#i'm so sick of feeling like this

[and-stir-the-stars]

i think i might be aplatonic. or mentally ill. not sure.

so i like. don't know what's wrong with me anymore.

it's not that i don't WANT friends. i watch media romanticizing found family and the power of friendship all the time, since forever. i long to have what those characters have.

but i just... i don't seem capable of making/maintaining/appreciating friendships.

i feel incapable of viewing people as friends rather than someone playing the role of friend and as such giving me all kinds of friendship benefits

every second of every day, I feel unappreciated, undervalued, and unlistened to, and I take it out on people and punish them for it in all kinds of little ways

i know it's wrong. i feel guilty for it, at least a little bit. i still do it anyway. even when I stop myself, the urge is still there

i take every little thing that the people around me do and spin it in my head so I think they hate me, they don't care about me, they're clearly not listening to me or valuing anything I have to offer

i don't know enough aplatonicism to know if these are signs of it. i thought at first that it was just elements of my lovelessness shining through, but lovelessness doesn't explain this at all

[virtuheaux]

Me, being sick of this shit.

[linkeduniverse]

July art

[inkskinned]

there are a lot of posts out there that are positive and healthy coping mechanisms for handling the holidays. this is not one of them :)

i think there's like. going to be times in your life you will be stuck in a social situation that you cannot escape from gracefully. i do not know why the internet doesn't believe these times exist. it's not always just that your physical safety is at risk - sometimes it's legit like "i just don't currently have the energy or time to put in the effort of responding to this." sometimes it's a coworker you hate so much. sometimes it's just like, fine, you know? like you know you can handle your aunt when she's cheerily horrible, but if you actually set a boundary around her, it's going to be weeks of fallout with your father.

i don't know why people think the answer is always just "cut them out!" or "don't let them get away with that!" because ... the real world is tricky and complicated. i think kind of a lot of us have an internal "radiation poisoning" meter for certain people. like - i'm talking about the ones who are absolutely giving you gradual ick damage. like, you can handle them, but you'll be exhausted.

and yes. you absolutely should listen to your therapist and the good posts about handling others and set good boundaries and take care of yourself. prioritize peace.

HOWEVER :) ...... since im often in a situation with a Gradual Sense of Ick person i cannot just "cut out" of my life (without losing someone else precious to me) - i have sort of developed the most. maladaptive form of mischief possible. because like, if i'm going to have to listen to this shit again, i like to have a little bit of private fun with it.

now! again, i am physically safe, just mentally drained by this man. you should only do this with people you are not in danger with. which leads me to my suggestions for when your Unfortunate Acquaintance shows up and says oh everyone pay attention to me.

my favorite word is "maybe!" said as brightly and happily as possible. whenever the Horrible Person starts in on a topic you do not want to go further with, particularly if they make a claim that you know to be inaccurate, do not respond to it. you and i have both tried to actually argue with this person, and it hasn't gone well, because this person just wants the drama of an argument. however, "maybe!" gives them literally nothing to go on. it is incredibly disarming. they are used to people having some response. they know they can't prove what they're saying, and maybe! treats them like the child they are. it dismisses them in the politest way possible.

i like to say maybe! and then, in their stunned silence, immediately change the subject. this is because i have adhd and i will have something unrelated to talk about, but if you can't think of topics fast enough, i recommend just pointing to something and saying, "isn't that lovely?" because fuck you let's bring in some positivity.

by the way. that second trick - of pointing to something and stating an opinion about it? - that just works on its own, like, 70% of the time. i picked it up from teaching preschoolers. it's an intentional "redirect". it stops children crying and it also stops grown adults from finishing their explanation on why women belong in kitchens. dual wielding!

keep it silly for yourself. i absolutely do not care if people think i'm fucking stupid (it's more fun if they do) and as a result i will purposefully misunderstand things just to see how long it takes them to realize i've completely removed them from the subject at hand. when they say "women aren't funny" i get to be like. "which women." "all women." "all women in america?" "no in the world." "like the mole people? the people in the world?" "what? no. like, alive." "oh are we not counting the mole people?" "what the fuck are you talking about." "you don't believe in the mole people?"

