#i am so good at communicating

[plaguedoctorate]

idk man. i just think itd be really cool if sign language classes were mandatory throughout primary school. yeah because it would make communication with deaf kids and autistic/nonverbal kids much easier. and those kids would be accessible to the others so they could make friends and have healthy relationships. yeah. and kids would eat that shit up man. like their own little secret language? they love that.

[crispycostumes]

keeping the romance alive with my friends (i sent a screenshot of a funny post that had the word love and friendship in it while comparing it to us)

[nobie]

#ineffable idiots

[3cosmicfrogs]

POV: you're Sokka and you're desperately trying to get to know the cute emo linecook from the restaurant next door but whenever he's on smokebreak his greasy stoner boyfriend is also there.

[bedazzlecunt]

i really do have to emphasize that like. horny tumblr is a fucking horrible place to learn about kink. at least half the people here have never had sex (or done kink without sex) beyond sexting on omegle, and even the ones who do have any experience with sex and and kink and IRL kink spaces (including myself!) are mostly engaging in fantasy and theatre and performance. that's fine! that's fun! there's nothing wrong with that. but i do worry so much about all the 18 yr olds i see on here who've never had sex, many of whom have never been in a relationship, and who are building ideas about kink and sex and health based on the most deranged fantasy-of-the-sort-you-literally-cannot-do-safely-irl tumblr posts. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not take any tumblr posts as actual kink education, including and sometimes especially the ones claiming to be actual kink education. there are actual books and groups and dungeons for that.

[inkskinned]

you were raised in comparison.

it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.

you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.

you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.

what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.

it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.

you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.

you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?

a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.

you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.

it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.

something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.

[truepsychicbedtimestories]

🌈⛅ Skip*Hop Silver Lining Baby Toys! 🌟⛈️

[comfort-character-central]

I want to give my f/o or comfort character a kiss on on their forehead so I can see their smile grow. I want to intertwine my fingers within theirs so I can give them that pure gesture of closeness, gently squeezing their hand. I want to hold them close so they can feel the kindness of my embrace. I want to love them in the most beautiful ways so they can experience what it is like to receive genuine love in a form that is healthy and secure.

[tomatoart]

CHARM INTEREST CHECK!

hi guys have you ever wanted your own personal jerma ?! Well I have great news:

TAKE THE AWSOME JERMA CHARM INTEREST CHECK!

It would help me out if you took this, as well as show it to others wether here or other socials! i rlly wanna make these happen and I’ll need a proper gauge of viability :D!

what jerma creatures would you want to house? Help us solve this scientific question, the 3 designs you can choose to be created into charms will be from one of these two sets, may the best men prevail and become real…

EDIT: COSTUME SET UP FOR PREORDER!

[aroaceleovaldez]

i think the thing i'm most disappointed about with riordanverse fandom now versus like 2014 is not only has the fandom not gotten any less racist or queerphobic or ableist (in fact in some regards its gotten worse!) but now it's just boring too. like there's no fandom infrastructure anymore - the community these days is almost entirely source material-driven - and you deviate from canon even slightly people get weird about it. whatever happened to the post-HoO fanon boom. the fandom needs to get weirder again. and self-sufficient. and less offensive.

[mikakuna]

tortured by the thoughts of what if bruce was just a slightly better person towards jason. he took in a homeless child and wasn't the adult for him he should've been. what if jason sometimes thinks about who he could've been if a different adult took him in? would he have been safer, happier? do you think, after he becomes red hood, he wonders why robin was too dangerous for 19 year old dick but fine for 12 year old jason?

[raineandsky]

#114

The last thing the hero remembers is someone shoving them into a white van—and frankly, with a last memory like that, they’re expecting to wake up in a grimy jail, or maybe some weird torture basement.

What they aren’t expecting is to wake up in an actual bed, in an actual room. There’s actual windows, for god’s sake, and unbarred. They woke up ten minutes ago, and spent about six of those minutes revelling in how comfortable the bed is before realising they should at least try to get out.

They're in the midst of fiddling with the latch on the window—conveniently impossible to open, they notice—when the criminal behind this weird situation decides to make an appearance.

