#Driving Awareness

[defensive-tactics]

Safe While Driving... Do you know where you are?

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I love you Safety Wizard.

(Inspired by @keroascrazy)

[callmemossbrain]

brushing your hair, aroace style. holding your hand, aroace style. leaning on you, aroace style. laughing with you, aroace style. cuddling while going to sleep, aroace style. braiding your hair, aroace style. dinner together, aroace style. long hugs, aroace style. inside jokes, aroace style. "babe, love, dear," aroace style. making fun of things together, aroace style. giggling at three am, aroace style. driving to see you, or you see me, aroace style. meeting each other's friends, aroace style. meeting important people in your life, aroace style. dropping off a coffee while at work, aroace style. opening the car door for you, aroace style. comforting hand on knees, shoulders, head, back, aroace style. sleepy drives, aroace style. "I have ibuprofen," aroace style. "don't forget your meds," aroace style.

platonic swag, if you will.

[techdriveplay]

How to Teach Teenagers Safe Driving Habits

In the journey of adolescence, learning to drive is a pivotal rite of passage. It symbolizes freedom, responsibility, and the onset of adult independence. However, with motor vehicle crashes being a leading cause of death for U.S. teens, it’s paramount to teach teenagers safe driving habits from the start. Ensuring they understand the importance of safety behind the wheel not only protects them…

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

Okay 3 things

1. I was thinking about an aroace Sonic who says things that can be taken as wildly flirty/romantic but he just means them genuinely. “You have beautiful eyes, I keep getting distracted while looking at them,” not cause he’s interested romantically in them but because eyes can be really cool and pretty man I dunno what to tell you he likes looking at cool things and he thinks his friends are neat. “You’re the most beautiful person here,” because he really thinks that, he loves his friends

2. Sonic randomly dropping heartfelt genuine comments on his friends out of the blue completely blindsiding them and then moves on like nothing happened while they’re left going ?????? Bonus points if he does something immensely stupid or jerkish just before or immediately afterwards and they can’t tell if he was serious or not with the compliment (yes he was)

3. Sonic usually being so allergic to truly vulnerable moments that when he expresses something heartfelt randomly Tails thinks he’s been stabbed or something and does not believe him when he reassures him that he’s fine he’s fine he’s not dying yeesh

[perplexingly]

I kinda wish they bonded over their dead man walking like behavior…

[c0ckandb4lls69]

Phoenix as soon as maya mentioned Edgeworth in Justice For All

[barblaz-arts]

Picked out my favorite looks from my sketches and now they're going on a date

[demaparbat-hp]

I saw your art, "First Meeting" for Kyoshi Warriors AU, and my head just went "That's Jinshi!".

How can Katara control herself in front of a person who can collapse countries?!

Why would you do this to me.

[lifemod17]

Supernatural || season 11 × episode 04

Baby

[uncanny-tranny]

This might seem like an "old man yells at cloud" situation, but it's just wild growing up and being told how dangerous distracted driving is - how, at highway speeds, you can traverse the length of a football field (100 yards, 91 meters) in a matter of seconds - how one split second sending a text while driving could result in a potential fatal crash, and then getting on the road as a driver and being surrounded by billboards. Their entire purpose is to catch one's attention, so they're lining major roads, which tend to be highways. How is it that you're told how important it is to never be distracted while driving, but still being advertised to?

At best, this type of advertising is an eyesore to pedestrians and motorists and a general waste of electricity to light it, and at worst, it is an active danger considering they are there to advertise and therefore, must catch people's attention.

I'm not even against advertising in theory, but this particular mode bothers me so much and I hate how pervasive it is - especially in large cities or highways.

[lemongrad]

I drive between Massachusetts and New York with some frequency, and not too long ago Connecticut put up a sign on I-84 south welcoming people to the state, and declaring it the "basketball capital of the world". This seemed a weird statement, as the Boston Celtics have the most championship titles in the NBA, and Springfield MA is the birthplace of basketball and home to the hall of fame, but whatever.

Driving back from New York today I noticed the "pizza capital of the united states" sign, and realized they are picking fights on purpose.

[jinmukangwrites]

I had a debate with my coworker about the Jedi not being crib robbers, regardless of the outcome of our argument, it has got me feeling ill about the parents who gave their children to the Jedi before or even during the Clone Wars. I'm watching Rebels and Kanan sounds so sad when he says he didn't know his parents. And then replaying Survivor, Cal has a conversation with Mosey about parents, and I remember that Cal is from Coruscant.

Like, imagine you're a parent. You probably live in the more poverty stricken levels of Coruscant. It's only a few years before the Clone Wars, but there's no way you could know that. All you know is that you have a baby in your arms, and there's Jedi in your home telling you that your baby is gifted, and that if you are willing, you can give your child up to a higher purpose. You'll probably never see your baby again, never see him grow, but... he'll grow up on the surface of Coruscant, in the Jedi Temple. He will not suffer poverty like you and your family, he will grow up to understand the mysteries of the Force and he'll become a peacekeeper of the galaxy and for whatever reason known only to you... it seems worth it.

