#might do more with this...

[hunkadorusrex]

Dogs and Ponies

___

Darry had no idea how long he’d been driving. The needle on the gas gauge was starting to flirt with empty, but that didn’t stop him. Nothing would’ve. Not tonight.

The steering wheel creaked under a rough grip as the old truck rattled down the empty road. The headlights cut a weak cone into the dark, catching glimpses of barbed wire fences, dry grass, and the occasional flicker of trash kicked up by the wind. The sky was heavy, clouds pressed low, swollen with rain that just wouldn’t fall.

He hadn’t planned on going anywhere. But when you’ve got no one left to take care of, and the walls of your house feel like they’re closing in? Driving was the next best thing.

Hell, it might have been the only thing.

He didn’t bring a jacket. Didn't check the weather. Didn't leave a note. Why would he?

Soda was gone.

Just like that. A half-assed letter on the counter. No goodbye. No explanation.

Except Darry knew. He wasn’t stupid. He knew it had something to do with Sandy showing back up all soft-eyed and pregnant and saying it was his. Knew it had something to do with that too-good-to-be-true promise of a fresh start in Florida. Or maybe it was Texas. Didn’t matter. What mattered was he left Darry behind to pick up the pieces.

Again.

Now it was just the hum of the tires, the ache in his chest, and the black road stretching ahead like it didn’t care.

He spotted the dog first.

Big thing. Yellow coat streaked with dirt, ribs showing sharp through its sides. It was limping along the shoulder, a frayed rope dragging behind it. Looked like something wild that’d decided to give people one last shot and regretted it. The kind of mutt with upright ears and no tail to wag.

Darry’s brows drew together. He eased his foot off the gas, jaw tightening. Why not. It was better than turning around and staring at that empty house.

He was just starting to slow down when the lightning hit.

CRACK—!!

It tore across the sky like a warning, lighting up the field and road daybright for one sharp, breathless second.

That’s when Darry saw the kid.

Up ahead. Pushing a beat-up old Indian Scout, one hand steady on the handlebars, the other loose at his side. The dog trotted behind like they belonged to each other, even if neither of them looked like they belonged anywhere at all.

For one wild second, Darry’s heart leapt.

Soda?

He couldn’t help it—the kid had the same frame. Same way of walking like he’d been carrying something too heavy for too long and never said a word about it. Dark hair, tallish, lean.

But as he pulled closer, the angle shifted. The eyes—when the kid turned—weren’t brown.

They were green.

Darry pulled off to the side, heart still kicking against his ribs, and stepped out into the thick air.

“Hey!” he called, voice rough from disuse. “That your dog?”

The kid paused and turned around like he hadn’t even realized the mutt was still behind him. Looked at the animal, then back at Darry with this weird, tired kind of calm.

He let out a long, slow sigh.

“Well,” he said, “I guess he is now.”

Darry squinted. The kid looked half-starved but calm about it. Like he’d already decided not to expect anything better. “You got a name?”

“Ponyboy.”

Darry blinked. “That a joke?”

Ponyboy didn’t even shrug. “Nah. That’s just what it is.”

Jesus. “Alright. You need a ride?”

The kid looked at the truck. Then up at the sky, where thunder was still growling distant.

“I ain’t leaving the bike.”

“We’ll throw it in the back,” Darry said, already moving toward the tailgate. “Ain’t that complicated.”

Ponyboy hesitated only a second before wheeling the thing over. The dog climbed in first like it’d been riding shotgun its whole life. Darry didn’t even protest.

They didn’t talk on the way back.

But Darry watched the kid out of the corner of his eye, and damn if it didn’t keep hitting him. The shape of him. The look in his eyes when the lights passed. Like he was made out of the same pieces as Soda, just fitted together different.

___

The house was dark when they pulled in. The sky still hadn’t broken, but the pressure of the storm was thick enough to chew. Darry killed the engine, stepped out, watched as Ponyboy slid down from the cab.

Ponyboy didn’t wait to be asked. He wheeled the bike down gentle, like it was something sacred. Ponyboy parked it neat under the porch overhang, the dog settling beside it like a guard.

Darry jerked his head toward the screen door. “You comin’ in?”

Ponyboy didn’t move. Just looked at the porch couch, then back at Darry like the question had been bigger than it sounded.

“Nah,” he said, stepping over to the couch, still dripping road dust and storm air. “I’m good out here.”

“You do know it’s about to pour, right?”