“Good to see you awake,” the villain says cheerfully, then, with a little more apprehension, “and on your feet.”

The hero at least has the courtesy to stop trying to break out. “What the hell do you want, [Villain]?”

The villain’s bright smile doesn’t move. They carefully shut the door behind them. “I don’t want anything. I’m doing you a favour.”

From the lavish bed and actual walking space in here, the hero can kind of see that. “I seriously doubt you are doing me a favour.”

“When was the last time you slept in a bed that comfortable?”

A long time ago. The hero can even barely remember. It feels like they’ve always been a hero. Always been a little uncomfortable. “Last night, thank you very much.”

The hum the villain gives that is so disbelieving it’s painful. “I don’t like the agency,” they say after a moment, “and as a result I didn’t like you. I just kind of… bunched you in with them.”

“Well, yeah.” The hero shuffles awkwardly. “Probably because I work for them.”

“But exactly! You know I hate the modern working world.” The villain smiles, like everything is obvious. It’s really not. “I saw you as an equal to the agency, but you’re not, are you? You’re under them.”

“I don’t like what you’re implying.”

The villain’s not done. “You’re on their whim. You’re not an ally to them, you’re a victim.”

There’s a long silence in which the hero tries valiantly to process what the villain just said. “I think you’re a little confused, [Villain], I’m not—”

“When did you last have any free time? Enjoy life? See friends? I bet the agency doesn’t let you have friends.”

“I have friends!”

“Yeah? Who?”

“There’s… heroes.”

“Hm.” The villain smirks. “Only allowed to hang out with people they approve of, then.”

The hero returns that with a scowl. “Look,” the villain continues gently, “you can do a lot better than the agency. You’re better than all of this.”

“I’m not becoming a criminal.”

“I’m not saying that.” The villain shifts their gaze to the window the hero was just trying to open. “I’m just suggesting… I don’t know. Go do something that actually puts some good out there.”

“And you’re telling me this, of all people.”

The villain laughs at that. The hero smiles too—it is weird to get a morality lesson from someone who notoriously doesn’t have any. “Hey, you do the good stuff and I’ll stick to the bad stuff. Only good if there’s bad and vice versa, right?”

The villain opens the door, clearly considering their point made. “You really think the agency’s that bad?” the hero blurts.

“I don’t think there’s anything worse.” The villain idly runs their hand over the grooves in the door handle for a moment. “You have a lot of potential, [Hero]. I think I’d like to see what it’s like to fight you in your prime rather than as the agency’s lapdog.”

The hero nods sagely. “This is for personal gain, then.”

“Of course it is!” The villain grins. It’s a lot more genuine than their usual victorious smirk. “Everything I do is for personal gain, you know that.”

The hero can’t help but smile gratefully as the villain shuts the door behind them. Maybe they can think on it. Maybe they can consider their options, here, in this lovely little room that's more than they’ve had in years.

If giving the hero a nice bed and a beautiful view is for personal gain, then the villain should be selfish more often.

[heynhay]

mid week klance because my queen @klanced is on the struggle so I made lawyer au

[razzek]

One thing that's starting to really get to me with the James Somerton stuff is a real strong undercurrent of disdain toward his fans. And yeah, I was one of them. A good scam artist isn't as easy to spot as y'all seem to think. You forget that you have all the information right now. Two days ago most of you had never heard of him and it would have kept going. Anyone can fall for a scam, nobody is immune. I would love to have had whatever resources you guys think we all should magically know about so I could have kept my sad $5 a month I really needed but thought was going to something worthwhile. Some of us can only devote so much energy into things and when you have no idea whatsoever that something is amiss of course you're not going to go digging for sources, why would you when everything is fine as far as you know? I really wish I could have seen the dissenting opinions on him but for many, many reasons that aren't just that the dissenting voices weren't widely circulating at the time all I had was the thought every now and again that "huh that doesn't seem right" and then go on with my day. And I think that happened to a lot of us. So yeah. Say what you gotta say about Somerton, he has more than earned it with the damage he's caused, but maybe don't shit so hard on his former fans because that is going to be you someday with something, it happens to everyone sooner or later.

