#also my sister has been misgendering me more on accident and I think it might be

[mcnuggyy]

is there anything worse than correcting a cis person who you think is misgendering you but they were talking about someone else entirely and so then you have to apologize and it’s already so hard speaking up and now you just feel so stupid, like why even say anything ever… man… 🥲

[polluxdespell]

TALE OF TWO POES

These are just my headcanons for my 87/Comic Poe and my 2017 Poe. I’m trying to write this before the new ep comes because I wanna see how close my headcanons are to the real one. Ahhhhh.

So for my 87/Comic universe starts out with these basic things.

-Him and Magica are twins.

-Actually a pretty nice and chill guy

-Can’t actually use magic but really, really wants to. He has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to magical items and spells, he just can’t use or summon any magic himself. He learns how to work around this problem, though. Very cleverly. He even fooled Eldritch Academy for years. Ha. 

-Has been a raven for 10+ years which has affected his social skills a tad.

-Would do anything for his sister. ;-; Weh.

-Really not villainy like Magica has a redemption arch and he helps her with that (and sometimes his help wasn’t that helpful by accident,) but he himself is just chilling?

 

Really not as villainous as Magica; has a redemption arch, and helps her become a better person. Sometimes his advice/help doesn’t do much, but it’s the thought that counts.

-For being chill, he sure likes poking his nose in things and being a little troublemaker. Magica can tell Poe, “Hey, make sure Gladstone doesn’t do this thing,” and then when Gladstone does that very thing, Poe is half heartedly just “No. Don’t. Stop.” like that Willy Wonka meme. 

-Poe has a lot of “kid at heart” energy, while Magica is the more serious, adultier-adult one.

- I hint that he is trans. Comments like about him and his sister’s different personalities like “Hard to believe we’re from the same egg.” and “That old dress of mine looks better on you.” But not out right saying it.  Wouldn’t it be just his luck when he was turned into a crow he was turned into a male crow and when he was changed back he just happened to be changed back male and was like, “This is all going according to plan.”  Though out of all the villains I can see Merlock being a misgendering prick. Calling Poe She-lock and He-Witch. What an asshole. 

-Gladstone and Poe had become good friends even before Poe is reverted back to his original duck form.

-Poe is Minima’s dad, but there is some drama regarding the entire thing I hope to cover in a story I’m writing. (I’m really close to finishing that one.)

-I accidentally shipped him with Fethry in this universe lol. I’ve written bits and pieces of several Magicstone stories where Fethry and Poe form a friendship on the side that turns into a romantic relationship. In my future stories one of the main problems with Gladstone x Magica is their lack of communication. They don’t let the other know what they’re going through to ‘protect’ their partner. Meanwhile, I have Poe x Fethry at the same time as them having great communication and just the comparison of that against Magicstone like, look how many less problems Magica and Gladstone would have if they JUST TALKED. 

-Poe and Fethry are also both oversharers so like, this is gonna be great. 

-I’m really really biased with my 87/Comic Poe and Magica headcanons in that they can totally get redeemed. In my headcanon they were raised by their older half-sister till she was killed by hunters when Poe and Magica were thirteen. From that point on they raised themselves. Poe was very supportive of whatever Magica felt she had to do. Yeah the dark magic thing got a little shady but it's fine, its fineeeee.

-I know Poe wasn’t in the comics but I just hmm pretend he’s there with Ratface. In the cartoon Magica mentioned once she needed Scrooge’s number one dime for the spell to turn Poe back. So that is true along with having to do the Midas spell for the Grand Coven she answers to in the comics. 

-He makes friends with Grandma Duck super fast like omg his weak ass noodle arms will figure out how to get some farm chores down for her. GUS YOU NEED TO DO MORE WORK AROUND HERE WHAT THE HELL GUS.

- I never outright say how Poe got changed into a crow but it's something Magica feels is her fault. I’ve debated it being actually the Grand Coven Magica answers to that did it, because he offered to take a punishment for her. Something done in some way Magica feels it's her fault. ;-;

- Since this Poe can’t cast magic he does use magical items to protect himself. His hat does have a magical property I’m not gonna say cuz I needa finish that store. IT'S GONNA BE GREAT. 

---------

Now 2017 Poe I headcanon much differently. First big change is he has magic and he’s an asshat. I really think if 87 Poe had magic he would have been more of a jerk too, but not to the extreme 2017 Poe is. I based 2017 Poe being more villainous like how Magica is more villainous. I love 2017 Magica, she is still a fun baddie, but I don’t have the same hmmm- soft spot for her as I do for comic Magica. 

Also, in my headcanon he has a flare for the dramatic. I realized he’d seem a bit like Black Arts Beagle. I then decided Poe was the one that trained BAB because why not. Same performative flare. Whee. 

I originally headcanon him to be more chaotic Deadpool personality type but seeing Martin Freeman is gonna voice him I bet that's not gonna happen. SOB. God he’s so pretty though. That midriff showing. 

-Just trash man

-Love me that goth trash man

-I would really want him not to be a jerk to Lena. That would cause a divide between him and Magica. He would see her technically as family even though created by magic, and not treat her like crap. And be mad Magica treated her crap.

-Minima was his daughter who died a long time ago. He sees a lot of Lena in her, but realizes Lena is not her. I mean he knows that from the start but would still be sad if they’re in an argument and he calls her Minima on accident. “I won’t always be there to protect you Minima! I- I mean Lena..” SOB. 

-I really didn’t see the same reasons to ship him with Fethry this time around too, but when I saw Steekbeak x Fethry stuff it got me thinking of what Poe went  in disguised as a normal dude to do some McDuck spying and met Fethry and they fell for eachother but then OOPS POE is a VILLIAN. OOPS. Just like the Matilda thing with Magica x Gladstone in the comics. TeeHee.

-No redemption arch just nice to a handful of people ha. Might MIGHT help good guys if the world was gonna be destroyed but oh boy would he have to be talked into it. (Lena could talk him into it.)