Ponyboy didn’t even blink.

“Then I’ll get wet.”

And he said it like it didn’t matter. Like he'd dealt with worse , and he was just used to it now.

Darry stood in the doorway, arms folded, watching the kid fold into himself on the old cushions like this was always where he was gonna end up. Like he expected nothing else.

He didn’t say anything else. Just left the screen door open a crack and the porch light on.

In case the kid changed his mind.

[icewindandboringhorror]

(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[dead-core]

i just need to have more rules for myself. more rules and limits. surely that will help me

[leupagus]

It's worth noting that there are some extraordinary people in the world who have been quietly doing the work for decades, and they should be celebrated with all the fervor that we denounce the villains. I first read about Harrison twenty-odd years ago, when he'd already been doing this for about fifty years, and this is one of those guys whose life can, indeed, be summed up by his headline.

James Harrison saved millions of lives. Millions. Not with anything flashy or dramatic, not with profound speeches or brilliant strategy or any of the things we insist are the ways to impact the world. He simply kept himself as healthy as possible so that every few weeks he could go and sit quietly in a room and give away a fundamental part of himself — quite literally his lifeblood — to people he'd never meet, for no pay and no expectation of acknowledgement. (He was, it should be said, acknowledged quite a lot per this article, but that's beside the point.)

When we talk about the kind of people we want to elevate and celebrate in our societies, I often think of people like James Harrison. I hope we get more of him; not just for his blood, but for his heart.

[eydilily]

pearl :D

[weewoow-20706030]

The batfam trauma candy salad would go absolutely insane.

Dick: Hi. I'm Dick Grayson and when I was 8 I watched my parents fall to their death in front of me, then I had to move away from everything I love and spend the rest of my life in some weird American city. And I brought the sour gummy worms.

Jason: This is so stupid- my mother used to kick me out when he drug dealer would come over so I didn't see her spending our very small amount of money on drugs.

Steph *off screen*: what did you bring?

Jason: nerds.

Cass: I was raised to be a weapon, a murderer. I brought peach rings.

Steph: I'm Steph and My dad was an alcoholic who thought he could go head to head with batman and outdo the riddler. And I brought Reese's pieces.

Tim: I'm Timothy Drake Wayne and I had left the house to try and find some guy before he killed my dad, just for him to kill my dad when I was gone. I brought sour rainbow strips.

Duke: My parents are in a mental ward, high on joker toxin. No one knows if they'll ever get better. And I got m&m's.

Damian: I am a highly trained assassin and-

Steph: cut. Cut. Damian. Civilian identities. Ok. Restart.

Damian: My mother randomly dropped me on some weird man's doorstep when I was ten. I brought rock candy.

[pyrus-salicifolia]

“Normal” test results are not the relief people think they are. When you wake up in pain and continue to be in pain for hours every day and your tests come back normal you don’t stop being in pain.

[trekkerac]

he's like a faulty lightbulb

[chloesimaginationthings]

Doey trio consider what to do about poppy playtime

[hinamie]

blue light overexposure dot png

[inkskinned]

i keep thinking about how rfk said that autistic people "will never write a poem." i keep thinking about that, about if humanity is calculated on the back of old verse. how far we measure personhood is in baseball and stanza breaks.

i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.

maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat. i'm not sure if the injury gives me half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?

does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.

am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?

in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.

but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.

perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.

does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.

if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.

i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.

i didn't write a poem about any of these things.

something else, then. existing without humanity.

[pangur-and-grim]

I didn’t share this before, but I took this video on night before Belphie was diagnosed with FIP. he’d stopped walking. if I placed him somewhere, he’d just crumple. finally I managed to get this weird, wobbly walk from him with a meat gogurt.

compare this video to the one I posted earlier today, where he’s flinging himself into the air like a frog! I 100% believe he would’ve died that week without the medication, and now he’s thriving. now he gets to be a happy, chaotic kitten. now he gets to grow up.

[otaku553]

A self indulgent Koala redesign :)

Going for something cute that has the ability to look normal among mid to upper class civilians in case she needs to mingle with nobles, but just a bit more militaristic and practical for fighting! Thinking of doing a layer by layer breakdown for her outfit as well

[sheepwater]

based off of this post from @holyhaeresis !

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

The stewards of the old world are always keen to give you a glimpse of their might... According to legend, the ancients built specialized chambers to seal away false prophets.

The Arcane is waking up.