You give your baby up.

And you wonder about him. Visiting the upper levels, you do the math in your head of how old he must be, and then you look out into the crowd made of trillions and wonder if you'll ever see a shock of red hair.

You never do, but that's fine. Your son is a Jedi, and maybe that's enough for you.

But then the Clone Wars come. And, not only do you see the Jedi join and lead their side of the war, but you begin to see the adult Jedi bring their young children with them on to the battle field.

Do you feel nothing? Do you feel anger? Acceptance? Do you think your baby is a hero? Do you go to the protests?

You watch the news, and perhaps you feel sick wondering if your baby will ever show up as a corpse.

But you never see him. And you're not sure if that's fine.

Years pass. The Jedi are branded traitors.

You hear about the masses of deaths, even the children are not spared from being branded as traitors and marked for execution from your new Emperor. Your baby is 12, or perhaps, was twelve. Perhaps 12 is the oldest he got, if he's lucky. That sticks with you.

You carry on.

Maybe you make a life for yourself within the Empire. Maybe you suppress the grief you must feel for the baby you gave to the Jedi all those years ago. Maybe you wallow in it. Maybe, on dark nights, surrounded by the never ending sounds of Coruscant, you think back to those simpler days, when there was no war, and you held your baby for the last time, and you think about what if. What if you held him tighter, and told the Jedi to leave. What if you worked harder to give him a better life yourself. What if you watched him grow, and he wasn't made a soldier, and he didn't die before he could become a teenager.

What if.

Years pass. You continue.

There's rumors of rebellion. You have your opinions on the Empire, on the rebels, some are deeply buried secrets, a bias you cannot escape, no one can know but that connection to the Jedi lingers.

Years pass. About a decade.

And you walk out one day, and you stop in your tracks, because you did not expect to see anything continue from your grief, the end of his story you told yourself.

A billboard shines in the darkness of the Coruscant lower levels, which isn't new, but this billboard stares at you.

A head full of red hair. Eyes that remind you of your partner. Scars scratch his features but his cheek bones remind you of your father.

Jedi terrorist.

About 22 years old.

Wanted by the Empire, and you don't know what to think but you know exactly what you're feeling.

And time moves on, and you're not in his life, but he's alive. Fighting against the Empire, while you continue to exist under the ruins of the Jedi Temple you gave him to, glancing up every once in a while, to see his face staring back in the light of wanted posters.

[alchemistc]

There's been something about the woobification of Buck that's been sitting on the tip of my tongue for weeks now, and I think I've finally figured it out.

This is, of course, mostly in reference to the moral outrage about a decade-ish (give or take) age gap between two adult men and the infantalization of one said grown man, so all the puritanism isn't really coming from a place of good faith anyway, but here's the thing that's been bugging me that I couldn't quite put a finger on until now.

Buck has people he goes to for certain things. He has, what are in his mind, experts in the field for most of the things he can't think through on his own, that he goes to for a sounding board.

He went to Hen to talk through the sperm donor dilemma for a few reasons that made sense to him. 1) She's a mom. She has very much had to deal with the reality of 'giving up' children she considered her own. Buck is aware that he would be giving up something that could mean something to him, and he wants to talk to someone who has some insight into that. 2) She's dealt with IVF. She knows the risks, she knows the trials and tribulations, she knows about this thing that he is thinking about agreeing to be a part of so she's going to have a fuller grasp on the enormity of everything this process entails.

And they drink about it. Hen gives him what she can and cautions him where she thinks she should and they continue to talk about it and regardless of what SHE thinks, he makes his mind up in part because he got to talk to his Expert.

Bobby is often his go to when he feels like he's losing his grip on things. He's seen Bobby staring down the bottom of the bottle. He's seen the work he's done to pull himself back into the world, and he's seen the way he fights for his family, his people. Buck leans on him in times of questioning himself because he knows Bobby has pulled himself off the ledge with bleeding hands and a bleeding heart.

He reaches out to Maddie about interpersonal shit constantly. We see it all the way back in S2 when he's starting to question what the hell he's still doing in Abby's apartment, and that never really changes. She's the one with advice for him when he's angry with his parents, upset with the firefam, worried about his friends, or just generally concerned with the way he's perceived by people or how he perceives the world. He goes to her when he's embarrassed, ashamed, because he knows she won't judge him for it. She'll call him out, for sure, but she's not going to look at him differently when she knows he's done something he considers bad behavior.