[winterknight1087]

Flower from the Fae (ch 41)

Chapter Title:

Summary: Virgil likes plants, but when he goes to investigate a plant his friend, Remy, tells him about, he doesn’t exactly check out the plant. Little does he know that the handsome man he meets there is a fairy who is about to challenge the world Virgil knows.

Word Count: 3937

Chapter Warnings: This is a heavier chapter, so please be safe! Skip if need be! Sympathetic Deceit, sympathetic Remus, injuries, death, cancer mention, blood, transphobia, unaccepting parent, misgendering of partially closeted character, discussion of abuse

Chapter Pairings: Thomas/OC-Jon, Demus

AO3 Link      My Writing

A/N: this is chapter 41, so read the first chapter here! 

~30 years ago

 “What do you mean you just want to talk!” the girl screamed at him. “You’re now the king! You’re supposed to be ordering my death! I killed… I… I killed all those people! I killed your parents! I broke my family’s deal with… with that thing.”

“I read your appeal to my parents, Cassandra. I know the horrors that fairy did to you. I’m probably one of the few beings who know that the explosion was an accident. As far as I’m concerned, that deal was never supposed to exist because you did not agree to it. And the idea of my ordering your death, do you really think I would come out here without a guard or at very least a weapon if I were planning to kill you? I’ve done my best to come to you on your own terms, so that we can talk. Half of this kingdom is already in search of blood. I just want to help.”

Thomas got a good look into her eyes. They were the rumored mismatched green and purple. They held no light and were filled with fear. She couldn’t have been more than a couple of years younger than him. Yet, the horrors this poor girl endured… The thought of his pain from losing his parents probably was laughable compared to what she has endured.

“Why?”

“Because everyone deserves a chance. I know that bastard. I know about his quest for power and what he’s willing to do for it. You tried to stop what happened two days ago and my parents failed you. I want to help.”

“You don’t know anything about what… about what…” her eyes filled. “You know nothing.”

Thomas made a decision as he slowly raised the front of his shirt, revealing a large scar across his chest before awkwardly dropping his shirt. “I may not know specifics of what he did to you, but I do know him. That was his parting gift after finding out I was the prince. He wanted power and was willing to do what he could to get it. Unfortunately for all of us, my parents supported his goal for power. I know of the spell he stole from the library. While I don’t know for certain, I would assume as a witch, you were forced to cast it for him. The spell, being as complex as it was, backfired when he tried to hurry it along and here we are. Please. I’m not going to force you to do anything. If you wish to be left alone, tell me and I will leave. I just think you’d be happier leaving the Realm of the Fae and returning to the human world.”

“You’d be willing… to do that for me?” she asked, softly.

“Of course,” he answered. “If you would like, I can arrange for some nymphs to take you in to help you adjust and ensure that you’ll return to your proper realm on your own two feet. But, again, it’s whatever you want.”

“How can I trust what you’re telling me?” she demanded, but Thomas was relieved to see she was at least becoming hopeful.

Thomas looked around and found a mushroom. He picked it and asked the girl to use her dagger to prick his finger. She didn’t look sure about it, but did as he told her. With the drop of blood, He carved a rune into it. There weren’t any herbs around that he could use, so he knew the reverse deal wouldn’t be as strong. Still he told her to take the mushroom in the folds of her cloak and to say his name.

“Uh… Thomas Sanders?”

“Before the witch who holds the deal, I agree to stand by my words,” the mushroom was glowing now. “Congrats, you caught the prin… nope, not that anymore. The King of the Fae in a reverse deal. That mushroom is enough of a guarantee that I will stand by my word to do what I can to help you.”

“You are too trusting, your majesty.” She said softly, staring at the fungi, knowing the power that it held. “I… I would like to return to the human world. Please. I know my family is gone, but… I’m scared to stay here.”

Thomas stood up and offered her a hand. “Then let’s go make arrangements for you to return to your realm.”

 ****

 ~14 years ago

 “Why would you guys come here all decked out, knowing Mom would be furious!” The miserable teenager demanded.

“Because we wanted to show you that it’s OK to be who you are. Your mother is wrong, and honestly, she’s just a terrible person.” Thomas stated. “She hates the LGBT community. Have I told the two of you what that woman did at my wedding? She brought a bag of angry wasps and released them when the priest asked if anyone opposed your uncle and my marriage. Angry wasps!”

The teenager gave him a get to the point look. “Alright, Hope, I’ll get to it. My point is that not everyone is like that woman. You can be ace, pan, bi, gay, straight, trans, non-binary, whatever best fits you. It’s not wrong. Your mother does not get to out you to the entire family because you’re questioning though. So, we decided to make her reconsider going around and outing you. Only you get to decide who you are.”

The teenager flinched. “Please don’t call me Hope.”

Quickly, Thomas nodded. “Alright, any other things you’d like me to stop using?”

“I… uh… Mom will be furious if she knows, but I’ve been going by Emile, he/him. Just, please avoid Hope or pronouns if you can, please.”

“No problem, bud.”

“Why do you have long hair if you are a him?” a tiny curious Roman asked.

“Roman, people can look however they wish.”

Emile picked at his ponytail. “I want to cut it off, but Mom…”

“I don’t need you and that bastard corrupting my daughter!”

Hearing the shout, Emile winced as he muttered to himself. “Son, please, just use son for once.”

Thomas pursed his lips. “Alright, are you sure you want it off, Emile?”

He blinked in surprise before slowly nodding. “But…”

“Hey, Roman. You want to cut some hair? Aunt Zoey will be furious, but I’ll get you two scoops of ice cream if you let her throw her fit.”

“Three!”

“Two.”

“Two and a half?”

“Alright, deal.”

“Uncle Thomas?”

Thomas looked at him. “She can’t be angry at you if your eight-year-old cousin sneakily chops it off, now can she?”

