#i'm not even into kids and /i/ was thinking it jfc

[khaotunq]

if u look close during the community service scene, you will see 50 frames wherein Ray is actively deciding to google "how i get pregnate" when he gets home

[petiolata]

hi! person u rb'ed the fandom gatekeeping post from. it was very much written with a specific situation in mind: people who haven't engaged with the source material directly (meaning no lets plays, no proper excerpts, nothing) who act as if they have an understanding of said source material. often leading to shit just being completely made up and treated like canon. less "couldnt play the game themselves" and more "is claiming to know all about a book that they admit to never reading". i was venting about people claiming certain things about source material, who then got mad at me for correcting them while admitting they never read the thing in question. i should probably be more specific in how i present personal posts bc i always forget anyone can see them lol

Hey, I appreciate you taking the time to clarify the issue. I'm fortunate to have never come across anyone like that myself.

[vvanessaives]

the gang + their families. what’s family if not an ecosystem of love and grievance and hate.

(click for quality! i hate tumblr) [template]

[aturinfortheworse]

sad thing about my current role at work is that i'm with mostly the same students in pretty much every class right now (which is very unusual) and I'm so attached to them. but most of them will be graduating only two terms after i started 😭

i had one day last week where i wasn't in any of their classes, and when i saw them around the school they were excited to see me and my heart is breaking

im gonna be crying like a fucking baby when they leave in a couple of weeks

[bi-moonlight]

.

[trash-nerd]

jesus fucking christ

[bellerocks4]

The boy and his hats!!!!! Look at them all :D

This is like a little counter-part to the one i did of Six's masks. Also I rated the hats, which i will go into more detail about below the cut ;P

The Classic, The Original, The Paper Bag!!!!

I have like an emotional attachment to this hat, i kid you not. My favorite by far, he just looks so good <33333

5/5 hats

....Ball

Gonna be real with you, i hate the way this hat looks in game. I made it look good because I'm awesome but for real he looks so fuckin goofy in this hat, it has its charm but still

1.5/5 hats

✨Rain Cap✨

I don't love love this hat on him but i can't overlook the fact that he matches with siiiiiiixx thats just sO CUTE GAH!! Twinsies,,,

3.5/5 hats

Postman Cap!!!

Kay i actually love this hat on him it's hella cute, lost points because its fucking HUGE in game. Like how is that thing not eating his whole head jfc

4/5 hats

Mokujin Mask

This is a pretty good hat i just,,, don't get the reference,, if there even is one???? maybe its a historical kind of mask hm- ok no i just looked it up, it is a reference. Anyway, yeah good hat overall but im not the target audience so

2.5/5 hats

Flat Cap! or Gatsby Cap, the way superior name

I love this hat so much he looks so cute in it, like i didn't even do it justice its so cute

5/5 hats <3

Nome <3

ok yeah I took some liberties with this one, this isn't really what it looks like in game. but that's because the in game version looks kinda lame so i made it better <3 Minorly disappointing after the wild goose chase i had to go through to get it >:(

1/5 hats :(

Hunter Hat :D

First hat in the game, it's ok,, i just think its a bit boring is all. I favor hats that cover his whole face anyway so im a bit biased. The tail is fuckin adorable tho, i love the way it trails after him :)

3/5 hats

Stuffed Bear Hat of evil

ok when i said i favored hats that covered his whole face i did not mean this one- I did amazing drawing it✨ but its horrifying in game. Which i assume was the point, so kudos ig, but this is my personal how much i like it scale and the bear's ugly >:P

1.5/5 hats

....

I... its- .... *starts crying*

5/5 hats

Tin Can Hat

Ok when i said that I favor hats that cover his whole face I meant this one <3 Got that charm from the paper bag but he kinda wonky. So cute :D

4.5/5 hats

Mummy Hat

Listen- its cool ok? cool and creepy but cool. If you haven't guessed already all my favorites are hats he looks cute in and this? yeah this ain't it...

