#history is depressing

[ill-say-anything-i-hafta]

Newsies AU where it's 1899 but none of the boys are newsies; they have other period-appropriate jobs instead.

Jack is a stableboy. He mucks out the stalls and sings to the horses while he brushes them.

Crutchie is a bootblack, so he doesn't have to walk too much.

Albert is a telegraph messenger. His crew is feuding with the Western Union messengers, who knock them off their bikes when they see them.

Buttons and Finch both work in a textile factory. Finch is always getting in trouble for going too slow. Last year, Buttons caught two fingers on his right hand in a machine and lost them, but he's healed up now and is faster than Finch again.

Elmer helps his ma and siblings roll cigarettes in their tenement.

Mush repairs shoes.

Romeo works at a laundry next to a brothel. All the ladies are really nice to him when they see him.

Specs is the lookout for a gang of older boys who are housebreakers. They give him a cut of their take. He has been in the Refuge six times.

Jojo is apprenticed to an illiterate jeweler, and does the books. His boss beats him if he thinks he's made a mistake.

Racetrack is an oyster shucker. He has never seen a pearl.

Albert seems to know everyone in Lower Manhattan, but most of the other boys are lonely. Buttons and Finch aren't allowed to talk at work. Kids steer clear of Specs. Crutchie once saved Romeo from getting soaked by some toughs and now he sometimes says hi when he sees Crutchie set up on the corner, but none of the rest of them are even friends.

[inkskinned]

they want to talk about mental illness and acceptance and how everyone is a little ocd it's cute and quirky and their "intrusive thoughts" are about cutting their hair off and you say yours are about taking a razorblade to your eye and they say ew can you not and everyone is a little adhd sometimes! except if you're late it's a personality flaw and it's because you are careless and cruel (and someone else with adhd mentions they can be on time, so why can't you?) and it's not an eating disorder if it's girl dinner! it's not mania if it's girl math! what do you mean you blew all of your savings on nonrefundable plane tickets for a plane you didn't even end up taking. what do you mean that you are afraid of eating. get over it. they roll their little lips up into a sneer. can you not, like, trauma dump?

they love it on them they like to wear pieces of your suffering like jewels so that it hangs off their tongue in rapiers. they are allowed to arm-chair diagnose and cherrypick their poisons but you can't ever miss too many showers because that's, like, "fuckken gross?" so anyone mean is a narcissist. so anyone with visual tics is clearly faking it and is so cringe. but they get to scream and hit customer service employees because well, i got overwhelmed.

you keep seeing these posts about how people pleasers are "inherently manipulative" and how it's totally unfair behavior. but you are a people pleaser, you have an ingrained fawn response. in the comments, you have typed and deleted the words just because it is technically true does not make it an empathetic or kind reading of the reaction about one million times. it is technically accurate, after all. you think of catholic guilt, how sometimes you feel bad when doing a good deed because the sense of pride you get from acting kind - that pride is a sin. the word "manipulation" is not without bias or stigma attached to it. many people with the fawn response are direct victims of someone who was malignantly manipulative. calling the victims manipulative too is an unfair and unkind reading of the situation. it would be better and more empathetic to say it is safety-seeking or connection-seeking behavior. yes, it can be toxic. no, in general it is not intended to be toxic. there is no reason to make mentally ill people feel worse for what we undergo.

you type why is everyone so quick to turn on someone showing clear signs of trauma but you already know the fucking answer, so what's the point of bothering. you kind of hate those this is what anxiety looks like! infographics because at this point you're so good at white-knuckling through a severe panic attack that people just think you're stoic. even people who know the situation sometimes comment you just don't seem depressed. and you're not a 9 year old white kid so there's no way you're on the spectrum, you're not obsessed with trains and you were never a good mathematician. okay then.

mental illness is trending. in 2012 tumblr said don't romanticize our symptoms but to be fair tiktok didn't exist yet. there's these series of videos where someone pretends to be "the most boring person on earth" and is just being a normal fucking person, which makes your skin crawl, because that probably means you are boring. your friend reads aloud a profile from tinder - no depressed bitches i fucking hate that mental illness crap. your father says that medication never actually works.

you still haven't told your grandmother that you're in therapy. despite everything (and the fact it's helping): you just don't want her to see you differently.

[taibhsearachd]

Just discovered an early Protestant theory about werewolves (the Catholics had their own complicated ideas about whether werewolves were possible and how they worked, don’t worry about it) was that an imbalance of melancholic humors could fuck up your alchemical makeup so badly that you transform into a wolf.

Fellas, you ever get so sad that you just straight-up turn into a fucking wolf? I know I have.

[thefangirlphenomenon]

Books are a special kind of poison. They soothe every ache inside of you while making you long for things that don't exist. They make you feel alive while simultaneously making life seem more and more dull with every page you read. Reading makes you feel less alone and yet it creates an ache for companionship - the likes of which you will never know outside of those pages.

Books are a poison I wish I had never drunk, but now that I have - it's the one thing keeping me alive.