The teenager finally looked hopeful. “No, I guess not. Plus, if it just gets awkwardly cut, she’ll have to take me to get it properly fixed and I can have them do one of the cool styles! And hair stylists are known to always cut hair shorter than you want.”

“So, you have any scissors? Maybe some headphones to pretend you don’t hear a little giggle behind you?”

Emile jumped up and ran from the room. Roman was giggling, excited for the ice cream! And his cousin finally looked happy! Thomas started to stage the little performance, setting Roman behind the couch, telling him to only touch the scissors once he was going to cut Emile’s hair. Emile was sat on the couch with his long ponytail draped along the back of the couch. His headphones were on and he was bopping his head to his music as his mother stormed out of her bedroom, fed up with her brother.

“I want you freaks out of my house. It’s bad enough I have to deal with having you as family. I will not have you corrupting my daughter. Hope is already having enough problems. She doesn’t need you lot making it worse.”

Snip.

Roman dropped the scissors before running to his dad, with the full ponytail in his hand, giggling. Roman’s Pa had stepped out in time to see his sister screaming at his husband and son while his niece ran a hand through shorter hair than she had had when they arrived. He noticed a little glint in Thomas’s eyes that told him all he needed to know.

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! YOU ARE NO LONGER ALLOWED TO VISIT! YOU HEAR! GET OUT!”

Half an hour later, Thomas split his scoop of ice cream and set it in Roman’s bowl. “There’s the last piece of your payment, little prince.”

“Zoey is never going to like you after that stunt, Thomas.” Jon muttered, watching his son dig into the ice cream.

“She has never liked me. Never forget the wasps, Jon. I’ve stopped caring that she hates me. She was making her son miserable! We just helped brighten his life up a little.”

“Son? What did I miss while she was screaming at me for your idea of invading her house in rainbows?”

“Uh… Hope is Emile and uses he/him along with masculine nouns, such as son.” Thomas answered, eating his half a scoop.

Jon sighed before chuckling. “Did you see how furious she was? I wonder if Emile will be keeping the Stitch we gave him. I can see her taking her anger out of it.”

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Jon cut off as he quickly pulled a note out of his pocket. “I received this while you were pissing off my sister. You might like to read it.”

Thomas accepted the note and saw the words: purple and green eyes ten-year-old witch with hunter.

 ****

 “You won’t stop worrying about it, so we are going to investigate, Thomas.”

“We haven’t heard from Cassandra is years, Jon. That set of eyes is only found in one family of witches. If she was taken by a hunter… She wouldn’t…”

“This is why I am insisting we go. If she’s there, we’ll get her out. We know the boy is with this hunter for sure. I can’t sit back and let a hunter get away with harming a child.”

“Alright, once we tuck Roman into bed, we’ll head out.”

 ****

 So many traps! Jon regretted inviting Thomas along. Their kingdom needed him, but he also knew that Thomas would be furious if he hadn’t. It took half an hour to finally get down the hallway to the central containment area. They could hear someone crying from one of the further cells. Jon stopped Thomas in order to check to ensure they were alone.

The child was hugging a badly-made rabbit to his chest. Thomas began to open the door, which sent the child off of his bed. He quickly shoved the toy behind his nightstand, as if to protect his single toy. He looked confused seeing the men standing outside his door but didn’t ask.

“Come on, we’re getting you out of here.” Jon said, opening his arms for the child. “We’re going to get you to safety, OK?”

“But… you aren’t dad?” he whispered.

Thomas barely kept his fury off his face as Jon softly asked. “What about your mom? Where is she?”

“She… Dad says she didn’t want me… He said he sent her away…” the boy didn’t look sure of what he was saying though.

Jon asked, wondering if this child was actually alright as he seemed less afraid than he’d thought the kid would be. “Do you want to stay here then?”

“NO!” the boy cried out before throwing his hands over his mouth, terrified.

There we go, Jon thought. “Alright, then come with us, young one. Let’s get you out of creepy lab land.”

The child slowly moved forward and let the man take his hand. They started for the exit when the child ripped his hand out of Jon’s and ran for a shelf. He started to try and climb it, but he couldn’t manage it.

“We need to go. The mean man can be coming back soon, kid.” Jon said.

“Mom’s book! I… I can’t leave it! It’s all I have of her!”

“Go, I’ll find it.”

Thomas took the child’s hand and started rushing with him out of the lab. Jon looked over the stuff before finding a grimoire bag. He pulled it off and decided that this would just have to be what he brought the child. With the bag, he started off after his husband and the child. Thomas and the child made it out safely, the child’s magic working ahead of them to stop traps. The fairy was relieved when he saw his husband, but…

“JON!”

The King’s Witch collapsed at the entryway to the hunter’s lab. Thomas and the boy ran for him. Thomas’s eyes frantically trying to figure out how bad his husband was hurt, but it was too dark to properly see him. Jon weakly shoved the bag into the boy’s arms. The kid hugged it close to him, before reaching out a hand to the man.

“No, yo-you ne-eed to run. Get as far away f-f-from here as you can, kid.” Jon gasped, gently pushing the child away. “Run.”

One terrified look at the two of them was the last look they saw of the child’s face as he pulled the book closer and ran away. Thomas was sobbing as he felt the warm liquid on his hands as he tried to feel where the wounds were. He tried to do something… anything, but Jon insisted the fairy just take his hand.

“T-Tell Roman, that I love him. And you. I love you both so much.” He gasped before shutting his eyes and, knowing that it would take the last of what life he had, Jon poured his magic into a single spell. “Domum!”

Thomas felt the change around him. He heard the screams and panic. He watched as medics tried to save his husband. He felt something in him break when he heard them pronounce him dead. He blankly watched as his friends helped clean him of his husband’s blood. Once they were done, he felt himself wander to his son’s bedroom and pull the sleeping child close to him as tears slide down his face. He’ll never forget having to tell his son that his Papa died a hero trying to save someone once they woke up the next morning. He watches as part of his heart was given a royal funeral as his son begged for his papa to return.

