there are days that it is hard, and unfair, and some horrible part of me wishes i could have been born in a different world. i love being queer, i hate how others react to it. when i first came out at 15, my mom whispered: please don't say that. your life would be so much harder.
it is harder.
it is also a tuesday, walking my dog. we are both skiving off of work, and yes both of us have dyed hair and pronouns. mine is patchy - it was my first time trying bleach; i didn't have enough. theirs is a resilient toadstool green. a little girl comes up to us and asks um, excuse me? is your hair real? 'cause jason says you're a fairy.
it is sunday brunch, all of us talking over each other, overfull on love. she is trying out a new name today, and we made her a cake with today's name scrawled in shaky purple letters. she laughs so much she cries and then gets frosting in her hair. someone young at a different table keeps giving us these large, wide eyes: the same look we have all been on the other side of. the kind that says, breathless: wait, is that possible?
it is a half-fight in a supermarket because he loves "dance moms" and says abby's tiktok is funny and meanwhile i think the children in that show should be allowed to sue abby lee miller for child abuse. i tell him that it led to the casual acceptance of child harassment for mainly adult views; and then i am standing, suddenly, in someone else's thrown soda. there's a white lady standing there, furious, saying something about hell-on-earth. i had forgotten i was wearing stuff with pride colors. and then it is this: he had just been casually arguing with me - and within an instant, he squares his shoulders and goes after her like i am his sister
on saturday i sat in a circle while beca played with my hair and we were all over 30 and we laughed about how much happier we are being this old, how much more we appreciate our community. 25 minutes from now, we will be on stage to dance in baggy beige clothing, but for now we look on with envy to the dancers in loud-and-bright buttondowns. where are they getting these shirts! i cry, distraught. everyone laughs. one of our friends has a mushroom witch hat. this would have been cringey in high school, probably. instead we are all delighted with each other; happy just to be here and alive and moving
it's that last week my new friends cried with joy for me when they heard i'm getting top surgery. every so often i have the honor of being the first person someone feels comfortable enough to tell. i'm trying to make long fluttery butterfly wings to wear to pride; but i don't know anything about fabric or dye, so my friends have been sending me their personal advice.
i think in a different poem i would talk about how sometimes you walk into a room and put the mask back on. but i'm sleepy and my whole brain is fuzzy so i think in this one, it's a monday, and my dog and i took a nap on a couch, and i had missed texts from friends. i used to wake up lonely. i think this poem is about walking into a room and seeing someone and just knowing, the way you just-know-sometimes, and then giving them that little smile, and seeing them light up with joy and relief. it is how we always seem to be able to find each other in a crowded room. how we always seem to make friends with each other before even we know-it-to-be-true. it is saying: we're very different people; but i belong to you.
it is harder, yes. but it comes with a built-in family.
5K notes
·
View notes
Hey. PSA. If you pick the flirty, roguish, charming mercenary to pursue, please realize what you're getting into. X's character type has been transparent from day one.
Getting upset at their CH10 scene on the farm when they and the Crown aren't remotely in a relationship and have only interacted with each other for a literal 1 week is a little delusional.
The Crown canonically is also not going to be bothered by it because they understand this very well. So please understand you're not going to get any options to "make X jealous" or "break up" with them (there's nothing to break up anyway?) based on just that, because the Crown is a normal, mature and well-adjusted person when it comes to relationships, and they realize X is an adult who isn't chained to them and hasn't promised them anything, so they can do whatever they want.
The Crown will be upset at the OTHER, plot-relevant thing X did, and you'll get choices on how your Crown handles that part. You know, because that's the actually important part here lol.
490 notes
·
View notes
System Collapse, or: Adventures in Just Standing Here
Chapter 2, page 27: "On my mission (make that 'mission' because I was actually just standing there) the humans were already finishing up."
3, 36: “I backburnered all those feeds, though I kept a channel open with Three, who was still doing a good job of sitting there with Karime and not screwing anything up. I wasn’t doing a good job of standing here, because my current three humans had just volunteered to go check out the new probably-not-apocryphal colony site.”
3, 62-63: “You’re stalling, ART-drone said. I am not. I can stand here and be useless without any ulterior motives, thanks. […] At least while they were fucking with Tarik nobody was noticing that I actually hadn’t made a report yet and was in fact just standing there."
4, 68: “On our private connection, ART-drone said, SecUnit. Shit, I’m just standing here watching."
