#but read in here in the meantime! :)

[idliketobeatree]

[carpathiians]

sketches

ref

[some-little-infamy]

(Read on AO3)

“How would you feel about getting married?”

Eddie doesn’t mean to ask the question, or at least not so bluntly, but the words tumble out of his mouth after spiraling around his head relentlessly for the last hour of his date night with Marisol. They’re cleaning up after dinner, Marisol beside him at the counter drying off the dishes he washed and put on the rack.

“Like, as a concept? Or…” Marisol questions, carefully placing the glass she was holding down on the counter before turning fully to face him.

“To me,” Eddie clarifies, choosing to double-down instead of backtrack.

“I mean… if I’m being honest, I hadn’t thought about it a whole lot. Yeah, it’s crossed my mind in a hypothetical future scenario sort of way, but… you’re not talking about that, are you?” Her eyes narrow as they watch the emotions cross his face. “You’re talking about right now.”

“Not right now,” he says. “But soon.” “Where is this coming from?” Marisol asks. It isn’t a no, but it also isn’t a yes.

“Christopher,” Eddit admits.

“Christopher wants us to get married?” Marisol asks.

“Christopher needs something constant. He needs something long-term. He can’t keep losing people… I can’t keep bringing people into his life who leave.” If he’s going to spring something like this on her then the least he can do is be honest about it. He knows how this must sound otherwise, bringing up marriage out of nowhere. They never spoke of it before, they barely planned for the next week or two, let alone months or years from now.

“Eddie…” Marisol starts slowly, and it’s the tone of a gentle let-down that leaves an immediate pit in his stomach.

“Don’t say no, just-” “I can’t say yes, though. And that’s the problem. I can’t promise to never leave, Eddie. We’re not there. Or I’m not there, at least. And if that’s something you’re looking for… maybe it isn’t fair for us to keep doing this.”

A silence falls between them.

“There’s no chance you’ll be willing to pretend this conversation never happened, is there?” Eddie tries, sensing the line they just crossed and already knowing what it means for them. It means the very thing he was hoping to avoid.

“I don’t think that’d do either of us any good, do you, Eddie?”

Eddie doesn’t know what to think any more. Every move he makes seems to backfire, no matter how good his intentions are, and he’s starting to think that maybe it’s just him.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally.

“Me too,” Marisol agrees. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Me too,” Eddie echoes. If Marisol hears him she doesn’t give any indication, making her way to the door without turning back.

  “There are only two plates,” Christopher says as he takes his seat at the table. “Isn’t Marisol going to come over tonight?”

Eddie’s thankful that he has his back turned, scooping the potpie onto two plates at the counter. His face immediately pulls into a deep frown and he takes a deep breath for a second to steady his mind and his heart before turning to face Christopher with a small smile.

“Not tonight,” he says. “Actually… Marisol isn’t going to be coming around here any more.”

“But I liked her,” Christopher sighs.

“Me too, buddy. Me too.” Eddie forces the rueful smile to remain on his face despite every single instinct wanting to sigh right back.

“Then why did she break up with you?” Christopher asks.

“Hey,” Eddie says, feigning indignance. “What makes you think she broke up with me?”

“Because I heard you talking to Abuela when you dropped me off last night.”

Eddie winces. He remembers bits of the conversation he had with her - how he might ask Marisol to move in with him, or how he wondered if she might be ‘the one’. How much had Christopher overheard? How high did Eddie get his hopes up only to crush them the same way his own were the night before?

“I’m sorry, Chris,” Eddie says.

“It’s okay,” Christopher says.

“I know you liked having someone else around the apartment-”

“Now Buck can come over more often!” Christopher points out.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees with a laugh. “But it isn’t the same.”

“Why not?” Christopher asks. “Buck plays games with me, and eats dinner with us, and helps me with my homework, and watches me when you and Abuela can’t. He even gave me advice about girls,” Christopher adds. “Much better advice than you or Marisol.”

Dinner is growing colder by the second, but Eddie doesn't seem to notice as the seconds of silence following Christopher's statement stretch to a minute, and then two, as his son's words settle over him.

“It isn't the same when Buck is around,” Eddie tries to explain, his words coming slow and carefully chosen. “As it is when I bring a date over.”

“You're right - Buck always leaves at night. But I wish he wouldn't. I like it better when Buck's around. You do, too. Right?”

The question is so casual, so innocent. Christopher talks between bites of dinner while Eddie’s own food continues to cool, untouched in front of him.

If he's being honest with himself, he has missed having Buck around as much as he used to. If he's being really honest, maybe he's been pushing himself to date to try and not think about just how much he likes it.

Likes Buck.