2/5 hats

OK!! Thats all folks!!! Thanks for indulging my silly little hat scale <3

[macsimagines]

hi, could i have some headcanons regarding draken babytrapping the reader? like, what event triggers his decision to babytrap you, how he does it, etc. thanks

Forreal one of my biiiiiig kinks. And Draken is sooooo zaddy

TW: YANDERE BEHAVIOR, MINOR DNI, NSFW, BABY-TRAPPING, NONCON BABY MAKING, JFC WHAT DID I JUST WRITE.

Yandere!Draken (Ken Ryuguji)

Ok so, it takes a lot to get him to this point. I personally think the reason he holds out on love and relationships so often is because of his upbringing and he's got insecurities about having kids.

He'd never abandon them, but he always feels like something in him is broken and unfit. Like he'll taint them and they'd be better off without him in the picture and then that turns into "Maybe I really would leave, maybe I really shouldn't have them, maybe-"

Ya It goes on. But with you? Oh he wants it all with you. Nice house, beautiful kids, maybe even a dumb dog in the backyard.

But you're holding out on him. Keeping him at a distance. He finally let you in and it's like you're reeling back.

This asshole is the type to go through your shit and he doesn't like when he finds the texts to your friends. 'He's gotten super possessive lately. IDK what to do. He keeps demanding I tell him where I'm going and who I'm gonna be with. I'm thinkin of ending things...'

Nope. You're not going anywhere. He pretends like he didn't read it but oof the next time you guys have sex its wild.

holding your ankles up to your ears and pistoling that dick into you like his life depends on it. He made you cum already but he keeps going like you're not crying for mercy.

"C'mon, who makes you feel this good baby? Tell me! Tell me how good Daddy makes you feel!" and you're hiccuping his name, sniffling how good daddy is through your tears, and he's not relenting and not stopping the goddamn beating he's giving your cervix.

"That's it baby! Take it all fer me, make me a Daddy! Fuck-Y/N~" And he's spilling a load that has you blacking out for a solid minute, but Draken Keeps his dick stuffed in you making sure every drop goes where it needs to.

Even when he's pulled out he's kissing you stupid again, fingers making sure to keep you nice and plugged up, not letting a single drop get out of your pussy.

You're fucked to stupid to realize he forgot the condom and he already hid your birth control a week ago. You did tell him that you needed to be careful until you got your refill, but he thinks he's being very careful in making sure you're not going anywhere.

[thosewildcharms]

Just broke my own heart thinking about Rick being absent for Lori’s pregnancy with Judith since he was, understandably, emotionally checked out AND being completely absent with Michonne’s for RJ and how he missed welcoming them both into the world, plus not seeing them grow up as he said, for a man that only cares about his family he must carry so much guilt over that or feel cursed… also thought about Michonne probably being extremely anxious when RJ turned the age Andre was when he died and she had no one to talk to about it. Thinking about her having to deal with it all while being a grieving single mother of 2 leading a community also made me sad. lol I know they’re both resilient fighters but damn all of that is so heavy! I’m so happy they’re all back together now and can start some healing

ANON BESTIE WHAT THE FUCK?

well okay sure. let's be depressing for a bit but then we should go back to grimes family headcanons okay?

it's honestly so tragic that rick was not able to see the birth of the child he wanted so badly, that he didn't even know RJ existed for almost a decade. the length of that time jump is honestly so evil - like yes, on one level it heightens the intensity of their bond, the way that they never even considered anyone else over all those years and stayed completely in love throughout that absence and distance. but god, it's just a really fucking long time. it's devastating!

it's also why I love that scene in the towl finale where rick expresses how angry he is about it, how just for a minute he lets himself say out loud that he just wants to be selfish for once and say fuck it let's go home, because he doesn't want to miss any more time than he already has. i also love the way andy played the reunion with judith and rj: the quiet grief in his face because he's mourning the time lost even while they're right in front of him, maybe even more so. like, of course he was distraught over how much he missed. this man held a shard of glass to his neck when he truly thought he could never see his family again (which i think we moved on from a bit too quickly tbh). his love for his family is his motivation for everything. keeping him away from them is the worst thing you could do to him, which is btw is why i'm not mad okafor is dead.

as for michonne. well my god anon did you have to go there with that andre/rj thing? i mean, yes you're absolutely right and you're completely brilliant but jfc that hurt. i honestly can't even think about those six years michonne spent grieving rick and raising their kids and protecting that community and getting that scar and everything else without getting upset. i genuinely hate it so much. i'm also constantly thinking about the scene where she finds evidence that rick is alive, the specific way her face contorts as she holds that phone like she's scared to even dare to hope, even though she never fully believed he was gone in the first place. we already saw how much she was struggling but that scene makes me want to set myself on fire. it's all just so fucking sad.

so yes. they better be left alone to heal in peace forever no more Situations no more near death experiences no more wars or fascist megalomaniacs with armies to overthrow. they've done enough!