[crownedinmarigolds]

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY/Lupercalia from Daimund and this wonderful asylum of Malkavians!! Please click and look at all of the amazing work, it's just SO large Tumblr cannot possibly properly show off how incredible this looks! It's - WOW. TWENTY SEVEN MALKAVIANS and one Quinn (<3) are in this picture! I did my best to height match and to make sure we could get a decent look at everyone...! Thank you to EVERYONE who participated and do not worry if you couldn't - there are tons of holidays and clans to draw for! In the best order I can manage from left to right: Monday - @zyurp Sophia - @holly-bearie Rigby - @themarginalthinker Emil - @morticrows Mir and Marie - @problemsynth Claire - @pretend-pretend-vampire Thom - @socialprawn Charlie - @osatokun Quinn and Sunspire - @tzimizce Niko - @shaydh Daimund - @thesixthplaneteer Shivers - @kmpshitposter Andrea - @bugcouncil Heleen - @m4rloe5 j and clemency - @luoniiel and @kermitted-cause Brooklyn - @svampira Wyrd - @clompe Apollo - @mountainashfae Lucas, Noelle, and Zeus - @supersquiddle Finn - @confusedwithglitter Lyla and Thirteen - @problemsynth Father Emir - @urbanknightart Monroe - @cynical-tuba

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Riz has counted four casseroles this week alone. Five, if one goes by the method of cooking, but Yelen's scary when she's crossed, and calling her burek by its proper name is important to her, so Riz does her the courtesy and doesn't include it in his mental tally.

He holds the tupperware over his head to keep it out if the way as he takes careful steps over the piles of notes in his path. The dockman case just closed, relevant documentations handed over to relevant personnels, evidences dealt with as needed; all he has lying around now is just record of the process and traces of himself thinking through it. Unsurprisingly they still haven't invented a surface more convenient for people under five feet who like to pace to put pieces of paper on than the ground.

Actual records go into the case folder with the other documents. Anything else with at least one side still blank is going to the school kids in the block - they chew through an astounding amount of paper just learning arithmetic. The rest is for the recycling basket.

Later. It's his mandated lunch break right now.

Riz sits down in front of the corner file cabinet. In an office often overrun with papers and strings and sometimes even thumbtacks, he's never really managed to clutter up this exact square of surface like every other ones. Ever since the bottom drawer rattled for no discernible reason a day long past, his eyes have always just kinda decided to slide across the space without acknowledging it.

It's years out, now. Riz doesn't know why he thought it such a big deal anymore, back then. He wasn't scared, he doesn't think. Not anymore. Maybe just uncomfortable with the idea that certain things persist despite all efforts to change.

He opens the tupperware. Dame Carabelle's experiment greets him with enough spice in the aroma alone to knock out a small mammal. When he chopped the vegetables for this casserole he couldn't really imagine the eventual heft of it, evident even through just these few ladles' worth, maybe weighing heavier for being still warm. His folk eat more through the smell and the textures and the aftertastes than the taste itself. His folk's meal is really the cooking rather than the eating. The eating is the meal's end.

"Hey," he tells the file cabinet's bottom drawer. "Um."

It's the anniversary. Riz doesn't know the exact date of his dad's death; nobody currently alive does. He and Mom both use the date of the funeral, though as he moved out to Bastion and then got more directly involved with Interplanar he hasn't really been going to Dad's grave as much. Doesn't seem like very efficient use of his time, catching a train or borrowing a car or spending a whole spell slot on going somewhere he knows Dad isn't at. They're sorta coworkers now. They talk on and off every other week between missions. When he goes now, it's just to clean up the place, keeping the landmark tidy and respectable.

Without that work to mark the date he doesn't really know what it serves anymore. But he still remembers it. Still takes note, absently or not, when it comes around.

There's not really a good way to tell the drawer that. Riz looks for another way to start the... conversation, hopefully. The question at play, he'd guess, is why he's doing this. He's been pretty content ignoring all the rattlings and the knocks from inside and the times it sits slightly ajar without him ever opening it himself; hell, he still uses the three drawers on top of it. Space is fucking precious in Bastion.

Precious enough to finally fix this damn drawer so he gets his turn to use it? Riz asks himself. Is that what we're getting to? Then he dismisses the thought - he didn't manage to fix it the times he actually tried, let alone-- now. When he doesn't really care that much to.