So when Christopher so easily points out that Buck is the most constant part of his life - of both their lives - Eddie wonders why he didn't realize the true weight of that sooner.

As if reading his mind, Christopher fills the silence.

“You should just date Buck. Then he'll never have to leave.”

Eddie's breath catches in his chest.

“It isn't that simple, buddy,” Eddie says.

“Why not?”

Why not, indeed. Because what if Buck doesn't feel the same? Because what if Eddie doesn't just ruin his relationship with Buck, but Christopher's, too? What if he runs the entire dynamic at work, and their friends have to pick sides or avoid him or-

“Areeee you okay, dad?” Christopher drags out the first word, waving his hand - fork and all - in front of him in Eddie’s direction.

Eddie is most certainly not okay, but he isn’t about to explain to his son that he’s having an existential crisis over the affections of a man Christopher is so certain of.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” Eddie says, picking up his own fork and taking the first bite of a dinner he’s no longer hungry for. It wouldn’t do to leave the table without eating at least a little, though, or else he’ll never hear the end of it the next time Christopher tries to boycott eating his own food.

“You’d really be okay if Buck and I… dated?” Eddie asks, tentatively easing into the conversation Christopher is already fully having whether Eddie wants to or not.

“Of course,” Chris says.

“And that wouldn’t be… weird for you?” Eddie continues.

“Nope,” Christopher answers, dropping another bite of food into his mouth. “Did I eat enough to go play video games now?”

Christopher eyes Eddie’s barely-touched plate as if daring him to say no.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“Thanks!” Chris pushes back his chair and moves as fast as he can before Eddie can change his mind.

Eddie sits there another minute or two, head racing with everything that just happened. Every point Christopher made was not only valid, but also so painfully obvious looking back on everything. All of the nights they spent together, or days helping Chris with projects or sports over the weekends… hell, Eddie made Buck Chris’s guardian if anything ever happened to him, for fuck’s sake.

Eddie has no trouble admitting that Buck is the best thing to happen to the two of them in a long while, so why is he so hung up on taking that one step further?

His cell phone rings, jolting him from his thoughts for just a moment, but of course the name that lights up on his screen shouldn’t be a surprise.

Evan.

Eddie considers not answering it, but changes his mind at the last second, answering it just before it would’ve gone to voicemail. Thankfully, Buck can’t hear the way Eddie’s pulse picks up at the sound of his voice in the context of all the other thoughts running through Eddie’s head just then. “Hey, Buck,” Eddie says by way of a greeting. Now or never. The thought is in his head, the possibility of more, and he needs to know if it’s just him (okay, just him and Christopher) who’ve seen it and thought about it. “Just the guy I was looking for. What are you doing tonight?”

[saint-vagrant]

i've been accepted into 2024's Shortbox comic fair so, in addition to my work for SUPERPOSE, i've begun a brand new gay adult scifi comic for the event ⚪ it'll be kept under wraps until far off in the fall, but for our supporters i've shared my early developments and thought process.

i'm very happy with it... it's so invigorating to create stories that're at once totally separate and in conversation with one other, digging further into what i love in new ways, sharpening on it like a whetstone. i've heard from some people with taste and class that it even seems "good" so far. and gun to my head, brother, i'd have to say i agree!

(working title; i've gotta call it something.)

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OOH YEAH BABY! PARTY TIME BABY! MUSIC! DRINKS! SOCIAL PRESSURE & A PSYCHEDELIC BREAK DOWN! WELCOME TO VAMPIRE SOCIETY MOTHERFUCKER! ARE YOU SCARED? DO YOU UNDERSTAND YET? ITS OKAY IF NOT. FIRE DISSOLVED IT! ITS ALL GONE NOW. HAVE FUN!

[esteemed-excellency]

1867 / 1899

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: NEVER WHISTLE AT NIGHT: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, ed. by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

This has a bunch of authors I already love in it (Stephen Graham Jones, Darcie Little Badger, Waubgeshig Rice, and Rebecca Roanhorse!!), and several authors I've been meaning to try (like Tommy Orange, Nick Medina, and Kelli Jo Ford, to name a few), so I'm really hyped for them all to be together in one volume! Plus dark fiction is very much my jam (especially when it comes in a bright and colorful package).

[huehoa17]

[gazpachoandbooks]

Arya: I love going out with Jon, Theon and Aegon! It's great to never have to be the designated driver

Gendry: why?