 ****

 ~7 years ago

 “Please, I have to save my little python.” The man begged as tears streamed down his face. “I know my name and life aren’t enough to save him. I have an ancient grimoire extender though! I… I don’t know what else I can offer you. I just need to save my little python. He’s hurt really bad and… and it’s all my fault. I was the one driving. I killed my wife. I nearly killed my son and son-in-law. He literally just got married a week ago. He has so much to live for. Please, I’m begging you as a broken father to tell me what I can do to… to save my son.”

“Breathe, please.” Thomas begged the broken man. “I understand. We can talk, but I need you to breathe for me, alright?”

It took some time, but he was finally breathing, at least. “Well, what do I need to do, fairy? Please, it’ll only keep getting worse for him. Even now, they aren’t confident in his chances. Please, what do I need to do.”

“You said you have an ancient grimoire extender? That should be enough for what you’ve told me. You’ll just have to give me a night to figure out the logistics and whatnot to make sure that it is.”

“It’s back at home.” He said, miserably, before quickly adding on. “But I can get a family friend to pick it up or…”

Of course it is. “Alright, you said he’s stable at least, right?”

“Yes.”

“OK, meet me back here tomorrow. I’ll figure something out.”

“Thank you.” The man had that small gleam of hope that Thomas loved bringing back to people.

That said, he had no clue what he was going to do. He sat on a random hill, wondering how he could set this entire deal up. He felt bad for the poor shifter. Thomas couldn’t imagine the suffering he was going through. Having just lost his spouse, his son destined for a life of pain and loss as more and more complications appeared as time passed, his new son-in-law dealing with brain damage, and as if that weren’t enough, the man had six months to live because of cancer! Thomas groaned as he curled into a ball, fighting the complexities of this entire thing.

“Sweet, I had no clue how to call one of you gurls.”

Thomas looked up to see a being with an old leather jacket and sunglasses like some bad boy character out of a 70s movie. The fairy immediately picked up on the being’s magic, noting that they were a sandman. So, neutral towards fairies, no major concerns yet. Then Thomas noted that the sandman seemed extremely troubled.

“Uh? Can I help you, Sandman?” Thomas asked, uncertainly.

“I… you are a fairy, aren’t you?” they asked, just as uncertain.

Thomas ran a hand through his hair, another one, really? “What can I do for you?”

“Well, obviously I’m in need of a deal.”

Thomas knit his eyebrows. “Can’t you use your own magic, or appeal to your higher?”

“Those bastards don’t care about… Look, they refuse to help me. Are you willing to?”

“What?”

Remy groaned. “OK, look. I made a promise to someone who is essentially my little brother. Sandmen don’t care about anyone else. I need to protect him. He… He’s gone through too much. I have to protect him. I need a deal for his protection. Are you willing to work with me or are you going to tell me to get lost as well?”

“Protection from what? There is only so much I can do for something like that.”

“Hunters.” Remy didn’t even give Thomas a chance to process that, before going off. “Look, I know you can’t guarantee complete protection. Something like a blanket protection over our town, hiding traces of magic. That is something I’ve heard you lot can do. If it’s too big a request, please find someone higher who can agree. Please. This hunter is close and if he catches even a sign of magic, my best friend will…He… I… He will not survive that encounter. Please.”

Actually, this may solve my other deal issue… “Well, you’re out of luck as no one is higher than me, but you are in luck as I can do something like that.”

“No one… wait… Don’t shit me, gurl. You’re the king?”

Thomas stood up, brushing off his pants. “You’ve just saved me a lot of headache. That being, if you are willing to go fetch something from some random guy’s house, with random guy’s permission, of course.”

Remy blinked in shock. “That doesn’t sound like a normal deal? What happened to ‘give me your name and endure servitude for like however I feel like it’ sort of things?”

“Got rid of it, quite a while ago. I will end up needing your name as that is just the basics of the magic, but things tend to be better for everyone if we all just get along. And technically, which is good enough for the magic, you are doing a servitude thing by doing this task for me. Can you meet me back here tomorrow, same time? I’ll need to go speak to the other person and cause my advisor headache, but we’ll get this all done.”

Remy nodded. “Tomorrow.”

With that, Thomas returned home. He checked on Roman, pleased to see that the teenager hadn’t killed Talyn’s foster kid turned student, though their argument was heated. He then went and found Joan who immediately knew that they were in for a long night. Still, they accepted it and followed their friend.

 ****

 Thomas stood in the hospital room, trying not to invade the man’s personal space. The man explained everything to the other patient in the room, who, unlike the man’s son, was awake. The boy looked over at the other bed, with hope-filled eyes. The man pulled the boy into a hug before coming over.

“OK, Remus understands what’s going to happen. Let’s do this, your majesty.”

Thomas nodded and cast the deal. The man handed over the extender, in a dark purple bag to protect the fairy from the iron, and Thomas snapped at the limp figuring. There was a groan and a soft ‘dad’, causing the man to shoot over to the boy in the bed.

“Hey, hey, it’s OK, DeeDee. You’re safe. You’ll be alright. I know it hurts now, but you’ll be better once you’re out of here. You’re safe, Dee.” He sobbed. “It’s alright, little python. Remus is here. I’m here. We’re here. We love you and your safe.”

Thomas assumed the boy in the bed fell back to sleep as the man turned to him, with a huge, watery smile. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Thomas smiled back at him. “You’re welcome.”

He gave a weak laugh as he looked over at Remus. “He’ll be fine, little squeakers.”

“Dee spoke! He woke up!” Remus looked close to sobbing.

“Yeah, buddy. Now, let’s get you in a wheelchair for your daily escape while we take the fairy back so he can go home.”

Thomas walked with the two. It was midday and there were plenty of people in the little garden area. The man led Thomas over to the hidden fairy circle. Thomas wondered how one managed to grow out here, considering a hospital would probably keep their little garden well-tailored. Not that it really mattered now. I think I might talk Roman into a movie night. I need time with my own son after this stress.