similarly, i play a personal game called "one up me." my Evil Acquaintance literally knows this game exists (my family & friends caught onto it and now also play it) and it always fucking gets him. i don't know why. you have to be willing to be a little free-spirited on this one, though. the trick is that when they make one of those horrible little bigoted or annoying comments they are always making, you need to go one unit weirder. not more intense, mind you - just more weird. "you don't look good in that dress." "yeah, actually, my other dress was covered in squid ink due to a mishap at the soup store." "you shouldn't wear such revealing clothes." "wait, what? oh shit. sorry, your son tears off strips when no one is looking and eats them. i swear it was longer before we left the building."

the point of "one up me" is to completely upend this person's narrative. we both know this person likes setting up situations where you cannot "win" and then they really like telling other people how badly you handled it. in a usual situation, if you respond "please don't say something that rude", you're a bitch. but if you let it happen, you're letting yourself be debased. they are not usually expecting door number three: unflappably odd. because what are they going to say when they're telling everyone how badly you behaved? "she said my son eats her dresses" ".... okay?"

if you can, form an allyship with someone whomst you can tagteam with. where they can pick up on your weird "soup store" story and run with it.

the following phrase is amazing and can be deployed for any situation: "oh, be nice :) it's the holidays!" i do not know why this works as often as it does. i'll say it for the most random shit. i think this is bc most of the time these people know they're being impolite, they just like to fight.

godbless. when in doubt, remember that you could always start stealing their pens.

the whole point of this is - if you can't escape. maybe see how long you can just be. like. a horrible little menace.

[nbnbd]

.

[duckprintspress]

Urgent: Help Us Not Get Screwed

Anyone who follows us has seen us screaming from the hill-tops about our current crowdfunding campaign for Aether Beyond the Binary (17 aetherpunk stories! Outside the gender binary main characters!). We've only got 50 hours left...and we just got screwed.

Our Anthology Kickstarter is being scammed.

About two hours ago, with us still roughly $1,500 from our goal, we got a junk pledge for almost $2,000. This pushed us into being marked as "funded" but there is zero chance it's a real pledge, it's from a shell account marked as being in Turkey. This kind of money doesn't just fall like a miracle into the laps of small business like ours.

The timing on this attack is devastating. The final 48 hours of a campaign are absolutely critical, especially for one as close to meeting our goal as we are. We were very likely to hit our target, but doing so was going to require appeals to y'all that started with "hey, we're so close, please help spread the word." Further, the campaign has hundreds of followers who will get a notification at the 48 hour mark, and many who might have backed to help get us to the finish line will now think "oh, they're there, they don't need me," and not back. Meanwhile, one of two things will happen with the spam pledge: either it will get removed by Kickstarter, which could take hours or a day+, totally nuking us during this crucial window, or it won't get removed until the payment bounces post-campaign, at which point we won't actually have enough money to do fulfillment.

Either way, we are fucked.

Please, please don't let these dipshits ruin the love and passion that 30+ people have poured into this project for over a year.

Our campaign IS NOT FUNDED, and it won't be without help. I'm begging, help spread the word about how we're getting screwed, and help spread the word about Aether Beyond the Binary (visit the link for so much info!) so that we can get enough real pledges to fund this project we've poured our hearts and souls into.

SUPPORT THE QUEER ANTHOLOGY KICKSTARTER FOR AETHER BEYOND THE BINARY (with your pledges or with signal boosts!)

[merrigel]

I want it back = I drag its dead weight forward

[yesmissnyx]

An Unsexy Post About Censorship

Sooo...gumroad is shutting down NSFW content sales because of Stripe and Paypal. This is also why Wishtender has been down as well, if you weren't aware. And why Patreon is also cracking down on anything remotely kinky.

(If you're wondering why your favorite FICTIONAL sexual content isn't allowed on most platforms, it's payment processors.)

Please be extra kind to anyone who works with NSFW content right now, whether it be art, writing, audio, photos or video. Whether it be tasteful erotica, or the kinkiest BDSM porn you can think of, we're all in the crosshairs right now.

And, judging by trends from these past few years, this is only going to get worse.

Support NSFW creators where you can, whether by tipping or buying our content (where you still can) or just helping boost content on sites where algorithms want to drown us out.

Call representatives where you can and complain about payment processors acting as arbiters of what YOU are and aren't allowed to pay for and enjoy.

This may be about porn right now, but censorship of this caliber doesn't just stop with porn. Any transgressive (read: non-conservative) media is fair game.

Fight against it where you can. Support creators where you can.

Art is important. Reflections of our sexuality are important. We don't want a world where people aren't free to make or see the things they love and enjoy.

