#i say this now... but...

[cowboyemeritus]

dare i say... wip wednesday???

tw: violence and death

Time falls away, sloughing off like dead skin.

You can only afford to take half a week off. The spinning, headaches, and nausea persist long after the fight, and your wrist throbs with every minute movement, but Tom’s uncle says he’s in a bind (it seems everyone is, these days) and needs all hands on deck to keep the pub running. The kitchen is loud and bright, the exact opposite of what you need, but the attitude is laid back and your coworkers don’t get paid enough to care. No one chastises you for only having one hand to work with. They turn a blind eye when you puke in the sink an hour into your first shift. When the migraines get so intense that black spots creep into your vision, the line cook offers you pills from a clear plastic baggie. You politely decline, unsettled by the possibility that they might have passed through Emeritus hands.

The thought of setting foot in the gym makes you want to die, so when you’re not working, you’re sleeping. And because you sleep, you dream. When you do, you’re almost always back in the closet, watching in terror as a revolving cast of the influential men in your life are brutalized before you. One night it’s Daddy again, exactly how you remember. The next, Mary is being beaten, his head kicked and stomped on by fine leather shoes until it’s caved in. On the worst nights, though, it’s Copia. It’s always Copia. He's stabbed, beaten, shot, burnt. He's tortured, his fingers cut off, teeth ripped from his jaw. They take his eyes, his tongue, other unspeakable parts of him. Sometimes he dies quickly. Sometimes it takes hours.

And sometimes he screams for you to help him. You try to open the door, but your little hands are slick with blood and you can’t seem to get a grip. When you jolt awake, gasping for air, every inch of your body is covered in sweat. You lay there, staring blankly at the ceiling, until long after the sun has risen.

More than anything, you think of him. It’s impossible not to. No matter how hard you try, there’s a constant gnawing feeling in your stomach, like something terrible is about to happen. You failed. You failed him. It makes it hard to eat, to do anything other than lay in your bed and rot. You face the horrible dreams only because everything else is so exhausting.

Mary does his best to care for you. Begrudgingly, he heeds Copia’s warning to not take you to the hospital, knowing the trouble it could stir up. He knows you need dark and quiet and so he gives you that whenever possible, slinking away to write and practice with the band while you sleep. He sets food by your door and puts it away when you leave it untouched. On slow nights at work he pops into the kitchen to check on you and gets flustered whenever the waitresses remark at what a good big brother he is. Sometimes he orders food and encourages you to eat; even greasy pub fare is better than nothing.

You don’t remember much of what happened after the fight, and he stays tight-lipped about it. All you can recall is him screaming, then taking you inside and shutting you in your room.

Mary can scream, that’s for damn sure, but you had no reason to believe Copia would listen to him. Compared to the power he holds, your brother is just some squeaking gutter rat. If he wants something, he can by all means take it. But as the days pass with no word, that horrible feeling grows, becoming so massive it eventually collapses in on itself. All that’s left is a black hole where you think your heart should be. It consumes everything, and before you know it, an entire month has gone by. Your wrist heals, a scar forms where your eyebrow split, but each time you catch your reflection in the dishwater you look more dead than the last.

[guiiay]

jinx and isha visit a walmart

[beaft]

me when someone abruptly asks me if i want to go and do something fun together but the fun thing wasn't part of my daily plan:

[simplykaren]

Class 1 recall on Tostitos. (Class 1 means they can kill you if consumed, this time because of undeclared milk. Having food allergies really sucks.)

[taxideermied]

I hate 2 say it but being a part of a “weird” subculture does not meaningfully inoculate you against a conservative moralizing impulse. You gotta unlearn that. Saying “cringe is dead” is not enough, you have to actually be okay with things that discomfort, perplex and/or disgust you.

[anthrophobixx]

I had a dream where Brock was revealed to be a butch lesbian at the end of journeys and he thought that "ash and the others already knew" and the entire internet started losing their minds over it and after a couple hours the pokemon company tweeted "surprise faggots" with a picture of Brock holding a poorly edited lesbian flag

I tried to recreate it it looked smth like this

[keyboardfantasies]

Literally the most important words ever spoken

[kochei0]

I turn to Ares.

Thanks to Tyler Miles Lockett who allowed me to draw inspiration from his ARES piece for page 2! Look at his etsy page it's SICK

⚔️ If you want to read some queer retelling of arturian legends have a look at my webtoon

[ionomycin]

temple at the end of the road

[arcanegifs]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS: 2x03 - “Finally Got The Name Right”

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[sunnysidemage]

Gojo gives a class assignment

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[wardensantoineandevka]

is that piece of media actually bad, or is it just not following the blueprint you projected onto it? is that work actually not good, or are you just demanding something from it that is absolutely antithetical to its themes, genre, tone, and narrative goal? is that story actually poorly written, or do you just dislike that it is not the specific things you wanted from it that it never set out to be, never was, and never is going to become? is it actually bad, or is it actually well-executed and you just dislike the story it chose to be because it isn't catering to your specific desires and expectations?

[egophiliac]

missed the mark by (looks at calendar) uhhh. hm. but I really wanted to do something for the 5th anniversary! happy five years to these idiots 🎉

[rivetgoth]

It's honestly crazy that discussion around testosterone HRT skews so much towards the beginning stages of it (to the point that you have dozens of guys thinking their transition is "failed" if they don't pass by like a year in lol) and what the initial changes of the first couple of months to years look like, like the classic laundry list of those early basic changes like bottom growth, voice drop, etc, when IMO literally none of that compares remotely to the depth and intensity of the long term total masculinization you start to experience like 3-5+ years in.