#let this come true

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[stuckinapril]

don't stress about that opportunity that fell through or that friend you lost or that thing you really want to happen but isn't. as long as you keep your chin up and try try try again, better things will replace your losses. i'm looking at my life rn and actually marveling at how every single thing i stressed about, whether it be an opportunity or a person, got supplanted w another thing that is so much better. it really is true that loss makes space for better things. these days i don't get sad when something doesn't work out. i get excited that i'm now open to so many other possibilities out there, so long as i actively seek them. you never lack. you just transition.

[trec-tears]

The ads here.. are on another level… I wish these were the ads I got every day

[qiinamii]

crown swap

[destiel-wings]

this is dean directly speaking to us with the fanfiction writing power and living outside of the narrative he's trapped in, asking us to do what chuck and the cw don't allow him to have

[enii]

We can do nothing at all, and I will still love every second of it.💕

[royaltea000]

Me when I’m in a being coerced into parenthood competition and my opponent is sun wukong

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

This one is dedicated to @shirokokuro, who made a lifeguard AU fic to fill the void where there was none.

Read it here! It's great: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51598429

[ilovedthestars]

A thought I’ve been having: While it's important to recognize the long history of many current queer identities (and the even longer history of people who lived outside of the straight, cis, allo “norm”) I think it's also important to remember that a label or identity doesn't have to be old to be, for lack of a better word, real.

This post that i reblogged a little while ago about asexuality and its history in the LGBTQ+ rights movement and before is really good and really important. As i've thought about it more, though, it makes me wonder why we need to prove that our labels have "always existed." In the case of asexuality, that post is pushing back against exclusionists who say that asexuality was “made up on the internet” and is therefore invalid. The post proves that untrue, which is important, because it takes away a tool for exclusionists.

But aromanticism, a label & community with a lot of overlap & solidarity with asexuality, was not a label that existed during Stonewall and the subsequent movement. It was coined a couple decades ago, on internet forums. While the phrasing is dismissive, it would be technically accurate to say that it was “made up on the internet.” To be very clear, I’m not agreeing with the exclusionists here—I’m aromantic myself. What I’m asking is, why does being a relatively recently coined label make it any less real or valid for people to identify with?

I think this emphasis on historical precedent is what leads to some of the attempts to label historical figures with modern terminology. If we can say someone who lived 100 or 1000 years ago was gay, or nonbinary, or asexual, or whatever, then that grants the identity legitimacy. but that's not the terminology they would have used then, and we have no way of knowing how, or if, any historical person's experiences would fit into modern terminology.

There's an element of "the map is not the territory" here, you know? Like this really good post says, labels are social technologies. There's a tendency in the modern Western queer community to act like in the last few decades the "truth" about how genders and orientations work has become more widespread and accepted. But that leaves out all the cultures, both historical and modern, that use a model of gender and sexuality that doesn't map neatly to LGBTQ+ identities but is nonetheless far more nuanced than "there are two genders, man and woman, and everyone is allo and straight." Those systems aren’t any more or less “true” than the system of gay/bi/pan/etc and straight, cis and trans, aro/ace and allo.

I guess what I’m saying is, and please bear with me here, “gay” people have not always existed. “Nonbinary” people have not always existed. “Asexual” people have not always existed. But people who fell in love with and had sex with others of the same gender have always existed. People who would not have identified themselves as either men or women have always existed. People who didn’t prioritize sex (and/or romance) as important parts of their lives have always existed. In the grand scheme of human existence, all our labels are new, and that’s okay. In another hundred or thousand years we’ll have completely different ways of thinking about gender and sexuality, and that’ll be okay too. Our labels can still be meaningful to us and our experiences right now, and that makes them real and important no matter how new they are.

We have a history, and we should not let it be erased. But we don’t need a history for our experiences and ways of describing ourselves to be real, right now.

[adh-d2]

So, THAT Clone X trooper...

is 100% definitely, undoubtedly Tech, yeah?

I mean, physically/literally:

His accent is different under the voice modulation

I stg those pained grunts as he lifted the stones were pure Tech

He runs in Creature Posture

The pocketses

He still doesn't give a fuck about following orders

But also narratively:

The lingering closeups whenever he's about to act in regard to the Batch. Is it consideration? Hesitation? They sure want us to wonder.

The story's repeated emphasis on Crosshair being able to anticipate his moves, and the way they match each other beat for beat the whole way down.

The fucking intimacy of the way he almost kills Crosshair. I mean the whole physicality of the fight, but especially the way Clone X had to stare into his eyes while he drowned him.

Why, as a writer, would you waste those story beats on someone who had no personal significance to the Batch? You just wouldn't.

[casualavocados]

You should stay away from me. I'm no longer with the gang. I didn't agree. Our boss already agreed four years ago. Pull over and let me out of the car. I'm your boss!

KISEKI: DEAR TO ME Ep. 01 / Ep. 09

[yourockthebeatofmyheart]

And you know what else I love about MAWS? They didn't do that thing where the main couple finally gets together and then they're immediately forced apart/made to suffer to create Drama. There's no pointless misunderstanding, no jealousy, no petty arguments blown out of proportion. They do reach a breaking point, but in a way that feels natural and sincere (Lois thinking she's not good enough for Clark, Clark thinking he's too alien for Lois) and while they're apart they realize that they were wrong about themselves but also learn to accept the things they resented before. Lois isn't bothered by Clark not being human, she loves him because he's a good person; Clark doesn't think Lois is inferior to him, he sees her passion and courage as extraordinary. And in the end it makes their relationship even stronger I have to stop typing bc there are literal tears in my eyes this show is so good!!!

[singerorpheus]

Hadestown - West End - 26/05/2024 Dónal Finn (Orpheus), Melanie La Barrie (Hermes), Lauren Azania (Worker), Tiago Dhondt Bamberger (Worker), Lucinda Buckley (Worker Swing), Waylon Jacobs (Worker), Christopher Short (Worker) Do not share outside of Tumblr. This is the very song that sent me 16 hours to London. Dónal plays Orpheus so hurt and angry here, it is genuinely as life changing as I thought it would be in real life, it's all you could ask for in an Orpheus. Also, we get changed lines after 'So I ask you...', instead of 'If it's true what they say, I'll be on my way. Tell me what to do!' , we get 'Brother, look around today. Is this how the world will stay? There must be another way!' which i think is very fitting for his Orpheus and also means we get Orpheus saying 'brother' in IIT again!! Melanie carries this production for the entire 2 and a half hours powerfully and I loved all the workers I watched that day, they were all so great. Feel free to yap at me about literally anything Hadestown West End related <3.

[foolishlovers]

rewatching good omens will fix me

[autisticandroids]

FAMINE: That's one deep, dark nothing you've got there, Dean.

[youtube with closed captions]

dean and his father. dean and his family. dean and how bad it is.

(via @closetoyou1970)

[littlefankingdom]

Me to myself: Don't send murder threats to DC comics writers, don't send murder threats to DC comics writers, don't send murder threats to DC comics writers...