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Wilbert's Worst

Right, so I really was open to having my mind changed on The Worst One but nobody’s argument has budged me.

I was going to write a complete, balanced essay on The Worst W. Awdry Book, but I’m a) mired in the research phase (hey if anyone knows someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of Tom and Jerry hit me up, for real) and b) right now I wanna talk about the characters and their Beloved Dynamics instead. 

So I'm just gonna get this out of the way so I can post the poll and move on to answering fun asks and watching Tom and Jerry in peace. Behold: a salty and unbalanced review.

Wilbert’s biggest failure of a children’s storybook? 

Henry the Green Engine 

Ohhh… because of the, uh, ra —?

Because of the racism, yes!

Oh. You do know that since 1972 they’ve republished it without the n-slur? 

Good for them. Two things: 

1. I know it used to be there, I’m never able to read it without knowing it was there in the first edition.

2. I consistently try, when ranking the books, to consider them in the context in which they came out. Because of this, I don’t like using “things that happened later” (like a new character never being properly used again or whatever) against the book. This helps me evaluate the author’s successes and failures against what they were trying to achieve when they wrote it vs what I would most want (blorbo content). It helps me not bring to bear the whole weight of fanon and fandom on a text that should be able to stand or fall on its own. Tl;dr I try to read the books like a guy who picked it up in 1951, or whatever. 

And yeah, if I’d bought this when it came out it would have had the slur. I’m going to judge it accordingly. 

Look, racism is bad, no argument, but does that mean the book as a whole must be condemned? 

Yeah, I think the slur and the “aaaand suddenly, blackface! heeheehee” bullshit fuck over the entire book, game over. Go directly to jail, do not collect $200. 

The Railway Series is not a work of high art or deep thorny complex literature. The books are meant for children — small children, at that. Children small enough to get bedtime stories read to them. The main goal of each book (especially this early on — you do have to manage secondary priorities like “pleasing the long-time fanbase” the longer you go, but right now we’re only 6 books into the series) is to create a happy imaginary world to enhance childhoods and family lives… to impart to other parents and kids a similar cosy happiness to that the author and his own kids enjoyed when he was workshopping/drafting the stories for them. When we say “children’s book” we really do mean little’uns — these average 1.25 full-color illustrations per page!

And these books sold in large numbers. This means it’s a certainty that somewhere in 1951 there was a Black family who owned the whole series, who went out to the shops, whose kid was like “ooh! Henry gets a book, neat…,” who like everyone else enjoyed the wild ride of Henry’s inspection and coal and wreck and rebuild… only to get verbally spat on one page from the end. 

Real mood-killer there. Epic fail, as the cool kids used to say in my youth. 

All right, fine, cool kids never said that. Anyway, statistically speaking there was certainly even more than one family that got that experience. Not to mention the non-Black families who even in 1951 were like “... wtf? i’d smack my kid if they ever said a word like that around me, geez. no.” Just a lot of people who had the light the book was kindling in them snuffed out all at once. 

You can actually be totally racist and your book not commit creative suicide on the penultimate page! Awdry flubbed his job of 'bestselling books-for-six-year-olds' here. Creative failure. Unforced error. Automatic zero. 

But times were different then, you have to consider it in the context of the time. 

1951 U.K. was not the nadir of multiracial equality or Black power, but jfc. I can assure you that over 99% of children’s books published that year in the Anglosphere managed to not use the n-slur. 

All right, all right. That was bad. But this feels off-topic. If you had never known about what used to be “Henry’s Sneeze,” would you still rank the entire book as dead last in the Wilbert Awdry corpus? 