[averagepretentiousreader]

Just a reminder to all the dark academia bitches that our season begins very soon

[relaxxattack]

i really sincerely hope there’s a cool homestuck event this 4/13 because i still haven’t really gotten over my sadness from not being able to attend the cafe one last year

[sulasnsleep]

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones I did not.”

— Donna Tartt, The Secret History

[amicus-noctis]

“Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.” ― Franz Kafka

[ill-say-anything-i-hafta]

For @elysias-plains, who wanted to know what David is doing in my canon-era child labor AU:

When David and Les have to leave school, they try to sell papes at first, but David gets beat up pretty bad the first day for mouthing off to a bigger kid — he didn’t even know he was doing that! he didn’t mean to! — and his ma keeps him at home while his two black eyes fade and convinces him to let his sister teach him lacemaking. This is not a success; David is no good with his hands and Les is driving everyone crazy cooped up in the apartment all day. David eventually finds work running deliveries for a hatmaker, which brings in some money. He is still pretty jumpy and takes long detours through alleys every time he sees a newsie. Les helps him watch his back.

No one asked about Spot but I need you all to know that she works for a knife grinder who operates all over Brooklyn and Queens. He is very old and thinks of her as the grandson he never had. Someday soon, she will inherit his cart.

Did I miss anyone else?

[yet-another-haven-of-dollya]

wait why are those Chobies with the new PC now?

I kinda don't have a job for them so I told them to just follow Nyan to narrate his story and sing background music like that Muses Chorus in Hercules.

Nyan can't do anything about it. The decision is mine, and I think that's funny ^^)

[rambrandt-the-painter]

been having an ehhhhh time with art and this isnt great but i think shes really cute when i draw her like this

[tomorrowusa]

"Nazi Town, USA" is a 2024 feature in PBS's American Experience series. It looks into the surprising degree of influence which Nazis had in the United States in the 1930s. There were even Nazi summer camps for kids.

It can be viewed (probably for a limited amount of time) at the series link above. Here's a preview...

To explore the topic more deeply, check out Rachel Maddow's excellent 8-episode podcast Ultra.

Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra | an MSNBC original podcast

Ultra has somewhat more emphasis on Nazi attempts to penetrate government.

Those espousing Nazi-friendly views in the 1930s did not disappear when the US entered World War II and fascism became very unfashionable. Those half-hidden feelings hibernated and occasionally emerged from time to time to poison discourse and endanger democracy. There are obvious echos of that movement today.

[frogteethblogteeth]

Cab Calloway and his band in a sleeper car, 1933

[rainbowchaox]

I’m still grieving that the missa art. All the albums of pictures. The waystone phil y missa. The double bed. Their first house. Their wall. Is just gone. So much pissa and death family history and memories gone.

[dinitride-art]

“Mike wheeler’s armpit of a basement”

“I’ve seen Mike’s room look worse than this”

“I was being a total self pitying idiot”

“Why am I the bad guy”

“One day she’s going to realize that I’m just some random nerd”

“At least Lois Lane is an ace reporter for the Daily Planet”

“I’ve been bullied my whole life”

“Mike’s always whining about it”

“And yet you still have a C in Spanish”

“You can’t even write it Mike”

“You made it super clear that you’re not interested in anything I have to say”

“-and if I said that thing then maybe she’d want me there with her, wherever she is”

“The bad government dudes are after your super-girlfriend right? Right?! Okay, so, maybe the cops can help us find out where she is because they’re gonna kill her, man. And if they kill her, there gonna kill us!”

“Oh, no, no, no, no- it’s a shitty knock off, yeah”

“Who’s that twig with her?”

“That doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I mean, if that guy would’ve lived one more second- one more second- th- we could know where she is. Wh-why didn’t he just say the number? I-I should’ve explained myself, cuz then maybe, Eleven would’ve taken me with her and things would be different but I-I didn’t know what to say”

“And I feel like maybe I-I was worrying too much about El, and I don’t know, maybe I feel like I lost you or something”

“Y’know the last few days, I’ve had to think about the last talk we had. You know, before the cops and the whole word went to shit and everything? I- I guess- I just- I- I dunno- I guess I just wanted to- to say-”

“But… but what if after all of this is over… sh-she doesn’t need me anymore?”

“No I… it’s so stupid, given everything that’s going on. It’s just… I… I don’t know. I just”

“I, love you.”

Mike’s flopping on the floor like a miserable and suffocating fish out of water season. His friends make fun of him. Eddie made fun of his clothes. Karen told Dustin he’s welcome at the Wheeler’s anytime which implies that Mike isn’t really talking to his friends outside of school. Dustin and Mike didn’t know when Lucas’ basketball game was, which implies that they haven’t really been talking to Lucas a lot. Mike did call the Byers but wasn’t able to get through. El and Will are have been in Lenora for months and Mike hasn’t really been able to talk to either of them. El’s been lying to him in her letters and writing and signing letters is a reminder that he’s avoiding writing the word love. Everyone’s telling him that he’s doing something wrong. This kids going through it.

[elumish]

Pro tip: if you're thinking about using terms like "gay panic" in your writing/AO3 tags please do at least 5 minutes of research to understand what the term actually means and why you shouldn't use it to refer to, say, someone panicking about they themselves being gay.