Jon: please stop bringing this up

Bran: the three of them are no longer allowed to get drunk at the same time

Gendry: I'm going to need more context here

Arya: oh it's a great story

Jon: IT'S NOT ARYA

Sansa *already tearing up from laughter*: it really is

Arya: so there was this family party, and everyone was there, and Theon and Aegon, who were already pretty wasted themselves, managed to get Jon drunk. So they absolutely HAD to pull a prank on Jon Connington-

Aegon: I think we should all just stop talking for a while

Arya: -and considering he'd fallen asleep on the table about an hour ago, they decided it was a brilliant idea to dye his hair bright pink

Gendry: OH GODS

Bran: it gets better

Aegon: please just stop

Arya: and I've never seen anything half as fucking funny as their faces when the deed was done and the doors of the room opened up to reveal-

Jon: SHUT UP SHUT UP

Arya: JON CONNINGTON

Gendry: I'm not following

Rickon *breathless from laughing, already on the floor*: WRONG- WRONG REDHEAD

Jon *whispering in fury*: wrong fucking redhead

Gendry: please don't tell me you were the ones who dyed Brynden THE BLACKFISH TULLY'S HAIR BRIGHT PINK

Theon: it was more of a neon bubblegum shade if we're being accurate

Jon: please just stop talking

Gendry: OH MY GODS

Arya: Uncle Edmure was laughing so hard he actually needed medical assistance

Aegon: the worst part is Bran knew the whole time. He just decided to let us ruin our lives

Bran: I honestly can't think of a single reason why I should have stopped you

Arya: I think about Uncle Brynden's face when he saw himself in the mirror every. Single. Day.

Gendry: how do you come back from that??

Jon: you start by avoiding Riverrun like the fucking plague

Theon: he still doesn't talk to me. A bit of an overreaction if you ask me. His hair grew back! To be fair I still can't look him in the eye without laughing my ass off

Aegon: if I ever see him anywhere I pretend someone just called me and run for my life

[magnifiico]

if anyone is waiting for anything from me (be it an ooc response in IMs or some sort of beginning to an interaction), please know i'm not ignoring you or not disinterested! (ꈍ ‸ ꈍ✿)

i was sick all week last week and now we're diving headfirst into the holidays, so i've been a bit scatterbrained with remembering to reply to things — i guarantee it's me, not you ♡

ty for your patience; i'm stoked to explore dynamics together!

[septembersghost]

I really hope Taylor wont loose that 'forever love' belief post joe. I really hope she will still believe in invisible strings and golden love and that she can indeed build forever with someone else. She has alluded previously that she wants family kids and marriage someday(even though she doesn't know when).

But at the same time it must suck a lot. Starting from the bottom. That effort to trust someone,be that vulnerable,love them fully well considering how it could end. Plus everytime she goes on a date people will talk. I can't even imagine it. We got so used to joe breakup wasn't even in our mind.

i hope she won't either, considering she really never has, not totally, even after the amount of pain and mistreatment and scrutiny she's endured, and (to our knowledge, i will say this is subject to change only if we ever learn differently) joe was so unlike those relationships that badly hurt her - maybe somehow she can hold onto the belief that she'll find it anew. she's a romantic at heart. i saw a post mentioning the red prologue and the connection to daylight, and how precious that was and how proud we were of her, and that's still true. she did learn to nurture a love that wasn't burning red, but golden. she knows what it is now, and what she's looking for and what she needs. it's definitely hard because the idea of falling out of love or simply growing apart from the person you thought would be in your life forever and dreamed of a future with is terrifying, and like you said, it takes intense vulnerability and time to learn to trust and love someone so wholly (like idk if i would be capable of this!), and that's understandably even more difficult for her given her place in the public eye, but one day it may find her again. i will say whenever the day comes that she feels up to trying, i wish her privacy and peace because the media is going to be horrendous about it and i'm already tired on her behalf. the idea of having to start over at square one after building a shared life, after the deep fears she had of losing this, is also just really daunting, and i think that's what a lot of fans are feeling a bit overwhelmed by conceptually. the loss of this particular love, the wish for her happiness, and the worry for all the tough aspects of the situation. we weren't expecting that sudden drastic change, and it's possible they weren't entirely either. she's a strong person and she'll be okay eventually, but that doesn't mean the process is simple or easy. and i hope nobody rushes her or pressures her and she can take as much time to mend and care for herself as possible in the midst of all the artistic work we also know she's focused on (and that work may be her lifeline for a while, and that's okay too).

[bleaksqueak]

realizing I did not letter the next page that goes up this week and that I have to do that still...

[siflshonen]

You have not made any mha posts in a while have you given up on the series

NO! I JUST DON'T ALWAYS HAVE TIME TO TEAR OUT MY HAIR AND RIP MY CLOTHES AND DOCUMENT MYSELF LOSING IT OVER THE ONGOING SHIGADEKU MEMORY FUSION SEQUENCE!

It's very stressful, you see.

