#how do i tag this...?

[carnage-cathedral]

my partner said something that kinda rocked my world

[flogisto]

big fan of stories that, while undoubtedly being about the power of friendship, acknowledge that the power of incredible violence is just as important

the love was there. the love changed everything. the crowbar helped also

[eulers-babe]

for no reason whatsoever here’s a reminder that if you consider yourself a leftist/punk/abolitionist/anarchist/radical in any sort of way and get called into jury duty, you are to become the most square person on earth during the jury questionnaire!!!

don’t be that guy who says fuck the police in the jury questionnaire! that just gets you sent home! if you want to generate change, interact with the case and use your jury vote for good! ESPECIALLY if it’s a high profile case!

[flamboyantly-understated]

maybe this is just me idk

[cafeyote]

me and gang at the haunted house

[rasairui]

Okay I know I posted the first one already but it's a collection now. Anyway don't you ever get so tired of this

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[antennatoheaven]

[itsahotminuteinbetween]

(stupid little thing we wrote last night that is too short to put on ao3: )

“Sunshine, give yourself a little credit.” His voice has a strange, tinny quality. It reverberates the words lightly. “What you’ve done so far is no small feat.”

You squirm under his gaze. He watches you as one watches an ant climb a concrete wall, as if your behavior surprises him. You feel the capillaries behind your skull buckle under the pressure. 

“That’s nice of you to say,” you murmur quietly. “But staying alive doesn’t really take much effort-“

“Everything that you do takes effort,” he tells you firmly. There is no room for argument in his tone. “Blinking takes effort, twitching your hand takes effort, speaking takes effort, learning and breathing takes effort. Staying alive takes effort. The fact that you are still here is no small feat,“ he squeezes your shoulders at this, “no matter what others may have you believe.”

You stare at him with wide eyes. He has not broken eye contact with you throughout the entire tirade, and you search his optics with a rawness you yourself cannot comprehend. 

He meets your disbelieving gaze steadily, refusing to take back his statement, daring you to tell him otherwise. 

You flounder for words like a fish plucked out of water, like a suffocating man given a full breath of air. The concept doesn’t fit. The refutation sits at the well of your throat like a stone, solid and unmoving. You are without words.

His optics keep the same brightness. You can make out the soft light of your reflection in them. 

A small, teetering noise. Once, twice. The stone plunges deep into your chest. Your heart constricts, then seizes. You can’t get enough air. You are gasping, hiccuping, between quick breaths of oxygen. Something hot and wet and ancient spills down your cheeks.

You haven’t registered the Attendant moving closer until his arms are already around you. He pulls you to him, wrapping you gently in his embrace, and you are overwhelmed with emotion. You want to recoil, to vomit, to cough so hard that everything spills out, organs and viscera and feelings and all. 

You want to move closer, to bury your face under the crook of his shoulder, just beneath his curved ruff, and take in the soft scent of butterscotch and chamomile and bittersweet coffee, and let his segmented digits smooth out the fistfulls of ugly rumpled emotion balled up by years of experience. 

Sun tucks you further into him, one hand protectively cupped behind your head. He makes a soft shushing noise, rocking you back and forth. You want to let go of him. You don’t him to let go. You don’t deserve this, don’t deserve either of them, and you wish with all your selfish heart that they never find out. You don’t want to lose this. You have to, you can, but you don’t want to have to. 

You start babbling then, a waterfall of half-coherent sentences tumbling out of you in garbled strings. You love them, you love them and you love them so much it hurts, and you love living so much it aches, and you know it’s not okay, you’re not okay, but you don’t know what you’ll do if everything falls out. You can’t go back. You can, but you don’t want to. You can, but you don’t want to.

And they hold you close, and they rub circles over your back, willing away your persistent storm clouds with the cyclical motions of their hand. You don’t know if you can tell them that it’s no use, that those clouds are yours, that there is no blue sky beneath them. There hasn’t been for a long time, and you don’t know if you can handle shooing them away if nothing comes after. And they smile like they always do, and your matted lashes stick together, and they hold you against them with a tenderness that you don’t know and cannot name. 

They will make the sky for you, they tell you. They will be the heavens above your head, brightening with blues and purples and oranges and yellows, and you will be a star, like you always have been in the sky that is their own.

You plead yourself with your whole heart to believe them.

[hansoeii]

A latte with lots of love!

[marfian]

So act 3 huh

[gl1tchedj3llyfish]

BREAKING NEWS: EMOTIONALLY CONSTIPATED FATHER TRIES TO SHOW AFFECTION

Tiny Tim needs some validation and love.

[vulpinesaint]

quiz enjoyers! i am now inviting you to come create something in my workshop❕

[fox-bright]

I am never going to be able to leave Reddit.

[noodles-and-tea]

Ok but does adult Dick still get star eyes when he sees Superman, as his hero or does he keep his fangirling low key now that he works along side him, as Nightwing?

(I love your art OP thank you for sharing your art with us!)

He keeps it professional on the field but the second superman is out of sight he reverts to fangirling.