Not dead last, but it is not a strong book. “Coal” and “The Flying Kipper” are super-interesting as material for Henry, but after that the book kind of falls off a cliff; the intrigue drops dramatically. The railway incidents chosen to make stories of are all solid choices, but it was not only “Sneeze” where Awdry’s handling of the material feels clumsy and weird. (And I’m not even talking here of the “heehee blackface — ain’t i a stinker?” gag in “Sneeze.”) 

But… “The Flying Kipper”? C’mon. It’s a superb story and no book that contains it can be the absolute worst in the series. 

“TFK” remains easily the best single TVS episode ever – but a lot of that is down to Britt and David’s artistry and judgment. 

Don’t get me wrong, a full-on railway wreck makes interesting material. But I don’t think the book does nearly as much with it as it could (and I’m trying sooooo hard here to forget about the amazing TVS adaptation, as I think it REALLY shows Awdry up. Even so, the storytelling here is surprisingly tepid and low-stakes). I get that Awdry probably wanted to lean into the comic angle and not make Henry’s condition afterwards seem too grave, in order to ensure the material wasn’t too dark for his young audience? (*mutters* again, a level of tender consideration for his readers’ youth that went right out the window when it came to small Black kids, evidently coz he couldn’t imagine that they read) Understandable, laudable — but if he outright refuses* to make the wreck too dramatic or scary then, well, then the wreck isn’t real scary or dramatic. And it can’t save the rest of the book from its flaws. 

*For all I know it could have been the publishers who insisted that the wreck be made preschooler-safe, that’s possible (although it’s also consistent with Awdry’s brand of humor and his overall low degree of emotionalism in his writing). Either way, though, the end result book is what it is and it will be judged accordingly. 

In addition to not being as exciting as many remember... @trainsupessandhuntresses asked me once if I thought some of Awdry's stories were "mean-spirited." I had to assent vigorously. And a surprisingly high proportion of those "mean" moments are in Henry the Green Engine? For some reason? It’s not just the racism. Awdry was not in the game to give Henry a deserved happy ending, he’d wanted to kill him off (the fuck?) and when his publishers prevented him (I don’t say this often, especially since I love how salty the Awdrys get about their publishers, but this in case good job, publishers!!) he wrote “TFK” with the primary motivation of giving Henry a new engine basis. Any soft or hearty emotions we get out of the deal are a side-effect — the only emotion that was fueling Awdry as he wrote this was spite, spite and a weird resentment towards his poor, long-suffering, invaluable illustrator. (I don’t blame Awdry for being frustrated that the engine illustrations were continually inaccurate or confusing, but I do think it’s weird to read all this great Henry material knowing that it was written with such poor grace.) 

So his ‘happy Henry’ stuff feels perfunctory; his Percy interlude is just brutal (why did you have to drag Percy into Henry’s book purely to give him a fuck-up, a scolding, and a messy dunce cap?); Gordon’s savaging of Henry for being too happy after recovering from a near-death experience is such an incredibly low point for Gordon that it’s hard for me to accept it as canon (there’s being proud, boastful, and self-absorbed, and then there’s being the straight-up raccoon dumpster fire Gordon is in that scene). Oh, and I think “call the police [local constabulary, doesn’t bear firearms]” woulda probably a less reckless way of dealing with the rock-throwing youths than the sneeze of hot locomotive ashes, which of course the Fat Controller doesn’t like, that shit coulda been real dangerous! Mind, there are small rays of kindness throughout that do get me (the interactions between Henry and his crew feeling to me the least perfunctory and most heartfelt), but this is overall such a mean-spirited book. God. It starts off with such a gentle story (almost a non-story, if you’re in it purely for the “railway incidents” game and not character drama), but in short order the vibes just sorta suck. At least in other RWS books, when the vibes are off, they’re usually off near the beginning and then improve by the end. This one gets worse as it goes on. Oof. Don’t like that. 

Also, the last page is sooooo lame. I suspect the publisher strong-armed Awdry into writing most of it so that at least the slur wasn’t on the last page of the book... and if Awdry had any idea of how much he’d just empowered Henry and all his fans in this book he shouldn’t have found it hard to find 50 extra words to sum things up. As it was, he’s just filling space and running out the clock, lol. Lame wrap-up. Boring. As usual when it comes to every little thing about this book, Britt and David closed this up better (mind, their closer – “He had taught Gordon and silly boys a lesson, with a whistle and a sneeze” – also sucked. But at least it was blessedly short.)