“Thank you, again.”

“It’s no problem. Now, he has improved a lot from what I could feel, but the magic will do the majority of its work once he’s out of here, away from confused humans. Try to get a follow-up with someone who’ll understand magic sped up his recovery. I can’t promise how much it will help some of his outer scars as they’ve already started to heal on their own.”

“Yes, yes. You’ve drilled all of this into my head. I’m grateful for what you’ve done for my son, your majesty. It means so much to me. Yesterday, they weren’t sure how long he’d be out and how dim his prospects were. Now… Now, he can live. Thank you.”

Thomas nodded as he stepped past the boundary of the circle. As Thomas vanished, he saw the man collapse onto the ground. He appeared in the palace, with a bad taste in his mouth, hoping that the man’s collapse was from relief over... He knew he couldn’t return without risking appearing in front of a bunch of frantic humans. So, with that bad taste, he entered his home and sought Roman out, as he sent all the magical good luck he could to the two boys.

“Uh, Dad, you alright?” the teenager asked, looking over the figure.

“I… uh… Not really, but there’s nothing anyone can do to fix it.” Thomas answered, awkwardly. “Would you be up to some Disney movies with your old man, Ro? I could really use a distraction after… Uh… yeah. So uh… movies?”

Roman was already on his feet. “Of course! Let’s do it!”

Next Chapter

Taglist: @that-one-nb-kid, @hufflepuffxfox

[destroyyourbinder]

rethinking butch while doing my laundry in buckets at 8 PM

You know, I never thought there would be anything on this earth that could make me re-think my commitment to pants over skirts and dresses, a vow I had made to myself over and over again since my childhood days of being crammed into tights and lace, but doing my laundry in a series of five gallon buckets in the bathtub of our dingy apartment was it.

I was thinking yesterday, while staring into our shared closet and remembering when I had a purple closet full of clothes that I had to tug at, clothes that I tried to ignore that they existed even when I was wearing them, that I probably haven't worn a skirt outside of a Halloween costume in almost fifteen years. When I moved out of my parents' house I ditched my last one, a vintage skirt that had always stayed on its hanger, part of a pair with a yellow blazer that I had loved but didn't fit anymore. I felt vindicated, but a bit lost, as if a high school presentation was going to leap out of the void at any time and make me regret my decision. I didn't bring any skirts with me here, to the city; it felt daring and somehow pathetic at the same time, a sign of how stunted my life had been that it seemed like a bold move at all. It was a tiny hop into the deep end of a lesbian kiddie pool. Skirts do lurk around the corner at any old thrift store, but somehow I felt like there was no going back; I had banished them, and they would not return.

My girlfriend and I share most of our clothes, as we're close in size-- she's a bit broader, I'm a bit taller-- and our clothing tastes are pretty similar. She has her favorites, and I have mine, and we don't tend to share pants or shoes due to the particulars of how we wear them out, but the rest are a big indeterminately owned mass of potential dress options. The thing is is that she's supposed to be a "man"; she still lives a life where she doesn't tell people she's detransitioned, generally, and most people take her to be outright male or a trans man. I'm not supposed to be a man; I don't pass except maybe from afar and behind, and I assume I mostly come across as tired and dumpy and gay. I don't really know if people notice that our shirts and shorts and socks swap between and across us. Maybe they're too confused by the other things going on with us to see that one. When we worked together doing early morning stocking we used to fuck with people, we'd switch our jackets and hats every so often and see who we could fool, which was way too many people at way too close a range for a pair of human beings supposed to be at the opposite poles of Gender. Nobody was particularly apologetic about it either when they mistook us, even though that kind of outright misgendering is supposed to be a major faux pas. They usually just laughed in a way that indicated that, well, of course. I laugh in the same way when people tell me that Trans Men are Men, that everyone treats them just like any other male person, that nobody knows they aren't male, that they never experienced sexism and never will, that the gap between them and A Woman is incomprehensibly large. A waiter's never handed me the check at the diner when I was out with a dude, but they do it all the time when I'm with my girlfriend, and then she has to use the men's room after dinner.

I've somehow gotten more "masculine" since I stopped seeing myself as transgender, which I think might surprise people who know nothing about the process of desisting or reidentifying or detransition, but doesn't surprise women who have been through this. I feel a lot less neurotic about wearing men's clothes, about buzzing my hair off, about being hairy elsewhere and not hiding it, about stepping out into the world as an unacceptable female person, uncontained and unbridled, edging in on men's turf. The stakes aren't quite as high, now, honestly, even though they're higher than they have been before. I don't have my family to fall back on if I lose my job due to being an unrepentant dyke, but now that I'm not in her house, I don't worry about my mother discovering my secrets, including that I'm not the daughter she wanted me to be. I'm scared to go out after 7 PM if I can't sufficiently cover up the fact that I'm female, but my entire sense of self worth isn't riding on whether or not someone perceives my ham-handed attempts at not-being-female correctly. I worry about my rent, but I don't worry about where exactly it is men pull up their socks to on their legs, and I don't worry about whether I'm not really worthy of living if I can't do it right, because I don't worry about if I'm not really a man or just a fuck-up of a woman, and I don't worry about whether or not a fuck-up of a woman is the worst thing I could possibly be. Well, I worry about it sometimes, still, because it matters to other people, even if I don't think it matters to me. But I've stopped trying to compensate for my fuck-ups by wearing the right earrings with my undercut, or hiding my breasts under a binder, hidden under a blouse. I can leave the house without having twenty thousand insecurities about the masculinity or femininity of my leg hair growth pattern or the color-contrast of my lips. So I leave the house in shit my nine year old self would probably appreciate: a flannel, a shirt with a cat on it, yellow pants with functioning pockets. I try to take stupid thoughts about whether the pocket style of said pants makes my butt look girly the same way I took my skirts, which is to chuck them out in honor of living a life without gender neuroses.