4, 69: “Iris said, ‘We need to stop it. SecUnit, you okay with that?’ Sure, whatever. I sent her an affirmative through the feed. Tarik hurried over and cut the power. Then we all kind of stood there for a second.”
6, 123: "I realized I'd just been standing here again when Ratthi, still monitoring my drone video from the shuttle, asked, 'What's that other door for? Another section of the hangar?' So I’d missed that, nice."
6, 124: "Nothing was happening, I might as well stand here as anywhere else I guess."
7, 157: “I walked out of the big chamber into the corridor, and just stood there."
anything: *happens*
murderbot: 🧍♂️
Bonus:
ART-drone was cycling through shows for us to watch in background, but I was actually really in the mood for a good long stare at a wall. (6, 136)
Not that trauma is making me revert back to my company days of feeling helpless and unable to take initiative or anything...😂💀🤖
100 notes
·
View notes
rei and miri's physicality: a chronological analysis (part 1)
Time to go into one of the meta topics that has been buzzing in my head for a while now. It's about how Miri and Rei interact with respect to physical contact, and how I am smitten by the way he's so gentle with her and lets her take liberties with him. This is gonna be long and image-heavy [NB now has descriptions]. I have to split it into two parts because of the image limit.
Episode 2! This is the first time that Miri and Rei have physical contact with each other, and it's Kazuki pawning her off to Rei so he can make breakfast without her running underfoot.
As I went to get these screencaps, I noticed that Rei's hands automatically come up to hold her even though he's clearly kind of sceptical about the arrangement at this point. (Lol at Kazuki backing away as though he's afraid Miri is radioactive).
Episode 3! And here begins a running gag about Miri's favourite way to wake up Rei lmao.
I'm curious as to why Rei was sleeping on the sofa to begin with, when that's where they put Miri until she gets her own room in episode 4, and Miri didn't know Rei slept in the bathroom until later on.
Miri goes looking for Rei after Kazuki turns down her request to sleep with him. She finds Rei sleeping in the bathtub as per usual for him and eagerly clambers into the tub so she can sleep with him. Going by the setup of Misaki's apartment in episode 11, she's probably used to sleeping with her mother.
Despite his resting bitch face and reserved demeanour, Miri is already super comfortable with him. She's plopped on his chest, pawing at his face, and goading him to smile. And Rei is very accommodating of her whims. He later tells her to stop kicking the back of his seat in the car, but doesn't tell her to stop pawing at his face. Around this time in the story, Kazuki complained about her climbing into his lap when he was trying to eat, but Rei just....lets this happen lol.
There's a cut out and it fades back into her asleep in the tub, wrapped in Rei's blanket as he looks down at her from outside it. The implication seems to be that she just tired herself out pawing at Rei and then he relinquished his sleeping spot, probably to go out on the sofa.
Such a significant moment. I had already realised that this was the first time that Rei had addressed Miri by name, but it was only while I was drafting this post that it hit me that this was also the first time he had willingly and consciously initiated physical contact with her. I also think it's significant that he repeats the 'Let's go home, Miri' line after she's jumped into his arms. It's him fully committing to the sentiment.
It's sweet how after he has made his 'I'm her papa' resolve, he doesn't seem to put her down again until they meet back up with Kazuki.
Episode 4!
It's so adorable how Miri loves climbing on Rei and how he just let's her despite him not being a tactile person.
Him keeping Miri on his lap after they both woke up from their nap is so precious.
Tsundere Rei lol. Even though he acted very put upon to be there, he was clearly paying attention and even anticipated the high five coming before Kazuki did.
I think this is the only instance of her hugging both their legs at once and I love it. I love it! It's so dear to me. I love this family 😭
Episode 5!
Rei's expression here is golden. Miri, like most small children, is very adorable. But, also like most small children, she can be very annoying lol.
We get another instance of her preferred method of waking up Rei--jumping on him--band she even shakes him for good measure, but he's simply too tired to react.
This is also a good point to note the difference between him sensing something and waking up before she even flipped the lights in episode 3 and the way he's now so comfortable with her presence here that can even sleep through her deliberately trying to wake him.
I wish I had a gif because screenshots do not do justice to the softness with which Rei picks up and gazes at Miri while she's asleep. He's 1000% having a 'that's my baby girl; I'm her dad' moment.
And just look at his expression after Kyu reveals he knows what the deal is. He's nervous about what Kyu will do, and there's also so much 'don't take her away from me' energy coming off him. I see in him shades of the Rei who will tell Kazuki that he wants to keep taking care of her after her mother is killed.
And that's part one! Part two is here.
198 notes
·
View notes