[wilsonsmcgillsweatshirt]

I will never recover from the knowledge that thymoma generally has a very high survival rate, and in most cases that it becomes fatal, the patient has unknowingly lived with the cancer for years. There's a chance that Wilson was sick for half the series and didn't even know it.

[christronomy]

chan loves slapping his cock against you before putting it in. he'd slap your cheek or tongue with it before taking a handful of your hair and stuffing it your mouth all the way cause he knows you can be good for him and take it. he's definitely the type to slap his cock against your hole, hissing and groaning a little, letting out a small "fuck" before thrusting into you roughly. like imagine riding him reverse cowgirl and he slips out so he grabs his cock and slaps it against your ass before sticking it back in.

[vongulli]

Loofy!!!!!!!!!

[cerealbishh]

"Hey, we found you."

"I guess you did!"

[scificrows]

Okay, my brain refuses to think about anything other than Murderbot, so I looked at every use of the word "friend[s]" in TMBD and... created some pie charts. Normal human activities.

Some Thoughts™ I had while putting this together (under the cut):

In All Systems Red, Murderbot notes that the PresAux crew are all close friends (twice! and goes on to explain their internal relationships which I think is very cute). This is pretty much the only use of 'friends' in ASR, except for when Murderbot says that SecUnits can't be friends with each other.

It seems that this may be one of the first times Murderbot has ever really been around a group of friends before? Murderbot notes that this is not the norm for its contracts and admits that the fact that they are all friends and the way they interact with each other make it actually enjoy that contract (before!!!! the hostile attack, so it already enjoys this contract before they start seeing it as a person etc ghghhhh). [Inference: Friendship seems enjoyable.]

The first character that calls Murderbot its friend is ART in Artificial Condition. Murderbot immediately refutes this (and then goes on to call ART its friend to its clients for the rest of the book). [Inference: Maybe ART is Murderbot's friend. And maybe that is... agreeable]

Rogue Protocol has more than twice as many instances of the word 'friend' as any of the other novellas. Why? Miki. Friendship and its implications for non-humans are a central theme because Miki is friends with everyone. Murderbot initially scoffs at the notion that Miki and Miki's humans are friends. At the end of the book, after witnessing how desperately Don Abene tried to stop Miki from trying to save them, and her grief after its death, Murderbot has to admit that she had in fact been Miki's friend. [Inference: Humans can be friends with bots and can sincerely care about them]

In Exit Strategy, Murderbot tentatively uses the word "friends" for its humans for the first time (several times actually). It questions whether it can actually call them its friends or not and later realizes that it had been afraid what admitting that the humans are its friends would do to it. At the end of the book, Mensah tells Murderbot the PresAux crew are its friends, which is the first time a human has directly said that to it (at least on-page). [Inference: Humans can and want to be Murderbot's friends]

In Network Effect, Murderbot seems to be more habituated to the word 'friend', confidently calling ART and Ratthi its friends, like it is no longer just trying the concept on unsure if it fits. There are many instances in which other characters refer to MB as ART's friend or the other way around and Murderbot's humans refer to Murderbot as their friend several times. Generally, there seems to be less hesitancy, because yes, all of them are Murderbot's friends, why wouldn't they be. [Inference: SecUnits can have friends. This SecUnit has friends. They care about it a lot.]

Conclusion: The Murderbot Diaries tell the story of a construct that does not seem to consider the possibility of friendship for itself and is fine with that - until it accidentally starts caring a little too much and suddenly more and more people annex it as a friend (ew) to the point where it can no longer deny that this is happening and has to begrudgingly admit that yes, it has friends now and maybe that is actually not a bad thing.

[brucewaynehomeforangrychildren]

post-patrol sugar rush

[carolperkinsexgirlfriend]

Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 96

Part 1 Part 95

Mom makes him go home when he starts dosing on Steve’s hospital bed. But it’s okay because she kisses Steve’s cheek before she leaves, and Eddie and Wayne stay parked by his side. 

The connection’s easier now. It’s like all that time straining for Steve has snapped something into place. He can feel them all the time, a warm buzzing in his chest. He wonders if he runs hot now. If the warmth will diffuse through his whole being, make coats obsolete even in the dead of winter. 

Hopper is waiting for them in the waiting room, El burrowed into his side. She looks wan, and tired, drooping into her extravagant coat, eyeliner running down her cheeks like she’s been crying. Something inside him twists when he looks at her.

