courtlymayhem - Tumblr blog

[courtlymayhem]

"How can you forget sticky notes, they're right on your desk! Right in front of you! Are you a toddler with no concept of object permanence?"

No I'm just ADHD and the Brain Noises are at such a constant cacophony it's like there's a 500 player orchestra constantly playing and each instrument is playing a different songs at the same time in my head that I most importantly can't shut off.

Try remembering a sticky note exists when the trumpets are blasting star wars, the violins are playing never gonna give you up, the flutes are playing livin la vida loca and the drums think they're a christmas marching band.

"Surely it's not that much input!"

I am at my desk in my bedroom right now. I hear my parents talking in the other room, my cat snoring behind me, the water was turned on and off in the kitchen, the fan is running, the ac is on, there's shuffling of slippers, I can smell my candle, I heard a car go by, the computer is buzzing and it's fan is running, I can hear the fishtank in the other room because my bedroom door is open. The clicking of the keyboard is satisfying but loud. I look up and see everything on my desk. I taste the hot coco i just ate, I hear the fridge beeping, I heard my stomach make a Noise, my over the ear headphones make a soft shhhh sound wqhen they're not playing music, my tinnitus rings constantly, my neck crackled when I looked to the left.

That input DOESN'T SHUT OFF.

Y'all with executives that can function? They're in a nice quiet boardroom with pretty windows and a quiet meeting.

MY executives are forest critters in ties and glasses meeting in the Denny's parking lot at 4am to go over peanut butter recipes and that song we heard when we were 8 and can't EVER let go. What important stuff happened today? I dunno, the raccoon disguised as the board meeting leader ATE the file.

[courtlymayhem]

Ok I want to say something controversial

But you are responsible for your own safe spaces. You can block tags, block words, block people.

“But i thought fandom was supposed to be a safe space” —yeah you have to curate it.

Unfortunately one persons’s safe space may be another persons’ trigger. That’s ok. Simply block them, block the tag, block the word etc. They can do the same for you.

Maybe I’m just out of touch, but I’ve been around since the days of “don’t like, don’t read” and that’s a good philosophy. If it squicks you, scroll past. If it causes you anxiety or upset, block! Plenty of people are responsive if you ask them to tag an upsetting trigger. And if they’re dicks about it, block em.

[courtlymayhem]

It’s a hard and nerve-wracking job that many won’t claim due to feelings of inadequacy. Let mother characters be fulfilled in the lives they lead (and let’s stop pretending it’s something no one would choose for themselves, plenty of people have parenthood as a goal. It shouldn’t be cheapened if it happens to be a woman who chooses it).

I have come to a conclusion. I hate the term "reduced to motherhood" or "only a mother" when applied to a character. There is nothing reductive about motherhood. There's nothing "only" about being a mother. Or a father, for that matter.

If motherhood is written as reductive or flat, then you know what? That's bad writing, cuz motherhood is anything but.

[courtlymayhem]

the idealized version of my tomorrow self will fix this

[courtlymayhem]

I went outside to the real world and there was nuance. it was fucking terrifying stay safe y'all

[courtlymayhem]

Character idea that I had at some point: A dance teacher who had to give up his own highly promising career as a performer after an injury, and now makes his living giving lessons to children. He comes off as stern, serious, and frighteningly strict, and even some of the parents have a hard time believing that the kids genuinely like him and enjoy the lessons. Which, to be fair, are frightening to watch with no context of what this is about.

The children go through their practices with downright eerie, automation-like, coordinated synchrony, with stern and focused looks on their faces, while the teacher circles them, observing and correcting, brandishing his cane like a weapon and every once in a while dramatically lamenting about how "you little vermin can't do anything right", and occasionally the music stops and the only sounds coming from the studio are of kids running and screaming while their teacher bellows about teaching them a lesson.

This, however, is all just method. He started the first lesson with the children by proposing a game: How about they play flea circus, where he is the cruel evil ringmaster and they are all his poor suffering little fleas. One of the girls starts crying, protesting that she doesn't want to be a flea. Well, how about mice? Mice are cute. The children accept these terms, and ever since they've spent dance lessons playing Evil Circus.