Didn’t you once list HtGE on a list of your favorite Wilbert Awdry books? 

I did list it as one of the books that “at one time or another” have been my favorite in the series. Unfortunately in the case of HtGE, that was back when I really couldn’t read a story that I knew from the TVS without mentally substituting the adaptation into my brain as I read… largely overriding the actual text. Plus, everything I knew from TVS as a kid kind of automatically got a halo effect. Plus, I was super into Henry’s arc. 

The first time I read HtGE after calming down and actually reading all the books as books... massive disappointment. There is such a gap there between what I'd thought the book said (all our incredible fanon work overanalyzing and headcanoning Henry and building this beautiful fantasy arc about disability!) vs. what it actually said (limp and careless writing, mean vibes, airbrushed n-slur, bad aftertaste). 

I do think there is some stuff about the development of Awdry’s storytelling technique here that is interesting (again, Tom and Jerry superfans reading this, please shoot me a message!) but it doesn’t counteract everything else. 

At least we’re over the racism stuff? 

Nah, I’m not over it, actually. 

[lefluoritesys]

The difference between some of our headmates sometimes is literally just:

Host (me): *avoids the subject of what our life like even around our literally the most trusted friend/found family member ever (and succeeds), takes months before they even consider telling someone about the system if it's irl, read people like an opened book to figure out if they could be trusted with that kind of info.*

Sexual persecutor today when we left them at front during volunteering thinking it'd be a good idea to a person they met 1,5 hours ago: Yeah, so I actually have DID, basically like when you're a kid and go through a shit ton of repeated/prolonged trauma your brain goes "nope" and puts up amnesia walls that split you, so now cause of that I have a lot of different personalities, and they're not like parts of me (one person) or smth, and I know you also brought up schizophrenia which is totally different from DID despite sharing symptoms, they're actually their own people, and all of us are called a system.

The poor person in question: Did your parents do that?

Sexual persecutor: Well, they didn't start it, but they did continue it, basically- *proceeds to spill our worst trauma without a lot of details.*

We stan a queen, but jfc, [insert sexual persecutor name here because you know who you are, but I'm not gonna say].

(Clarification, they did not hurt the system that way. Despite all that was mentioned before, no boundaries were crossed, and none of us are in danger.)

-host

[adoriels-tears-if]

I love this wip and this is not a criticism to u as an author more a vent about the attitudes of the characters (even tho i completely understand why they have to behave the way they do around strangers, it's just frustrating from the pov of the mc) like, reading about a child whose own mother pretends not to be related to them in public is heartbreaking and I always have to act out and be a little brat when im playing as my mc bc like,, what kid wouldnt😭 it feels hypocritical for the MC's family to tell them that they have nothing to be ashamed of with regards to their heritage and then only ever act ashamed of them around strangers, and to then be surprised/confused when the MC has tantrums and meltdowns like jfc they are gonna grow up so traumatised😅 again, I understand its the society the characters live in and I think this is more a testament to ur ability to write complex nuanced characters than anything else. It just hurts my heart. I can't wait for the (even angstier) teen phase❤️

I totally understand what you're saying Anon! Don't you worry.

To be totally honest, it hurts my heart too. (Sometimes I get so depressed about Mc that I'm forced to let the story rest so I can feel better and come back to it. XD)

I only dream of one thing, that Mc can show how extraordinary half-bloods are. But there are still so many things Ash and Elianna have to plan before that, so many obstacles for Mc to overcome.

[hils79]

Hils Watches In Blossom - Ep 2

This is giving my Mysterious Lotus Casebook vibes with them pretending to speak to a ghost to solve the murder

I see he is once again playing a snarky little shit. Excellent.

He's already so gone for her

I possibly should have checked if this has a sad ending because that sounds ominous

Gosh he's so pretty

Wow, okay, I did not see that coming. We're only on episode 2!