They always say that gender is culturally contextual, limited to time and place, and while we all pay lip service to that in some way or another when we get mad that our favorite historical figure got parsed as one thing or another, I think we all like to think we would be butch lesbians or trans men or whatever it is we are in another life, that we probably wouldn't have ended up like our great-grandmothers but something like female husbands, passing soldiers and sailors, instead. I spent a lot of time as a kid wondering why the hell girls did this or that, wasn't it harder, it's so stupid; I felt so betrayed when I hit middle school, and everyone was tripping over their purses, pursed lips in candy-sparkle lipgloss, on the way to idolize boys. I wanted to be among boys, I wanted to be a boy, somehow at the same time I thought girls were stupid for admiring them in the other way. I think a lot of us carry this into adulthood; we figure femininity's a bunch of dumb crap we can't be bothered to do, and besides we're unsuited for it, constitutionally incapable of hoisting a tube of fabric above our pooch. We escaped from it because we kept our heads (non) straight or maybe because it wicked off us like pink droplets on a Teflon pan, which we definitely use to make burgers with and not cute hors d’oeuvres. We know what a dress means and how it works, and we know how it makes us feel, and we know we would never wear it, not on a desert island nor to our sister's wedding.

After washing my clothes in a bucket, I don't think you should do disservice to your grandmothers like that. I had to sit on one of my other buckets-- there are three in this clothes washing system-- and think for a bit about what the hell I was doing with all this gender and anti-gender shit, what the fuck I was doing with my life at all. Because the thought I had, which surprised me, was that pants are fucking bullshit. They're fucking bullshit when you wash your clothes by hand, which is what generations of women did before me. My value system got turned upside down; I spent my whole life thinking skirts and dresses were frilly nonsense, floofery intended to hold women back from participating in the world, an "easy access" hole to parts I didn't want to exist. And it's not like that isn't true: women's dresses and skirts have been artificially cumbersome throughout history, full of engineered contraptions to enhance women's decorative-sexual living-pornography value, whether literally stuffed with metal cages and yards of fluff or whether tightly drafted to form a second skin. When you can't fucking sit down or lift your legs or bend over it's a problem, when your teeth chatter in the winter on your way to school it's a problem, when you can't be a lawyer or a senator without wearing the appropriate kind of Leg Tube it's a problem. It was a problem when my mom put me in a velvet thing that rested just above my knees, and I wasn't allowed to play or even spread my legs while I was in it, lest I render myself an obscene five year old girl. But the Leg Tube isn't the problem, it's all the other shit, and I had never taken that seriously, never really dug into it, until I had to confront the inconvenience of manually sloshing around my pants for ten minutes.

I had confused symbolism for reality. I thought I was done with that, over that, now that I was out of the trans shit. I was living in some patriarchal dollhouse, and I had thought I busted out, but now I'm in another one, better maybe, but just as artificial, because the grass being greener over here all hinged on having a washing machine. When do I get to leave? I am suddenly afraid I'll spend my life in an infinite nested universe of misogynist fuckery, having existential crises about the fridge or maybe the carpet next.

I guess my girlfriend and I got into what you might call "urban homesteading" by accident. We didn't set out to do this out of convictions or philosophy, it was mostly because we were cheap, and also we're lazy in a certain kind of baffling ADHD way where it's easier to make a curtain with your two damn hands than navigate thirty, fifty pages of advertising-merchandising to find one that will ship to your house for not-sixteen-dollars . Car insurance in this town is absurd, so we just don't have a vehicle. We also don't turn on the heat in the winter, or the air conditioning in the summer. We bake bread, make yogurt, make shampoo, wash out and reuse plastic zipper bags, don't flush the toilet for stretches of time. Clothes get patches upon patches, breadcrumbs go in a jar, there are lots of systems for a lot of things that nobody really thinks about anymore. My dad told me his family used to sleep on the porch of their farmhouse in the summer; I can't do that here, but it comes to mind anyway. He was from that kind of people where you did it yourself or you didn't do it at all, German farm folk born in nineteen-oh-something; my mom was from people that didn't do it at all, her father too drunk to give a shit, her mother feeding her seven kids out of cans. There's a weird mix of shame and pride when you end up doing your laundry in buckets, dual gene lines, dual angel-devils sitting on my shoulders: someone clapping me on the back for my resourcefulness, a job well done, and someone asking me why the hell I stooped to this when there's a washer in the basement, didn't I work hard so you didn't have to live this way.

We saw it on YouTube and thought we could save some money on electricity or water because our landlord isn't going to replace our 30-plus years old washing machine anytime soon. I thought maybe doing it in the buckets would help my busted brain a little, 'cause I could do it every couple days, fifteen minutes at a time, instead of in big piles once a week. I like shit I can touch or otherwise it doesn't feel real, I can't keep track of it, it feels like the sort of work women with tight lips and long nails do and they make their lips tighter when I can’t hack it. There could be a system, tangible, clothes I can see in places where they belong, hands on a plunger pushing soap and water and fabric up and down, you can tell if they got clean yet or not if you open the lid. I don't like dumping them in a machine, an unknown hole of productivity, input-output, assembly line nonsense. I'm not productive anyway, so what do I care?