For reasons beyond adult comprehension, children of a certain age really love playing pretend in a setting where everything is Dark And Horrible And The Worst, and Evil Mouse Circus is exactly that. And whenever he picks up that the kids are starting to get too genuinely nervous or agitated, that's when he goes "that's it I'm going to beat all of you" which is their cue to take a break to run around screaming, while he chases them. He won't catch them and isn't even trying to, the kids just need to let the nervous energy out.

It looks horrible to an outside observer, but the kids are having an excellent time playing circus mice.

[courtlymayhem]

Apparently there was some kind of race scheduled at a local park or something so I've been trying to avoid the main trail but a little while ago when I had to cross near it I overheard the following shouted exchange

Higher feminine voice: woo, look at you go! You're jogging! Keep it up!

Lower masculine voice (panting): you know it! Last place is still a place, baby!

And goddamn if that didn't rewire my brain a little bit.

Last place is still a place, baby.

[courtlymayhem]

pfffft, you call yourself a supervillain but you’re STILL using chrome? dumbass! everyone knows REAL evildoers switch to firefox!!

[courtlymayhem]

Reblogging so I can find it again, this is a beautifully written piece

A faerie introduces himself. Then, holding out a hand, asks, “And your name, please?”

And, like a fool, you give it to him.

[courtlymayhem]

Random, but a really handy way to make things seem creepy or wrong in horror is to make them incongruously neat or clean:

In the middle of a horrific battlefield, you find one corpse laid aside neatly, straightened and arranged, its arms crossed neatly across its chest

As you walk through the garden, you gradually realise that the oddness you’ve been noticing about the trees is that they are all perfectly symmetrical

As you move through the abandoned house, you realise that suddenly that there’s no dust in this room, no dirt or cobwebs

You hear hideous noises coming from behind a locked door, screams and pleas, and visceral sounds of violence. When you manage to break down the door, there is no one there, and the room is perfectly spotless

In the middle of a horrific battlefield, a hollow full of churned mud and blood, you find five corpses cleanly dismembered, each set of limbs or parts neatly laid out in their own little row

You witness a murder, a brutal, grisly killing that carpets the area in blood. When you return in a blind panic with the authorities, the scene is completely clean, and no amount of examination can find even a drop of blood

You run through the night and the woods with a comrade, pulling each other through leaves and twigs and mud as you scramble desperately towards freedom. When you finally emerge from the forest, in the grey light of dawn, you turn to your companion in relief, and notice that their clothes are somehow perfectly clean

You hand a glass of water to your suspect, talking casually the whole while, and watch with satisfaction as they take it in their bare hand and take a drink. There’ll be a decent set of prints to run from that later. Except there isn’t. There are no prints at all. As if nothing ever touched the glass

You browse idly through your host’s catalogue, and stop, and pay much more attention, when you realise that several items on a dry list of acquisitions are ones you’ve seen before, and it slowly dawns on you that each neat little object and number in this neat little book are things that belong (belonged?) to people you know

Neatness, particularly incongruous neatness, neatness where you expect violence or imperfection or abandonment, or neatness that you belatedly realise was hiding violence, or neatness that is imposed over violence, is incredibly scary. Because neatness is not a natural thing. Neatness requires some active force to have come through and made it so. Neatness implies that the world around you is being arranged, maybe to hide things, to disguise things, to make you doubt your senses, or else simply according to something else’s desires. Neatness is active and artificial. Neatness puts things, maybe even people, into neat little boxes according to something else’s ideals, and that’s terrifying as well. Being objectified. Being asked to fit categories that you’re not sure you can fit, and wondering what will happen to the bits of you that don’t.

Neatness, essentially, says that something else is here. Neatness where there should be chaos says that either something came and changed things, or that what you’re seeing now or what you saw then is not real. Neatness alongside violence says that something came through here for whom violence did not mean the same thing as it does to you.

