#what tags do people use?

[ghoulodont]

Alveolar Bone

Rain needs to have his wisdom teeth extracted — an uncommon predicament for a ghoul. Dewdrop is there for him in the days that follow, showing a similarly uncommon side of himself.

Relationship: Raindrop Characters: Dewdrop, Rain, Swiss Tags: Surgery, Caretaking, Hurt/Comfort Words: 4384

Read below or on AO3

Six months or so after he’s summoned, Rain attends his first dentist appointment. It’s horrible.

Dewdrop told him they were going to scrape his teeth with a metal spike, which did not make him feel better in the slightest, but that’s really all it was, and it was fine — a mildly unpleasant sensation. He marveled at how clean his teeth felt after. Overall, that part was acceptable. No, the real issue was what the dentist told him, which is that he has too many teeth. Apparently some people have more teeth than others, and each person only has enough room in their mouth for a certain number of teeth. Lucky him, he has extra.

He didn’t even know they existed, all the way in the back, tucked up inside his skull and his jaw bone, hidden away but causing trouble. The dentist knew, though, and had asked him sneaky little questions about them, like if he ever had pain in the side of his face. He asked it while pressing his gloved fingers against a surprisingly tender area in front of his ear.

Yes, of course he did. Everyone gets headaches, right?

Apparently not, or not like that. He had given a dangerously wrong answer to this question and revealed that his secret teeth were dysfunctional, and thus needed to be removed. The dentist tells him it’s a procedure much more common for humans. Humans are born without any teeth, and grow them in one at a time, so things can go wrong or something like that. Ghouls get all their teeth at once, during summoning, and generally only make as many as they have room for. His body must have miscalculated.

So Rain is an outlier among ghouls in this way, and now has a very human problem. It’s seen as something of a rite of passage, growing those teeth and having them removed, for young humans. It’s not something he could have ever anticipated dealing with as a young ghoul.

Back in the common room, he tells Dew of his plight. Dew doesn’t have any extra teeth. He never had those ones in the first place.

“Hey,” Dew projects across the room at Swiss, “how many molars do you have?”

“Molars?”

“Yeah, two or three? On each side.”

“Uh, I think three?” Swiss’ jaw drops slightly as his tongue explores the back of his mouth. “There’s three.”

“See,” Dew elbows Rain, “he’s like you.”

“He’s not though, because his aren’t stuck. They’re in his mouth.”

Dew hums. “Guess you’re extra special, then.”

—

Less than a week later, Rain is back in the strange and sterile dentist’s chair again.

There’s a lot more stuff in the room this time, spread out over the counter and on the little tray table. He spots something that looks suspiciously like pliers and then he stops looking.

The dentist’s assistant dotes over him, attaching the same funny paper bib from last time plus all sorts of other equipment. She clips something on his finger that makes a machine nearby beep in time with his heartbeat. He briefly wonders if it’s really that serious — why do they need to know about his heartbeat? But somehow it feels too late to be worried. He’s already here.

The dentist comes in and explains the procedure. He will be given some medicine “to relax,” and then something to make his mouth numb, and then the dentist will remove his teeth. With pliers, probably. Fine, it’s a plan.

The prerequisite for relaxation is apparently to put a big needle into his arm. He turns his head the other way. He sees the pliers again. He looks up at the ceiling. Whatever liquid begins to trickle into his vein makes a chill seep up towards his shoulder.

The dentist starts talking to him about the procedure again, reiterating the steps. At least that’s what he thinks is happening. It’s hard to tell because right in the middle of a sentence the world suddenly becomes hazy, distant, underwater. His body feels warm, and so, so heavy, or maybe it’s actually merged with the chair he’s sitting in. When he moves his eyes they glide over his surroundings like sliding on ice. The whole situation feels surreal, and it strikes him as amusing, just inherently funny to be in this room, experiencing this, waiting for someone to remove his teeth.

The dentist asks him how he’s feeling. He opens his mouth to explain that it’s like he’s had one drink too many, and a giggle comes out instead. He tries again, but words are too slippery. He gives up.

The chair tilts back. He blinks. He’s opening his mouth, because he was asked to — he doesn’t even have to think about it. He watches as the dentist approaches with an enormous, horror-movie syringe. Oddly, he doesn’t really mind. He closes his eyes.

The world becomes a blur of fingers and instruments in his mouth. There’s pressure, vibration, more and more sound. They’re doing road work inside his head, jackhammering asphalt and shoveling gravel. He can clearly picture the people in hard hats and high-visibility vests, tiny, inside his mouth, working away.

