#long!!!

[insectsinsects]

Draft I was talking about—

Yesterday I found a scar from two years ago, when I'd gotten so high I cut my index finger and bled into dinner and melted my phone case on Vasi's stove. I saw you the next day and we got more weed and two green apples and put the fruit on the operating table. We looked it up. One of us or maybe both of us had cigarettes too. It was late August. We used your crochet hook to make the proper orifices. We walked down Greene or Mercer or some other luxury store backstreet, parked in front of the Gucci store. My instagram story read 3 likes and i cauterize it holding a lighter to the wound.

At that point it had only been six months since we'd met, but that semester we began to spend a lot of time out after dark taking care of each other, getting blasted, drunkenly riding bikes, and always separating to go home; never together.

I was asked the other day what my best day ever was, and for a long time, paper boats was a top contender, though I didn't want to say it out loud. I didn't want to believe that I'd already experienced the maximum amount of happiness among you, my other friends, my family, and everyone else I'd ever loved. Besides, paper boats was merely the beginning. I do believe still that those days were perfect—I had mastered escapism. I took shelter in a transient bubble where I didn't have to confront the bad, necessary things in my life with you. I hadn't thought about that memory in a while, but my hand was being examined by someone new, and asked what that little, white scar was about. She traced it and I almost winced at the thought. I told her the story, incomplete because I admittedly leave you out of all these grand retellings of our adventures. In those stories you are a nebulous, conglomerate, and faceless entity that is "a friend of mine," because that's what you've always been to me. Even when the fire that I started about you burned at its brightest, you were just that. I don't know that I'm ready to have our world collide with the present. Only you and I will ever know the details, feel the negative space between us, and mourn the unsaid. When we're apart for too long you almost become that unfamiliar blur. But maybe that's our gray matter merging into one, becoming myopic— so close it becomes unrecognizable.

[lrndvs]

compliments from girls go hard

[climbingthefloors]

obsessed with this baby hippo from thailand's khao khew zoo.. she has been so utterly betrayed by the world

[parttimepunner]

Pour one out for a real one.

[hydrattan]

I was feeling agitated and artblocked yesterday so I decided to give my brain a rest by watching TV and then the next thing I knew these were in front of me

[wynsvre]

hi this is a comic about me please be nice

[nondivisable]

I need to say something and I need y'all to be calm

if it isn't actively bad or harmful, no representation should be called "too simple" or "too surface level"

I have a whole argument for this about the barbie movie but today I wanna talk about a show called "the babysitters club" on Netflix

(obligatory disclaimer that I watched only two episodes of this show so if it's super problematic I'm sorry) (yes. I know it's based on a book, this is about the show)

this is a silly 8+ show that my 9 year old sister is watching and it manages to tackle so many complex topics in such an easy way. basic premise is these 13 year old girls have a babysitting agency.

in one episode, a girl babysits this transfem kid. the approach is super simple, with the kid saying stuff like "oh no, those are my old boy clothes, these are my girl clothes". they have to go to the doctor and everyone is calling the kid by her dead name and using he/him and this 13 year old snaps at like a group of doctors and they all listen to her. it's pure fantasy and any person versed in trans theory would point out a bunch of mistakes.

but after watching this episode, my little sister started switching to my name instead of my dead name and intercalating he/him pronouns when talking about me.

one of the 13 years old is a diabetic and sometimes her whole personality is taken over by that. but she has this episode where she pushes herself to her limit and passes out and talks about being in a coma for a while because of not recognizing the limits of her disability.

and this allowed my 9 year old sister to understand me better when I say "I really want to play with you but right now my body physically can't do that" (I'm disabled). she has even asked me why I'm pushing myself, why I'm not using my crutches when I complain about pain.

my mom is 50 years old and watching this show with my sister. she said the episode about the diabetic girl helped her understand me and my disability better. she grew up disabled as well, but she was taught to shut up and power through.

yes, silly simple representation can annoy you if you've read thousands of pages about queer liberation or disability radical thought, but sometimes things are not for you.