I'm not sure a funeral is the most auspicious location for a proposal but I appreciate the vibes

I love how easy cdramas make it to spot the villains. Wearing red, exposed leg, clearly an evil hussy who will probably try and seduce Pan Yue with her sexy wiles

Called it! And I'm not even mad that it's predictable. It's part of the fun.

Of course there will be shenanigans now that a jealous woman is involved

OOH one of Pan Yue's family servants lied to her when she was a kid and she's spent the last 10 years thinking he hates her and abandoned her when her parents died

I mean you probably could if you wanted to, which you clearly do not

I love him

Oh no

I wish to be compensated for the emotional distress this disguise is causing

Oh no but without the beard but with the hair and clothes he looks super hot. Compensation accepted.

And now he's all wet. Wow, someone was clearly listening to me.

Wet and bleeding. JFC.

Her bestie is like 'oh no I ship it'

I have no idea what is happening right now

For someone who's been called ugly and judged on her appearance for the last 10 years you'd think there'd be a bit less of the body shaming. Yes, this woman is evil and is about to kill you but still...

Uh...what the fuck?

I still have no idea what's happening but given that this is only episode 2 I'm going to assume that she's not dead

[cyberpunk-20xx]

Kerry's situation is a very painful reminder of how fucked up the game's canon society is, even to the rich people. Which is maybe my biggest gripe with the game. A game where I'm not given even the slightlest chance to change shit around me, a game that's just so pessimistic and cruel in how it treats its characters, so hopeless, is not punk. but that's smth else entirely to talk about.

Back to Kerry. He's less suicidal at the end of the game when V reached out and helped some to sooth his trauma about Johnny, even if one could argue it's maybe just, well, putting him back where he started or indulging a toxic fixation. Depends on your interpretation. But his situation hasn't actually changed, he's still held by his label in a death grip, even if at least his current manager's supposedly out of the picture. But even that i don't believe. All we know for sure is that we burned his yatch. Like. Kerry tells us that his MSM Record manager (can't remember his name and be bothered to check) makes him drink on purpose to get him to sign shit, which is blatant abuse and all we get to do is fucking burn a boat? Let me make the dude a corpse, even if you make me have to work for it jfc.

I really love when fanfic writers actually address that issue btw, because it really hurts me to think about him being left in this bullshit. And in so many endings we know his situation is less than ideal even with V.

Kerry's profound unhappiness is visible in many ways: the state of his house, his insinuated addictions, his impulsive, self-destructive behaviors, his tendency to lash out and paranoia to assume people are against him, and overall defensiveness, his fear of the unknown, his clinging to fame, his refusal to see his kids, his mentioned and hinted suicide attempts. He's a guy who, at 89, doesn't seem to me like he knows what he wants, what he needs.

Personally, it both hurts me and makes me really like him, because I find him relatable in how he reacts to despair. In that aspect, I find him very well-written, even if a lot of shitty tropes and pop star stereotypes are used. Yes, pop stars one.

(One other thing that's devastating about Kerry is that he's a rocker, but he doesn't act like one, according to his own definition (which seems to really just be Johnny's shitty macho definition altho it's a whole label that precedes both of them in the TTRPG lore). Which wouldn't be a problem to me if he also didn't find the genre inferior to rock.)

But what fucks me up the most is that he's dealing with despair at all, when out of the four LIs, he's the one that has the safest, most stable life. Hell, he could even easily leave Night City and never look back, and still create, he's got the money for it, it might sound terribly materialistic of me but the man has enough money to just no longer be dealing with all this shit. But he's stuck there because even at nearly fucking nine decades of life, he's not yet felt seen, heard, or acknowledged. He's still scrambling for his roots and something to look forward at once.

Kerry is 89 and has the self-esteem of a 23 years old still.

If I just listen to my basest instincts, I blame Johnny for a lot of that, but that's the easy way, actually. If I actually think about it, Kerry's responsible of his own life too, and Johnny got nothing to do with how he feels out of touch with his Filipino roots, or him being a burnt out rockstar, Johnny is not that powerful at all, and mostly I blame Arasaka and the corps, and i blame the music industry in the game especially actually, i blame the media and the fans for how Kerry bit by bit stops feeling human in the spotlight, but the thing is, it's harder to be angry at those, even in game. Because we're not actually given meaningful ways to do something about inequality in game, and when you're unable to fight something, your brain becomes apathetic to it. It's just a survival thing. my brain does that a lot. i prize my anger a lot because of that (probably why i am so attached to Johnny tbh).