When you're doing your laundry by hand like this something occurs to you, which is that this is a lot of work, and maybe you don't want to be doing this all the time, so you should be careful with how dirty your clothes get. I realized real quick I wasn't going to be doing this every day, and that it would be wasteful, worse than the water usage of some old-ass washer to try. You start realizing how dumb it is to wear your clothes once and only once before you wash them, as you plunge up and down, up and down. It occurs to you that ten minutes is a pretty long amount of time, even though you're in your late twenties and winter just showed up again and you keep wondering where the hell the time goes anymore. You start resenting how stupid and arbitrary it is that you're supposed to be squeaky clean in public, that stains and wear are unacceptable, that they mean anything at all about anybody except that they live a life and entropy exists. You think that if you have to put this much arm power into washing your clothes, then how much power has to go into a damn washer, and you start thinking about the arms that shovel coal out of the ground, into rail-cars, into boilers. You start getting real mad about how much shit the world puts people through just so clothes can get clean and floors can get clean and skin can get clean and nothing will look like it's ever been touched except by a very conscientious housewife. Your brain starts contriving things while your arms are going, like some wild-haired inventor, like maybe if you had an underlayer of clothing all the time you could just wash that and the outer layer would be allowed to get dirty for a while. Brilliant! And then you feel stupid because well, that's what we always did until you could dump your shit into an electric machine, and then they raised the standards to keep women busy doing something they didn't need to do. It occurs to you that pants are dumb because they're heavy and sopping wet, one big lump of fabric, and you can't wear an underlayer unless it's really cold outside. It occurs to you that pants are not worth it unless you are doing certain kinds of manual labor all the time or you need to protect your legs. You understand why the women in YouTube videos about washing your clothes in buckets are really mad at their husbands and sons, and some generational rage takes hold of your arms as you agitate the clothes in the bucket. Why do men get to be dirty in their stupid pants. Why do women have to clean them. You never want to hear anybody talk about fashion ever again. You never want to hear anybody talk about the gender of clothes again unless they've wrung out denim in anger and they're willing to wring a man's neck the same. Now you get to drain the bucket. Now you get to refill the bucket with clean water and agitate again. Now you get to drain the bucket and press the water out of your clothes with the full bucket. Now you get to hang up your clothes over your tub.

When I stopped seeing myself as transgender I told myself I would consider very carefully the value of anything I did, and I would let practicality and ethics dictate my life rather than sucking up to gender, to men, to the women pandering to them and afraid I wasn't going to. It's taken me some wild places, for real, and I didn't think it would take me to a place where I was questioning wearing pants. But given this, I find myself all the same cringing at wearing a skirt or something else other than those damn pants, other than the thing that men wear and women fought for, willing to violate my newfound guiding forces... and for what? Butch cred? Womanly pride? Can't I just shove it all in the washing machine and stop thinking about this? Do I need to live in the woods to tie something around my waist and get on with my life? If I've learned anything there's really nothing neutral when it comes to gender shit, and no matter how far you get in processing the patriarchy there's always something else at the bottom of a bucket, a broom, a sink strainer. How many years worth of women have had these thoughts while scrubbing something, however they cut their fucking hair? I try to focus more on that these days, rather than what I call myself or what pronoun I use. My grandmother, my mother, all those girls in my class who I thought were big idiots, the women out there bigger and badder and butcher than me, the trans men I envied for living in my dream world, all these female people I defined myself against all these years, we all end up here, staring into a drain, hoping the man won't crush us. When does it end? I want it to end. I'm done spinning my head in circles about the cut of my jeans, whether I wear jeans at all, and I hope you are too.

[emerysocs]

edit 4/18/2020: haven’t discussed any edits in years. everything has changed drastically and i’m still in the process of updating everyone’s sheets. many new character editions: hell squad itself has grown as a whole. i’ll delete the “supporting roles” section-- everyone is equal parts important now and all have their own stories going on while still being tied to each other in one way or another. all co-exist with some of jonah’s ocs, all of which will be labelled below. 

the owens’ family has grown drastically while also shrinking: i might re-purpose mel in the future but for now she’s got nothing to do with the owens’ story anymore. her sheet will stay up as a page, but i’ll remove the link from the directory. the boys have two new sisters (astrid and lia) and now a step-dad (sean) too! very exciting. jade’s also a lot less of a piece of shit. any writing done in 2016-2017 is pretty much irrelevant. drugs still make him act out, but only in the way of saying shit he doesn’t mean. i’m eliminating physical abuse from jasper’s story altogether, save the verses where he winds up with seth long-term. 

seth will not get a sheet, but his full name is seth bennett. i simply do not want to develop him any more than jasper’s bf/ex-bf.

the marshells are also getting a big change: we’re going back to our roots today. this is something i decided literally 5 minutes ago, but i’m changing their last name back to monroe. marshell has a nice ring, but i’m cheesy and i want to keep their inspiration not just in the back of my mind as a relic, but in everyone’s face directly because i am a whore. i’ve toyed with different ideas for backstory for the girls for a long time, but finally i’ve settled on a house fire in middle school that april and hazel are caught in due to their parents’ neglect. for a detailed version, it’s now listed on their sheets. no more break-in/burglary. also, the monroes no longer live next to the owens-- hazel and jasper meet through theater in high school and jade and april meet through the two of them as usual. hazel’s pronouns have changed slightly since the last edit post-- they and she are both acceptable to use. i’m leaving them listed as nonbinary because they are, but they present feminine 80% of the time so it doesn’t make sense for them to get angry about being “misgendered” any time past high school. hazel’s also a canon tumblr kinnie throughout high school. as a fun fact. april hasn’t changed that much because honestly she was never extremely developed in the first place. she’s still gorgeous and popular and a sweetheart that no one really has any ill will towards. oh actually now that i think about it, she has a scene phase. minor change, but it explains why she likes jade so much and also how she dabbles in drugs here and there.

neph is probably the biggest addition, because with her comes alex also. god i don’t even know where to start with what’s changed about her. her sheet is actually the original sheet she started with, so i think hers might take priority. alex was initially named josh and he died in a car accident next to neph in her very early days. she was originally created with the intent of being a poet (hence her name nephley, meaning faerie of words). somewhere (not sure where really) i decided i wanted to make her a super well trained figure skater and abandoned the poetry side of her. before that changed, josh was renamed to alex (between aiden’s stepdad and updating evan’s middle name to joshua it made more sense) and his cause of death changed from a car accident to suicide while she was competing. her backstory’s been the same since about 2018. she’s jade’s ex but stays tied to the story most of the time as a friend of both abby and ari (jonah’s) after alex dies. 