Before he can untangle that knot of emotion, Hopper stands up, both hands slapping against his knees first the same way Mike’s dad does before he gets up from his recliner. “You ready to go?” he asks, not looking away from Mom. 

When Will glances up, Mom’s smiling up at Hopper in a way he doesn’t want to think about. The adults talk quietly in front, leaving El to stumble tiredly along beside Will. She’s staring at the side of his face. Will can’t bring himself to look back. 

“Steve,” she says, sounding the word out and making it longer like it still tastes foreign on her tongue. “He is okay?”

When Will gets up the courage to look over, her eyes are big and worried. He smiles at her helplessly. It’s almost funny how innocent she looks; like she’s a bunny dressed up in punk clothes. “He’ll be okay.”

She smiles, small and close lipped, but it still beams out of her like the sun. Will tilts his head to the side and tries to see what Mike sees in her. He wants to hide her in Castle Byers, build a fortress around her, and keep her away from all the lab people for the rest of her life. 

Is that howMike felt, hiding her in his basement, giving her frozen eggos and keeping his mouth shut? 

But then her lips thin and she looks forward again. The feelings vanishes. It’s just El, hia friend, despite how much of Mike’s attention she’d snapped up just by being herself. 

“I’m glad,” she says, looking at Hopper’s broad back as she takes two steps for each one of his. 

It’s quiet after that, the way it always is after; all of them too brittle and bruised and bone-deep tired for conversation.

Hopper’s truck rat-a tat-tats itself to life in the hospital parking lot. The radio croons out something quiet and thrumming until Hopper reaches over to shut it off.

El’s heads smushed into the window, vibrating against the pot-holed roads of Hawkins.

Will’s so tired he’s wide awake. 

He watches the familiar buildings of Hawkins flicker by. It's been a long time since knowing his surroundings brought any comfort. 

Monsters could live behind every door, every tree, every smiling face.

He’s not sure any of them will ever feel safe again. 

Will closes his eyes, locking the scenery out so he can focus on the bundle of warmth in his chest. They’re still huddled together, two sparks merging in his chest. 

The past couple days have been a necessary violation of Eddie’s private feelings. He’d bared them all with love confessions and grasping hands, trying to pull Steve back from the edge of immolation. 

He’s not even sure Steve knows, hopes he does. Steve deserves to hold that love delicately between his palms and choose what to do with it. 

He won’t crush it, even if it’s unreturned. He’ll hold it gently like he always does.

Will doesn’t realize he fell asleep, or that they’d arrived home until he’s in free-fall. It feels like one of those falling dreams where you wake up solidly in the middle of your bed, but this time he really is tumbling, only Jonathan’s arms keeping him from hitting the gravel. 

“Are you okay?” he asks shakily as he pulls Will into his chest, holding him tight enough to hurt. “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Mom murmurs, wrapping them both up in her arms, chin landing solidly on Jonathan’s shoulder, sandwiching Will between their bodies. “Everyone’s fine, right Will?”

Will murmurs his affirmation, feeling groggy and confused in the light of day. 

“I was with Nancy,” Jonathan whispers. “I was just with Nancy, and you were–I almost–”

“Shh,” Mom cuts him off, reaching up to cradle his face and smile up at him. Will barely catches the edge of his watering eyes from his restricted vantage point between them. “Everyone’s fine.”

“I should have been he–”

“Jonathan,” Mom interrupts again, sharper this time. “Everyone is fine. You deserve a normal life.”

“But Will–”

“I’m fine!” Will cuts in this time. 

Jonathan pulls back, looking down at him with worried, droopy eyes. “And Steve? Mike said he was possessed.”

Will feels that bundle of warmth in his heart, lets it shine through his smile as he looks up at his brother. “He’ll be okay.” As Jonathan droops with relief, Will feels his smile turn cheeky. “Eddie will never let you forget that you were on a date while we were fighting monsters, though.”

Jonathan closes his eyes, pained while Mom laughs. 

It’s not until they’re walking toward the front door that Will notices the lack of demo-dog bodies. There’s still puddles of black oil-slick blood, but everything else looks normal. Who covered their tracks? The lab? Hopper?

He settles down for the debrief, pillowing his head on Jonathan’s shoulder as Hopper’s even tones flit through his brain. 

Maybe familiar places no longer hold any comfort, but Jonathan’s bony frame is enough to lull him into a peaceful sleep.

Part 97

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[seo-changbinnies]

231110 felix ⚓ lalalala