Neatness, in the right context, in the right place, can be very, very scary

And fun

[courtlymayhem]

😘sexy💯 independent😈✨free-thinker😝🎱 roger, roger!🙊real🏅yes, we are hooman😇💫all your base are belong to us👍🙌🏼💋

[courtlymayhem]

Not arguing that auras and remote prayer work (homeopathy needs more study, but some of the remedies work. Others don’t, but the few that work for me are Godsends), but major corporations don’t care about reducing healthcare cost. Only small businesses and specific leaders even try for that, larger corporations actively hike the prices for inexpensive services to raise profit margins (see EpiPens and insulin for prominent examples).

[courtlymayhem]

do not mourn the loss of a limiting title but embrace being a worm who no longer boxes wormself into a singular category

[courtlymayhem]

Do You Remember Me?

“They tell me you’re the king now,” Feanor said with bright eyed curiosity. “Is it always one of your responsibilities to welcome the newly re-embodied?”

The first sentence, Finarfin had to admit, was not wholly unexpected.

… Even if it was said with far more cheerful curiosity than he had heard from his half-brother in - a long time.

“Not always,” he admitted. “Time would not permit it. But I was eager to see you again.”

Anxious. Furious. Bewildered.

But eager.

Feanor’s face brightened. “Again? We knew each other?”

Finarfin’s cautious smile froze. He turned, very slowly, to face Namo where he sat on his throne of judgement.

Keep reading

[courtlymayhem]

*screaming at fanfic* CAN WE JUST HAVE SOME BESTIES CONTENT

fr tho im not even aro/ace and even my romantic heart is tired of the over saturation of romantic plot lines I just want some stories about friends being friends (who else has a large friend group of singles and wants content of our fave characters also doing things as singles) im not saying there cannot be romance just nothing more than a side plot with FRIENDSHIP taking center stage

my many thanks to the few authors i read who do this you are so under appreciated and deserve so much love for prioritizing friend/family/found family over romance even if that wasnt your main goal

[courtlymayhem]

rarely does the empire admit loss. imperial assets do not simply vanish- they are reassigned, or sent back to shipyards for total system upgrades. or, when it is beneficial to claim so, martyred for the glorious cause. against the shouts of rebellious witnesses, straight-backed officials are accustomed to repeating one message, over and over again: you are misinformed. that ship is still on patrol.

sometimes she will appear on the scanners first. a massive object impossibly near and closing fast. but when the panicked officers on the bridge turn to look out the viewport, they see nothing. only the dizzying swirl of hyperspace, or the emptiness of the vacuum.

they will alter their course anyway.

sometimes she appears right of the bow in plain sight, distinct markings as clear as the day she shot off on an unknown vector. the vessel’s commander, enchanted by the sight, can only stare as the two ships draw closer and closer. finally, the technician’s voice will cut through, urging them to turn back, insisting frantically that there is nothing on the scanners. nothing there at all. and if they are sensible, the commander will give the order and refuse to look back, struggling to ignore the sensation of being watched by an unwavering pair of glowing red eyes.

no one knows what happens to those ships whose commanders are not sensible.

the empire does nothing to dispel the rumor surrounding that particular vessel- it’s a convenient piece of propaganda that requires little to no effort to maintain and is wondrously effective against the weak-willed rank and file of the galaxy. but even so, the hands of the most highly decorated members of formidable galactic empire can be observed to tremble ever so slightly when they profess what they desperately hope is a lie:

the chimaera is still on patrol.

[courtlymayhem]

This. And presuming a female is “lesser” for not being the warrior or adventurer gets on my nerves. No one has every skill or ability, so why must fantasy women? Some will be generals, some will be home-makers, some explorers, some artists. It’s not really allowing for the character to have a choice if only one is correct. It’s the inverse of “barefoot in the kitchen with a baby on her hip” as the only “correct” option. I know some absolutely wonderful and strong ladies whose dream is to raise children. They are strong, talented, well-educated, and have their pick of careers. They see that as a someday, because they want to work with children now (one has been researching fostering as a single mom since she isn’t in a relationship but wants to start making things better for foster kids without waiting).

When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.

But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.

As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.

The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork.  In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.

That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.