[willinghands]

i think r/BenignExistence is my favorite subreddit 🥲 i love these pleasant little glimpses into strangers' lives

[whiteshipnightjar]

Zoozve, my beloved

[inkskinned]

please i love you i'm begging you bring back suspension of disbelief bring back trusting the audience like. i cannot handle any more dialogue that sounds like a legal document. "hello, i am here to talk to you about the incident from a few minutes ago, because i feel you might be unwell, and i am invested in your personal wellbeing." "thank you, i am unwell because the incident was hurtful to me due to my childhood, which was bad." I CANT!!!!

do you know how many people are mad that authors use "growled" as a word for "said"? it's just poetics! they do not literally mean "growled," it's just a common replacement for "said with force but in a low tone." it's normal! do you hear me!! help me i love you please let me out of here!!!

[prettyboykatsuki]

touch-starvation needs to be written with emphasis on the starving part. you are hungry to be touched. so hungry that even the very taste of it makes you nauseous. it has been long since anything has ever touched you, ever fed you - that your body has grown more used to that gnawing emptiness more than anything else. it's better for you to be held, to eat but it makes you sick to try. you know

[insectsinsects]

The HBO Girls episode "The Panic in Central Park" gets its name from a 1971 movie called The Panic in Needle Park, written by Joan Didion and her husband John Dunne which is essentially about heroin addiction and how users in NYC massively coalesced into one park (to the point of being called "Needle Park," for the sheer number of needles littering the ground). It's a love story.

The episode brings back a long-gone character for a single episode and we essentially see that he's become addicted to heroin during his time away from the titular girls. Girls is quintessential NYC funny irreverent white girl media but the shift in tone is wildly jarring and heartbreaking to all fans and first-time viewers.

Central Park is pretty much a scion among NYC locations that have a history of displacement and eventual transformation into a public space that serves all but is primarily for uptown residents and tourists. The idyllic, comedic, and carefree world of Girls (though primarily set in Brooklyn) is thematically like Central Park: separated from reality and blissfully unaware. Marnie reckons with her first love returning. He's transformed completely, a 180 from his past-self and ultimately the things Marnie came to detest about him. From an uptight tech-bro to spontaneous, burly construction man, they reunite on the street and spend the day out. He's impulsive and fast, shoots up off-camera and in between activities he takes Marnie on. They ride the B train in silence and they rest on each other (perhaps the most recognized still among fans...)

By the end of the episode, Marnie wakes up in his apartment, sees the needles, and quietly exits his dilapidated apartment. She walks home barefoot, to a husband she's about to divorce, and it's kind of the first time her selfishness is encouraged by the audience. She's insufferable (often the audience's most hated!), but you can only see her make so many mistakes before you feel for her.

When it ends we never see him again!!!!! When the show moved like this from season to season, I used to think I was crazy for noticing the dissonance and lack of continuity, but I've realized the idea behind it is that life does not owe you continuity nor closure. Sometimes randomly serendipitous or tragic things will occur and we have no choice but to move forward.

[werewolf-transgenderism]

just watched a video of a wildlife rehabber tube-feeding the teeny tiniest orphaned baby opossum and the comments are fucking KILLING me

baby opossum (too teeny, hasn’t finished cooking in the marsupial pouch like it ought to have done, doesn’t even look like it should exist):

the comments:

[apollos-boyfriend]

i was cuddling with my boyfriend last night when his shoulder started tensing up (like he was readjusting or gently pushing me off) and when i asked him if he was okay or needed me to move or something he went “no you’re fine, i was just imagining myself pulling a large rope. i didn’t even realize my shoulder was doing that lmao” then refused to elaborate and i have never been as attracted to him as i was in that moment.

[lakanakana]

war never changes

[clairenatural]

there's a cherry blossom tree in DC that keeps blooming every year even though it shouldn't and the park service keeps thinking it's dead and then it keeps blooming! well they're removing a lot of trees to rehabilitate the area and they've said it's finally time for stumpy to go and they're going to mulch it and use the mulch to enrich all the other trees so it can help everything else keep going. and they're also going to plant spliced little pieces of it all over so that stumpy can live forever and this is genuinely sending me into a spiral