When he goes to her during the Tommy arc, he's there for one reason he'll admit, and another she has to ferret out. 1) He lied to his best friend and he doesn't know why. 2) Oh yeah he went on a date with a dude that's not strange WHY IS THAT STRANGE I'VE ALWAYS BEEN AN ALLY PLEASE DON'T PULL BACK THE CURTAIN - and Maddie is there with two things: 1) It's not weird but it IS new and something you clearly haven't worked through all the way which is why 2) you'll tell Eddie when you're ready

And Eddie is sort of his go-to to bounce ideas off of. Eddie is his Buck expert. Eddie is the guy who can sort through all the bullshit and who sees Buck for exactly who he is, every time, regardless of what Buck himself is thinking. Eddie is his best friend, and he knows the good the bad and the ugly better than anyone else. He is also, quite frankly, the one Buck seeks out to help him contextualize all of his romantic feelings for people. Eddie's the guy he talks to when he's interested in someone, when he's falling for someone, he's the guy through which Buck filters his love interests into the firefam. I do the same shit with my best friend. It's instinct to want the person you consider the expert on you to meet the person you are interested in, it's instinct to want them to like each other, to get along. Buck knows Eddie loves him (in whatever way you see that love, Buck knows Eddie loves him) and he wants this person who loves him to be at least an active listener as he talks himself through the minefield of relationships. I do also think that up until the events of season seven, Buck considers Eddie sort of an expert on that traditional love-marriage-kids-white-picket-fence relationship Buck thinks he's striving for - in a very naive way, because obviously the wasn't what Eddie and Shannon had and Buck knows that, but he's probably fed some of Eddie's rose colored reminiscences back into that notion.

When he comes out to Eddie he's got two worries. 1) I lied to you and I figured out why but I'm still a little worried you think it's weird and 2) I screwed it up with someone I really like and I don't know where to go from here.

And Eddie (Buck expert) reassures him that just because it's new and unexpected doesn't make it strange, that it doesn't change anything in their friendship. And then he gets right to the heart of it - if you like him you should reach out and tell him that. He doesn't know you like we do but if you give him the chance to, he'll love you as much as we do. If he doesn't give it the same shot you want to he's the idiot.

With all that context in mind, Buck isn't seeking out Tommy's attention because he wants an authority figure, or someone to take care of him, someone to guide him through sex or love or relationship dynamics or any of the other random shit I've seen ppl infantalizing Buck about.

What he's looking for, and what he ultimately tells Tommy he'd like to pursue, is a partnership. Someone to walk (or more likely for Buck, speedrun) through experiences together. The Athena to his Bobby, the Chim to his Maddie, the Karen to his Hen.

So every time I see someone infantalizing Buck for seeking out a relationship with an older man for X or Y reason, I'm just like - no. He has Bobby, Hen, Maddie, Eddie, Chim etc for that. He doesn't want or need Tommy for that. He is a grown ass man who has built these strong relationships with his peers and his mentors and he is so fucking aware of that because he reaches for their help any time he feels the urge for a helping hand.

So yeah, Tommy's older. Yes, Tommy has more experience with his sexuality than Buck. And that - that's really it. Buck's been in the same career for more than half a decade. He's lived on his own since he was no older than 19/20. He's had serious relationships, he has a rich and fulfilling life. There is no power imbalance in the relationship between Buck and Tommy.

And while the age gap may be a bit of a draw for Buck, it's not WHY he's attracted to Tommy. We know because he's told Maddie. He's cool. He's interesting. He's confident. He has a cleft.

Buck isn't going into this waiting for someone older and more experienced to take the fucking reins. He felt like he clicked with Tommy, like there was an immediate connection, and yes, Tommy had to kiss him about it for Buck to actually figure out what it was he was experiencing, but from that point on it was all on Buck (and the people he leans on for advice) to help him sort through.

Tommy didn't do shit other than pump the brakes and try to give Buck the space he thought he needed to decide what he was ready for. Buck (again, with the help of his experts - Maddie for the emotional piece of it, Eddie for the Buck of it all) did the work on his own. Tommy didn't swoop in and overbearingly hold his hand through a sexual awakening. He kissed him, asked him out, realized he wasn't ready, stepped back and then checked in multiple times when Buck came back at it going 120 miles an hour.

And then he did everything he could to prove to Buck he wanted the same thing - a partner, someone to talk to, and lean on, and flirt with and rely on to show up whenever they could feasibly manage it (and sometimes when it's a little unfeasible too).

The narrative even acknowledges that Buck had no reason to go to Bobby in this scenario, when he often would, and lays out exactly why.

Within the canon of this particular arc, we're meant to see this as Buck realizing he has the experience necessary to think these things through on his own. This is Buck finally taking control of something that's always felt like it fell into his lap a bit. This is Buck doing more than treading water until his legs give out.

And minimizing that growth bc you personally don't like the LI he's pursuing is gross at best. At worst it's something much more insidious.

[weebatron9000]