick offering to help navigate this with Tim and using it to get closer and closer to Tim. grooming him into the type of alpha that Dick wants in a relationship. anytime there's behavior in Tim that Dick doesn't like, Dick can pretty easily redirect by dropping comments about how Tim just "can't help" acting like this because of his alpha nature, which instantly makes Tim scramble to fix it. Dick likes Tim for who he is, this cute, sweet kid who's such a handsome little alpha. but he's rough around the edges and Dick puts it on himself to smooth those edges over. he's playing the long game with this, and he doesn't mind waiting it out. and Tim can't complain when Dick pushes the boundaries, making him uncomfortable, because he doesn't want Dick to think he's a *pervert* for thinking that way. it's one big mind game.

i do think, Dick would cave and sleep with Tim before Tim's an adult. he's smart enough not to mate Tim, and he's definitely smart enough not to sleep with Tim enough for Bruce, a beta, to notice what's going on. but when some sort of sex pollen incident triggers a simultaneous heat and rut for Dick and Tim respectively, it's the most convenient in that Dick needs. Dick acts like they're doing this out of necessity, that he's giving in even though he doesn't want to, just because of how Tim's acting under the aphrodisiac. it gives him complete control over the sex because Tim is so desperate to not give in to his "alpha ways" and hurt Dick by being violent or animalistic. Dick gets to pin Tim down, possibly even tie him down "for his own safety" and ride him until Tim is a crying mess under Dick. after the first time, if Dick orchestrates more scenarios where they end up in "fuck or die" situations well, it's not like anyone's noticing. at the height, he even manages to have sex with Tim without that sort of pretense, he just has to act like he can tell how needy Tim is and sigh, pretending he's the one doing Tim a favor "just this once" by letting Tim fuck him.

in the end, it's a long con that pays off. it takes until Battle for the Cowl but Tim's a legal adult. and Dick is Batman again, which really does feel like everything coming full circle. part of the reason Dick makes Damian Robin is to remove the pretense of Tim and Dick being sidekick and mentor. it makes it easier for Dick to insist he really does see Tim as a full adult (even if he doesn't, deep down. Tim is still a fresh teenager, just because it's legal doesn't make it any less morally questionable) and something more than Robin. Dick makes a comment about them being mates so offhandedly it makes Tim stop in his tracks. Tim, who's about to go on his Red Robin arc and isolate himself, now has a chance at being mates with his hero. a chance to smooth over their differences and be actual equal partners. of course, Tim jumps on it. maybe deep down, after they mate and Dick is all too pleased with himself, it clicks for Tim that this was all a set-up. he puts the pieces together while they're cuddling in bed. he knows deep down that Dick will never *actually* see him as an equal. but, the deed is done and if Tim is going to give himself over to anyone, of course it's going to be Dick Grayson.

[shiraishi--kanade]

I remember hearing a video essayist for a different fandom saying a lot of people are having wild takes on the media in question because it's becoming more common to get information about the books second-hand than to actually read the books. And I think something like this happened with pjsk. Except worse because we don't even have video essays we have tiktoks. And that's why We're Like This

[batcavescolony]

I was talking to an idiot and I need validation.

[sparklingchim]