At some point the pressure becomes intense, close to unbearable. Bulldozers roll in, and big, heavy steamrollers. He reaches up to bat them away. A hand places his arm back on the chair.

The pressure eases. He opens his eyes a tiny sliver and watches an off-white chunk of something covered in red leave his mouth. His eyes slide closed again. The assistant says he’s doing a good job. He wonders what he’s doing. He’s doing nothing. The pressure returns.

Sensations swirl around him. Time feels wrong — dense, but also infinite. How long has it been? Minutes, hours? Days? It’s impossible for him to know, and he’s not sure he could even guess. When the dentist tells him they’re done, he feels surprised, or some attenuated version of it, mildly puzzled. He closes his eyes and lets himself drift, the construction crew having finally gone home.

When he wakes up — he was asleep? — the world is solid again. He’s alone in the room. The entire lower half of his face is numb. The comfortable, sleepy distance from before is replaced with a different kind of tiredness. He’s not heavy anymore but simply exhausted, like his body is registering the fierce battle — a catastrophic defeat, really — that just occurred in his mouth despite being completely unable to feel it, a sort of painless hit-by-a-truck feeling.

The assistant comes back in and coaxes him to slobber a huge wad of blood-soaked gauze into a bowl. She whisks it away, off to some other place. He’s alone in the room again. He closes his eyes.

The next time the assistant comes back, she stands him up on wobbly legs and walks him towards the entrance. He bumps awkwardly against the doorframe when they exit the room.

Dew is waiting by the entrance for him. Rain lets himself be handed off, passed into Dew’s guardianship. Dew hooks an arm around Rain’s waist and guides him down the hall.

“They took my teeth out,” he explains to Dew, but also to himself.

“They did,” Dew affirms.

The dentist’s office is in the infirmary, which now feels miles and miles away from the ghoul dorm. When they finally arrive in Rain’s room, Dew directs him to sit on the edge of the bed. 

Dew says he’ll be right back. “Stay right there,” he instructs.

Rain complies. He lets his eyes fall closed. He doesn’t realize Dew is back until he hears him placing something on the bedside table with a quiet clunk.

“Here.” Dew holds out a plastic cup of applesauce and a spoon in one hand.

Rain eyes it, apprehensive. He’s pretty sure his mouth doesn’t work right now.

“You need to eat something before you can take this.” Dew holds up a silver blister pack of pills and flicks it gently with one finger, making its contents rattle. There’s only three little perforated squares.

“What is that.”

“Painkillers. You’re supposed to take one before the numbing wears off.”

Right, of course. He had been so relieved that the procedure itself was over that this part, everything else, slipped his mind. He groans.

“Do you want to eat something different?”

He considers it. The entire concept of food seems unappealing right now, so no, not really, nothing in particular. He’s sort of hungry, though, he suddenly realizes. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday. He shakes his head.

Dew peels the foil top off the applesauce and hands it to him. Rain takes the applesauce. Dew hands him the spoon. Rain takes the spoon.

Rain lifts a spoonful of applesauce to his mouth and it runs into something. He feels around with his other hand to figure out what it is. It’s his lower lip. His mouth is barely open. He recalibrates. He feels sloppy, childish. Dew could tease him, but he doesn’t.

It’s slow going but eventually he hands Dew a mostly empty cup and Dew hands him a glass of water, and then a white tablet.

This is a new challenge. Putting the pill in his mouth is simple enough but when he tries to drink from the glass a small waterfall rushes over his chin and onto his chest. He ends up tilting his head back and aiming carefully, which gets the job done. Dew brings him a dry shirt.

Dew sets the two of them up on the bed in front of his laptop and turns on some docuseries about the ocean. Rain is content to zone out in front of the pleasant colors and shapes of coral reef biota, of rippling anemones and waving grasses and drifting jellyfish.

Half an hour or so into the episode, Dew interrupts the narrator, who is explaining something about snails. “Hey,” he prompts.

“Hey,” Rain echoes.

“Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah?”

“Will you be okay by yourself for a little bit? I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, let me know if you need something?” Dew holds up his phone. The screen lights up right at that moment, awoken by a notification appearing.

“I will.”

Dew climbs out of the bed and heads into the hallway. He turns and takes one last look at Rain, checking on him one more time, before he disappears out of sight.

Rain can’t imagine what Dew thinks might happen to him, alone in the middle of his bed. He feels babysat, maybe, just a little bit. He continues to observe the coral reef.

