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On Isolation

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people will write the most rude, insulting shit loaded with oppressive dogwhistles about a group of people, but use the rhetorical framing of “why I don’t date people of this group” so that way when anyone confronts them on their extremely obvious prejudice and habitual participation in the collective public humiliation of an oppressed group, they can feign victimhood and and go “this group wants to force me to have sex with them!”

this shit is so transparent & I think we need to collectively stop humoring this move by carefully explaining that, no, we are not trying to make anyone have sex with anyone, and linking to social theory on desirability politics & etc.

I honestly believe this rhetorical move is constructed (and repeated en mass) with the intention of baiting marginalized people into this exact conversation so that the supremacist’s audience will go “wow this group is constantly talking about how they’re not sexually abusive.. why would anyone deny it that much unprompted unless they were hiding something.”

like this is scapegoat farming. it is not good faith, it is bait. don’t bite it.

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headcanon that charles is just a little bit near-sighted. he got glasses when he was little, but his friends made fun of them so he never wears them. and it's not a big deal, it really isn't, but sometimes he has to squint to read things. crystal calls him an old man and edwin isn't concerned because that's just how charles is, and everything is totally fine until he swings his bat just wrong and the demon is freed for just a second long enough to slash edwin, and after charles obliterates it ("charles, it's dead, i promise, you can stop now, it's okay, i promise-"), he's forced to contend that edwin's skin is burnt and that is on charles' flesh.

later, when the night is low and edwin's head is buried in some old book, his flesh longsince healed, charles asks crystal, hushed, how he could find out what glasses he needs. edwin overhears, and it takes everything in him to not interrupt, because he knows how ghosts could manage that, but he also knows that charles needs to figure this out without him.

in the end, it's fucking ridiculous. crystal goes to the optometrist and when they have her try different lenses, charles will shove his face over hers. it's weird and uncomfortable and they both hate it, and then they have to take the glasses to tragic mick, and they have to trade for a tincture that'll make them work on ghosts, and it's a whole fucking thing, and the entire time, charles just feels awful, because he knows edwin would never say anything against him, would never be cruel, but still, he can't help but think, and-

and then, charles does show up to the office in his glasses, thin and crimson and rectangular, and when edwin sees him, he offers a smile, not even blinking twice, before returning to research. crystal and niko follow his lead, because they'd follow edwin anywhere, because edwin knows what to do when it comes to charles.

later, when they're alone, the girls asleep and the moon bright and burning, edwin says they look nice on him. charles smiles so much his cheeks hurt and asks if they look nerdy. edwin tilts his head and says he doesn't think he can exactly critique charles on that front, and besides, there are worst things to be.

as the dawn fades away, charles thinks- yeah. maybe there are worse things.

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I find Crystal and Charles' relationship super interesting (relationship in general, I'm not really talking about shipping here).

Because on one hand-- she IS noticing things Edwin let go unspoken, and Charles DOES have some deep seated anger and grief.

But on the other hand, she is ABSOLUTELY projecting her own issues and traumas with violent men onto Charles. Like, he has some anger he hasn't dealt with, for sure, but he doesn't have Anger Issues in the way she claims. We never once see him him angrier than a situation calls for, in my opinion.

In the Devlin house, he's seeing a man brutally murder a woman and children. I ALSO would have tried to intervene.

With the Night Nurse, she had just mentally tortured both Charles and Crystal, and was threatening to essentially send Edwin back to Hell. Again, I for sure would have murdered her.

Charles is a generally fairly emotional guy, and extremely protective. But I truly don't think he has severe rage issues the way Crystal consistently insinuates, I think he has some unresolved issues and they trigger HER issues and she ends up projecting a lot.

Their friendship is fascinating to me because she's in this weird place of being both right and wrong when it comes to him, and giving a weird mixture of helpful and unhelpful advice.

And HE'S in this weird place of pinning a lot of his unresolved issues with being dead so young onto HER. As much as his death is better than his life was in many ways, as much as he's happy with Edwin and wouldn't change it-- he still died way too young and struggles with that in a way Edwin doesn't (Hell has a way of granting perspective, I think). And here's this living girl who can see him and can remind him what it's like to be alive and have a taste of what he might've done-- flirt and date and have a girlfriend.

So here are these two people who are genuinely friends, genuinely care about each other, and are partially right about each other-- while also being kind of hilariously wrong and projecting their own issues without realising.

Idk I don't think this makes a lot of sense I've just been thinking while bored at work and now I'm word-vomiting

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@whumpay Day 8 - Immortality

Storytime

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Patreon | Ko-Fi

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Subtle Ways a Smart Character Shows They're Smart

✧ They notice what isn’t said. The gap. The silence. The missing piece.

✧ They explain complex things in the simplest words. No ego, just clarity.

✧ They pause before answering, not because they’re unsure, but because they’re calculating what not to say.

✧ They remember names. Tiny details. The kind of stuff people don’t expect anyone to keep.

✧ They don’t correct people when they’re wrong. Unless it matters. Then it’s precise.

✧ They ask smart questions and actually listen to the answers.

✧ They use sarcasm as camouflage, people underestimate snarky geniuses.

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core four <3

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please will someone save me. haha im just kidding. please can i be saved

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this got Numbers on twitter so i’m posting here cause i literally have nothing else going on but working on my webcomic which you can read here and support here

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Winter has arrived on Poob.

Start your 7 day free trial of Poob today, and watch smash hit Martin Scorcese's Goncharov.

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99% of bloggers stop right before they manage to block every last terf on this platform. trust in the grind

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I may be forgetting something that suggests otherwise, but - I wonder if Charles was a very different person when he was alive. And I don’t mean that in terms of like, maybe he was a bully and reformed in death. I mean in terms of identity and presentation and relation to others (and especially authority).

Because the thing is, right. We look at Charles and we see a cool punk, right?

But that’s not the clothes he died in. He didn’t die in a battle jacket.

Because, right. He seems to have gone back and forth between living with his father - presumably a high-control environment - and St. Hilarion’s - ie institutionalized. So when was he going to all these alleged concerts? Where was he getting the punk clothes? What authority did he know that he was able to stand up to?

It’s fully possible that he was sneaking out, and earning un-monitored money somehow, and so forth, of course. But… I just keep thinking… we sorta just take Charles’s implied word for it that he was cool, you know? That he was a Rude Boy. (Although, actually, all he really tells us is that he spent his life desperately trying to be “good” enough for his father.)

So what if he was exactly who you’d expect from someone who grew up caught between extreme abuse and institutional control? What if kicking his mates off that boy was the first act of rebellion in his life (and the last)?

In short, what if that whole identity - just like the jacket and the patches and the rest of his look - was posthumous?

What if he died, and the first thing he wanted to do for himself, when he realized no one could stop him anymore, was to go to a concert, because he’d never been and always wanted to? What if Edwin helped him learn to stand up to authority figures like he helped Edwin learn to express himself freely? What if both of them only became themselves after death, together?

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“Why’d you do that?” Please remember that I am using what I’ve seen in humans to mimic them

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what yall know about the special kind of sadness that seems to come with spring

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One of the stranger things about training brand new nurses is explaining how to min max small talk. It feels very weird to coach people on how to chat.

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Every writing advice ever: If you’re having trouble with a scene, skip it and write a different part of the story.

Me: If I don’t write in chronological order, I will die