That's probably a good place to start. "'s fine if you keep being in there, turns out," Riz says.

The lunch hours are quiet in the block, sleepy and bright with the brief window of sunlight that manages to break through roof overhangs and extended balconies and laundry lines and climbing vines. Riz's work isn't loud here (the loud parts happen away from his office, if everything goes right), but the fragment of early summer heat reflected in the steady warmth his meal still carries compels him to lower his voice even more. It makes the words feel intimate, in a way he's never been familiar with - if he says something he just says it. He doesn't whisper. If he gives his friends something, he gives it open-palm. He's found out, along the way, that people usually don't think of rituals and courtesies the way he does.

Small voice for a diminished monster. "You know why I think so?" Riz asks. "Because almost two decades ago you kidnapped me and almost killed me, and now you rattle a drawer in my office."

It doesn't sound as much like a taunt as Riz wanted it to; the drawer has made a lot of noises again this morning when he checked the calendar, and he was definitely annoyed at it. Now, though, facing it like this after cooking the whole morning with more grandparents and peers from the block than he can count on both hands to cater for a tenant union meeting, he thinks the annoyance has morphed. Changed shape.

It has the shades of something like pity. Riz is not prone to pity, and especially not at these kinda matters. It's slightly maddening that he coheres perfectly outside of this one spot. That he commands his spaces, except for a drawer.

He puts the tupperware onto the floor between himself and the cabinet. "I know we're aware it's the anniversary," he says at the drawer. "You do this every year. You make a ruckus every time I decide to go do my job instead of mooching off my friends' aircon, and every time I get an invitation to some stupid social thing I want to turn down, and every time one of the old people tries to introduce me to a child or a nibling, because being a bachelor over thirty is weird," he pinches the bridge of his nose. "I have three fucking jobs. I love doing my fucking jobs. I'm forcing funds into infrastructures. You're never leaving, are you."

The drawer vibrates lightly. It's a very, very mild acknowledgement, considering the history of reactions Riz has gotten from this thing. Riz thinks it's emanating joyous agreement, or satisfaction.

It only sharpens the pity. Riz doesn't like that, but it's how it is. That's, ultimately, the lesson he's been taught over and over and over again, just by existing as himself, turned every which way by space after space that don't see him eye-to-eye: it's not like he'd quit living over any of it. It's not like any of it can sand off these fundamental pieces of him.

He's outgrown a lot of things, he's found out. Again, and again, and again. A childhood home, a yearly trip, a monster.

"'s probably scary for you, huh?" He asks. "Because I left."

He thinks he hears joints creak that sound like you did. Probably the way a scorned lover would say it, in a movie or a yellowback. He has no more connection to the idea than he did as a kid. Less, because it doesn't even scare him.

"That's what it is, right? That it's the anniversary, and I'll never be like Dad." He raises a knee from the floor, pulls it back closer to him. Slings an arm over it. "You love to remind me. The thing is, Dad also left. He loved Mom and he loved me, and none of us wanted it to happen, but it still did. Because love does fuckall to make anyone stay on its own."

He's long past being bitter about it. It's just the facts. Once upon a time he looked into the future and the specter of his friends' happily-ever-after casted lightless, fathomless shadow over him. Love, marriage, that kind of devotion, to a fifteen-year-old with more solved cases than friends seemed so eternal. Final.

But you can only watch your friends build up apps' worth of jilted lovers for so long before getting over it.

"You know what I learned?" Riz tells the drawer. "Love doesn't make anyone stay. Project management does."

He stands up, and picks up the tupperware of Dame Carabelle's casserole, that he helped make, that he helped share with a block's worth of neighbors and members of a community he's at home with, and goes sit at his desk to eat. "Last chance to get any," he drops an offer over his shoulder as he walks away.

He doesn't eat all of his share in one go. What he's spared he leaves on the desk when going outside for a smoke break. Baron looks the exact same as when he saw them last, when he catches a glimpse; they haven't grown at all. They aren't there when he comes back inside, but the leftover has gone days-old cold, like someone's sucked the future out of it.