alex is more fleshed out than just neph’s dead best friend as well. he grows up an only child with an abusive mother, turns to drugs/alcohol at a young age and gets progressively more depressed. he’s close with ari, azi (jonah’s) and lydia by extension and basically all they do together is drugs. he doesn’t let neph come over when he’s with them because he knows she has potential to be great and refuses to ruin her. ironically enough, by dying he does exactly that. only sometimes he doesn’t actually die, he simply fakes his death to run away with his mermaid boyfriend.

as for lydia, she’s the newest actual* addition to hell squad and pretty much only has ties to ari, alex and jasper by extension there. she’s a scene furry who loves to rave. she’s popular on deviantart with her art (tag tbd) and basically uses commissions as a main source of income. when she moves in with her high school boyfriend (originally named logan but i’m renaming him hunter because i feel like it) she does pick up a job at mcdonald’s briefly, but struggles hard with body image and has an awful relationship with food and eventually she gets hired at spencer’s with her friend james (jonah’s). he takes her in when she and hunter break up (he’s cheating on her) and she isn’t sure where to go. they end up dating in the end.

*emmett is really the newest addition, but he isn’t usually involved in the group. he lives in the same town as russ (jonah’s), jade’s end-game boyfriend in most verses. he’s a jock werewolf, really sweet and defensive of his pack and big. lowkey i think i subconsciously based him off zeke from high school musical. he plays football and soccer and loves to bake. he initially started as a reincarnation of jasper (hence the baking) but i fell in love with his dumb ass so much so that i decided to keep him as his own character. occasionally he does cross paths with abby and befriends him also. he’s fairly religious.

on the subject of supernatural creatures, riley and evan have made some pretty drastic changes as well: riley himself is more developed, but when i created evan in 2015 he was supposed to be fiery. he’s a baby now. he’s built to be a trophy husband and he simply likes minecraft and to get drunk at holidays. riley took all of evan’s fire-- he would also die for his family and he proves it when he goes to juvie for putting a kid in a coma after hearing him call evan a f*ggot.  they’re modern-aged vampires now with a nuclear family. josephine and adam have been introduced as their parents and while previously they would always be on business trips or lived in europe, they simply parent their kids. josephine (josie for short) is best friends with abby’s mother, teresa (jonah’s), explaining abby and evan’s friendship from childhood. teresa and josephine befriend joanna when she moves into town and everyone takes the loss hard-- when there is one. which is only sometimes at this point. the favors, the owens, and the wickfields (jonah’s) are their own mega-family basically. they all celebrate holidays together.

holly and sage whitney are the last updates: holly and quinn (jonah’s) remain friends since childhood since holly used to dance with him. in high school, holly gets a job at starbucks and becomes friends with abby. through abby, she meets azi and they fall in love and live a pretty normal life. sage’s only change is that she’s friends with astrid and lia, the owens’ little sisters. i rarely touch sage anymore because she’s younger than the main age group.

i THINK that covers all of the updates made in the past two years. i’ll try to keep up more with major updates from here on out, but with the amount of aus we create, it does get hard to keep track. i tried to keep everything on one timeline for the sake of this post but there is the occasional “sometimes” listed. this took me 4 hours! :D

[theflamingbuddhist]

We’ve all seen articles online with advice for depressed people to REACH OUT and GET HELP! But what happens when you do that and nothing happens? “Keep reaching out!” You, espouser of common advice might say. And what if you do keep reaching out?, and uh, still nothing happens? What if some people who ultimately commit suicide or otherwise die from depression didn’t all just die because they didn’t reach out? What if they did reach out? Over and over and over? What if they asked for help, down to telling people exactly what they needed, and nothing happened? What if this had gone on for years, and virtually nothing had changed? What then?

These questions aren’t hypthotetical to me and form the bedrock of much of my day-to-day experience dealing with depression, anxiety, complex post traumatic stress, and neurological diversity informed by chronic autoimmune illness. In my particular case, a medical intervention is not available for my depression, meaning I need to rely on environmental factors to help keep me stable. Unfortunately, my environment would make anyone depressed  - I spend most days in fairly severe amounts of pain and just trying to get from one task to the next (that doesn’t mean I don’t give my all to each task and contribute a lot, just that I’m always in a type of survival mode). In any given day where I’m working, I will have to NOT do several personal tasks that people feel is essential – prepping/cooking AND eating dinner for instance, exercising, or having time to work on personal things in the evening, are all usually out of the question. Instead I miss a lot of meals, fall out of touch with the few folks who are reaching out to me, and spend a lot of time feeling anxious about what I’d like to be doing but can’t because I’m feeling too exhausted/sick.

I’m working on making friends here in Lansing, but it’s slow going. As it stands, despite informing people that I have been seriously and suicidally depressed since 2013, I’m more isolated than ever. I have a few friends I hear from once or twice a year, casual work friends I’ve known a few months, and that’s it. THAT IS IT. Think about how fucking depressing that’d be for anyone, now throw in everyday being in part a hellscape of misgendering and gender terror, White Supremacy trying to crush me down all the time, and oh yeah, being sick as shit.

I’ve also tried reaching out to my family, and while I do occasionally hear from my  brother and grandma more these days, we aren’t close. Meanwhile my sister hung up on me when I called for help fleeing an abusive relationship in October and has ignored me since, really!, and my mom, despite being 4 hours a way, didn’t even call me after my car accident or offer to help in any substantive way. She did text at one point to let me know she’d seen it on instagram and to passively aggressively chide for me complaining that no one had helped me. Stay classy.

So I say now what, friends and society at large? I think more depressed people are in situations similar to mine than not, and yet we tell them to just reach out. Maybe instead we should start asking neurotypicals if they’ve reached-in to anyone disabled in their life lately? And if not, why is that not a daily practice for you? If it’s because you’re too busy, especially with work, you’re missing out on the meaningful human experience of helping someone who’s hurting just by being there, as yourself, from time to time. It asks so little, and yet instead we tell depressed people to just keep reaching out. to nowhere and wondering why they fall.