A school of fish undulates across the screen and the entire world moves with it.

He splays his fingers against the bed, bracing himself. He turns his head away from the suddenly overwhelming visuals on the screen. Every motion of his head ricochets off the edge of his field of vision and makes everything else go the opposite way. Being upright feels precarious, like standing at the edge of a cliff. He slides down the headboard, scared that if he breaks contact with it he might float away completely.

He curls up into a ball on top of the sheets. The bed rocks like a ship in a storm.

He oozes off the bed and onto the floor, willing it to be firmer, more stable. The motion feels like doing somersaults. He closes his eyes and spreads out over the floor like a starfish. The solidity of the hardwood does make him feel a little better, at least.

Actually, everything is almost okay as long as he stays completely still. He imagines calm, stable things. A sturdy rock formation. The glassy, perfectly smooth surface of a quiet pond.

He’s not sure how much time passes before he hears footsteps in the hallway, then coming through the door, then rushing over to him.

“Whoa, what happened?” Dew paws at his shoulders like he’s trying to peel him off the floor. The world tilts. The rock formation topples and a standing wave forms in the pond.

“No, wait— Stop—” He doesn’t know how to explain what’s happening.

“Sorry, sorry, what’s wrong?” Dew brushes hair out of his face that he hadn’t realized was there.

“Everything is moving.” He doesn’t dare open his eyes right now but he can feel Dew looking at him, the weight of his concern pressing into his skin.

“Okay, um—”

For a second, Rain can’t figure out what’s happening, but then Dew is lying down on the ground next to him. Dew’s fingers brush over the back of his palm. Rain takes a leap of faith and flips his hand over, giving up one of his points of contact with the solid ground in favor of something else, contact of a different kind. Dew intertwines their fingers and squeezes their palms against each other. He slides closer, pressing their sides together. His body is solid, a rock in the stormy sea.

They lie together like that until Swiss walks by the open door. He stops in his tracks when he sees the scene inside. Rain squints at him, scared to open his eyes all the way.

“What’s happening here?” He tilts his head to the side to align his gaze with the two of them, horizontal on the floor.

“He’s too high,” Dew explains. Rain hadn’t thought about it that way, but it’s exactly what’s happening.

“Wouldn’t it be nicer to be on the bed?” Swiss walks through the door and stands over them, hands in his pockets.

“The bed is moving.”

Swiss glances up at it. “I don’t know, looks alright to me.”

Rain frowns.

“Come on, you can’t be comfortable there.”

Rain is feeling blessedly little pain at the moment, actually. He could be lying on hot coals and he wouldn’t care, as long as it didn’t make him dizzy. He wonders if he’s going to feel sore later after lying on the hard ground, muscles tensed up, holding himself together, or if he’s just going to be perpetually drugged up enough to not feel it. He wonders how Dew is feeling right now. “Okay,” he concedes.

“Okay? Can we get you up on the bed?”

Rain nods, forgetting that it will make the world wobble. He presses his eyes closed.

Swiss and Dew guide him first into a sitting position, and then pull him up until he’s standing. Rain keeps his eyes shut as tight as possible. He holds onto Dew’s hand for dear life. Dew sits down on the edge of the bed with him. From the other side of the bed, Swiss helps him turn and lie back into the same position he started in, lounging against the headboard. Dew scoots up next to him. Swiss sits against his other side.

The spinning settles. Rain opens his eyes. Dew is kneading the back of his neck with one hand. The show is still playing on the laptop, the narrator’s calm voice describing the vital ecological role of algae to whoever will listen.

Wedged between the two of them like this, the bed isn’t so bad. He places his head on Swiss’ chest, rising and falling with his inhale and exhale. The world rocks in a steady, comforting way.

Once he’s a bit more settled, Dew gets up and brings him ice cream. It’s plain vanilla — a perfectly acceptable flavor in its own right, but a disappointment knowing that his options are limited, that he’s not allowed to have one with anything exciting in it. It feels like eating cookie dough ice cream after someone else already systematically ate all the cookie dough pieces out of it.

He can feel his face now, though — well, sort of, as much as he can feel any of his body, a tenuous claim — which is a small win for his dignity. He is able to skillfully operate a spoon.

It’s hard work. Every action seems to have twice as many steps as normal. The ice cream melts into a growing puddle at the bottom of the bowl. He imagines his body might be doing the same.

At some point he falls asleep, but not completely. He has strange, vivid dreams about watching a nature documentary on his bed. On the screen, Dew swims through a school of fish and catches one in his teeth. Swiss paddles by in scuba gear, clad in a wetsuit, with big flippers on his feet, and gives a thumbs-up. The camera rushes to the surface and he jolts awake.