I think Kerry craves to be seen as the man he is, but his ways to try and fix that is to feed the demigod image his career upholds. I'm mad we can't do something about it, nor see the change he deserves happen. I'm mad a game with "punk" in its name is so hopeless and cynical.

[wikiangela]

seven sentence sunday

tagged by @giddyupbuck 💖💖

this time a bit of the alive shannon fic bc I'm once again switching between my wips all the time (why the fuck can't I focus on one jfc 😂)

prev snippet

___

 “Those last few weeks were amazing. Perfect, even. Really made me think that we could have this. But she was right.” he sniffles. He thinks he’s crying, not sure when that started. “It would pass, and we’d be back to normal, and I- I don’t want Chris to witness this whole mess. Again.” 

He knows that divorce is the right thing to do. They might love each other, Eddie thinks he’ll always love her in some way, but they’re not good together. They don’t know how to be together at this point in their lives. A young, fun, teen romance was one thing. But then real life happened, and instead of figuring everything out together, growing together, learning how to live as a married couple, he left. He left, and when he came back – she left, and he doesn’t blame her for not wanting to stay married. After all this time, he’s not sure how well they even know each other anymore. When she asked for a divorce, he wasn’t happy about it, didn’t want to accept it, but now, with the possibility of her- now he can’t wait to tell her he agrees. He doesn’t know if they’ll ever get back together, he’s not sure what he wants anymore. All he does know is that their kid needs his mother. And Shannon really doesn’t deserve to go this way, or this young.

“I’m sorry.” Buck says again, squeezing Eddie’s hand. “I know how badly you wanted this to work. That- well, that sucks.” he says lamely, and Eddie almost laughs. Yeah, it does suck. This whole thing sucks. That’s too small of a word to describe how awful it actually is. And he’s just grateful to not have to go through this alone.

___

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[qqueenofhades]

I came across a post about some show called The Other Two and it was making fun of Angels in America and I just...I didn't know how to react to it beyond rage. Like do young LGBT+ people understand how important that play is? How much it meant to our community and still means? Why are we all so irony poisoned that we put down the things that gave us comfort in a time where all of us are faced with the very real possibility of being erased from existence and murdered by the right wing nut jobs passing horrible legislation calling us child groomers. I'm so fucking sad and angry.

I'm in two minds about young LGBTQ people these days. On the one hand -- it's great that they get to grow up in an environment where they can (more or less) be themselves, have institutional supports like marriage and Pride Month and LGBTQ characters in media and plenty of visible discussion. It really, really is. All of that progress was hard won and we shouldn't WANT them to have gone through the exact same struggles as their elders. That's always the thing -- fight so your kids can have a better life, and we shouldn't want that to be any other way.

On the other hand, because this is the case, a lot of younger LGBTQ people don't respect the community's struggles, believe that they're real, learn its history, or understand the magnitude of the threat it is once again facing now. Instead they end up doing things like embracing TERF logic and arguing on social media about who has the right to use the most hyper-specific microlabel, pushing us all into smaller and smaller separate boxes because "queer is a slur!!!" and relentlessly gatekeeping and moralizing at other vulnerable people, both inside the community and outside it. And man, that just does not sit right with me. Of course, not all of them are like this, but a not-insubstantial number are, and it troubles me.

As for Angels in America: I saw Part 1 live in 2010, after reading both parts beforehand. It knocked the fucking SHIT out of me, and this is even before I had consciously realized that I myself was queer (though I was already reading a ton of queer lit/history like This Just Seems Neat, because I was clueless). So I don't know why the irony-poisoned postmodern masses feel the need to get their jollies out of taking shots at it, especially since, once again, times have changed and LGBTQ art and experience is represented in a whole lot of other ways than just "AIDS tragedy." Which is as it should be! But if anyone thinks that it's okay to then mock, minimize, ignore, or otherwise discount everything that led us to the point of them smugly having the ability to do that, then yeah. Fuck off. Jfc.