[paperlovesadness]

I'm sitting outside in the sun in wet jeans - following advice on how to stretch denim to better fit you - making breathing room for myself and my thighs who are hated by jean sizing everywhere - and I'm getting sappy about Tumblr and fangirling and this community of lovely, unapologetically excited people I've met here.

This is something not many will probably read (long posts can be tough, I get it) - it just kind of all spilled I guess? Incoherently but with passion. So why not set it free when it's already here.

You see - I can't help but credit Tumblr as this huge part of my inner child healing journey. And particularly the girlhood part of it all.

Subconsciously & even consciously I've felt so so ashamed of these "girly" sides of me all my life. Especially in their "prime time" of my tween and teen years. I'd love things secretly - or at most - talk about them only after loudly labelling them as "guilty pleasures" (quite a terrible concept) or acting like it's all done with a tinge of self-aware irony.

But being a hopeless romantic; loving your favorite characters with your whole being; squealing over your favorite music and the musicians who make it; talking about your favorite songs and lyrics and photos; drawing, editing, making fanart of things that make your heart sore; sharing your fantasies and dreams; crying about quotes and big ideas; writing stories - those are all such beautiful things.

I've immersed myself back in the worlds of blogging and fanfiction and musical fangirling and... In many ways I haven't felt this good since I was a kid - still untouched by society and it's shaming of the endless supply of passion I had in me towards the things I loved.

And fangirls are a force. Fangirls are what made the music industry what it is. They're who discovered the Beatles and Leonard Cohen and Frank Sinatra and David Bowie - amongst so many others - and when they did the hard work - only then was it all taken over and appropriated by men who claimed only they can "truly and objectively" appreciate it.

It's girls - bright, unapologetically excited, passionate girls who care for pretty things and things with a soul and things with a story, with romantic connotations - girls who love to curate aesthetically pleasing landscapes and spaces around themselves - it's those girls who contributed hugely to an actual analogue photography and vinyl pressing revival & re-popularization.

I'm in my late twenties. I've only recently let myself pierce my ears and start wearing makeup sometimes. And care openly about my appearance and fashion choices. It's very much still all queer coded and slightly gender-mixed. Because that's me. But caring about these things has always been categorized as a "girl thing" = therefore = shameful, shallow, not something to be proud of.

I'm continuously curing my incredibly hurtful and internally misogynistic complex of "not being like other girls". There are still biases and automatic-judgements I'm fighting on the daily. But it's become so much clearer and easier to do so.

Im more ways than one I want to be exactly like other girls. I want to grab the hands of all the fangirls around this site and dance with them in a circle and tell them they look great whatever they choose to look like and I want to sit down in a meadow and make flower crowns together and squeal over our favorite things.

And to be clear I'm not saying be girly. I'm saying embrace you inner girlhood.

And that could be so many things. Just... Never be ashamed of the parts of it that society deems shallow and embarrassing or worthless.

And just... Thank you for being girlies with me 💗

(girlies & girls as usual used as more of a state of my mind and being; not a strictly gendered term. This applies in all, most or many ways to queer people & of course non-binary and trans experiences).

[saibowtie]

I think one of the reasons why this whole Ted ending doesn't really work for me (apart from the straight up way of how depressed and ooc he looks the entire episode) is that Ted never clearly says why he needs to go back to Kansas.. Like we know it's because of missing Henry and his mom guilt tripping asking him to think of his son, but Rebecca literally gave him a satisfactory solution for this? What the hell else was the whole "bring Henry here, Michelle can go teach, etc" speech for?? She literally spelled out every single Ted fic ending the fandom has written in the past couple of years, and TED HAD NO RESPONSE!!!! Someone tell me why they said this ON SCREEN and didn't give a valid counterargument. She said London is HOME for him and he didn't deny it.

I just don't get it. If this is truly the last episode ever, then all of the above just doesn't make sense and that's why it feels so wrong and unfinished to me.

[speedyowl152]

Have you ever seen a boy so sad to be complimented on his appearance by his closest friend whom he cares about and respects so much.

His self worth and identity is so tightly tied into his appearance as Adrien Agreste. For so long, looking good is all that most people, even his own father, value in him. He cannot get away from perfect pictures of himself.

But right now in this moment he's trying his very best to be a great partner. He knows Mister Bug is a harder role than usual and this time he's determined to do his best and support his lady while she's clearly having an off day.

But what she notices and compliments him on, not his hard work or skill or speed or his mind. Just the same looks everyone in Paris agrees are good. The looks that the whole world now own in the palms of their hand. His eyes as Mister Bug are less his own than they are as Chat Noir, and they're all she's noticed.

I'm fucking heartbroken. When this episode ended, I cried.