In the real world, Swiss isn’t there anymore. Dew is still pressed against his side, tucked slightly underneath him, his chin hooked over Rain’s shoulder. The ice cream bowl is on the bedside table now, its contents fully liquid. There are no more coral reefs or schools of fish on the laptop screen — it’s showing whales now, a group of them swimming together, breaching the surface and blowing big clouds into the air. A calf nestles against its mother.

The next episode is about turtles. Babies hatch from eggs and scoot their way over the sand, dragging themselves with tiny flippers, down the beach into the breaking waves.

Dew brings him dinner — soup, another exciting, no-chew food option. They run out of episodes of the ocean show and switch to a documentary about the African savanna, with elephants and zebras and lions.

Halfway through, Dew pauses it and gets up to grab something.

“You’re supposed to take more of this.” He holds up the blister pack from earlier. One of the wells is broken open and empty now.

“Do I have to?” He knows he should. His face is already starting to ache more and more.

“No, I can get you something else, hold on.” He heads into the bathroom but returns quickly, holding a small bottle. He opens it and shakes something into his hand.

Dew hands him two pills, little clear blue ovals — ibuprofen. It’s what he took for his headaches, and the same dose. To take the same thing after having the source of said headaches violently excised from his face? There’s no way it would be enough.

“I want more than that.”

“I don’t think you can have more, you’ll hurt your organs or something.” Dew lifts the bottle and squints at the text on it. “You should take the prescription one if it’s bad.”

“No,” he whines, drawn out. He’s almost embarrassed to hear the sound coming out of his mouth. “I’ll fly away, seriously.”

“I’ll be right here with you, I won’t let you fly away.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Okay, well, you can take these for now and if it’s bad you can take the other one?” Dew offers the ibuprofen again.

Rain nods. He holds out his hand and Dew places the pills on his palm. Maybe it’s enough; ibuprofen hasn’t ever failed him before. How bad can it be?

—

It’s bad.

The pain itself is bearable but it’s loud somehow, persistent and intense. He’s sweating.

“I should have made you take this one, I’m sorry,” Dew frets. He hands Rain a familiar white tablet and a glass of water.

Rain moans in response. He’s as sober as he’s been in a while now, but he still feels addled, in a brand new way this time, like he can’t hear his own thoughts.

It sort of crept up on him, starting out mild. Dew brought him ice packs, two clear plastic pillows full of something blue and slushy, to press against either side of his face. It helped, at first, but it just kept getting worse and worse. Dew was the one who noticed something was wrong, that he was becoming increasingly fidgety, bordering on agitated.

Well, it wasn’t that Rain didn’t notice, more that he didn’t know where to draw the line. He was trying to ignore the problem. He was prepared to endure it. Dew wasn’t willing to watch him do that.

Somehow it took Dew pointing it out, the worry in his face like a mirror for Rain’s own distress, for it to sink in — the pain, and the acceptance.

“Maybe if you go to bed now you’ll sleep through the side effects?”

Rain nods. He places the pill carefully between slightly parted lips. The water feels scalding hot in the back of his mouth, like it might sizzle into steam there.

He shuffles to the bathroom and, after asking Dew — who seems to have memorized the care instructions he was sent home with — if he’s allowed to, he brushes his teeth very, very carefully.

He returns to his bed and crawls under the covers, too overwhelmed to do anything else. He feels the mattress dip under Dew’s weight.

—

He’s roused by someone shaking his shoulder. He opens his eyes, just slightly, and the room is dim. The light through the curtains is yellow, like it’s early in the morning. He blinks.

The hand is on his shoulder again. They’re being gentle, like he’s fragile. He wonders how long they’ve been standing here, trying to wake him from a painkiller-enhanced slumber with light little touches. He rolls over and Dew is there, in sweatpants and one of the oversized t-shirts he likes to sleep in.

“Good morning.” Dew’s voice is soft, gentle like the hand on his shoulder. He reaches his other hand out, and he’s holding something — four pills, four little blue ibuprofen pills like beautiful, shining gemstones. “I asked the dentist and he says you can have four,” he says.

Rain’s heart swoops. “You did that for me?” For a moment he feels like he’s going to cry, so overwhelmed by this gesture. He holds out his hand to accept them.

“Of course.” Dew hands him a glass of water.

He sits up. The world threatens to spin, but ultimately remains correctly oriented. He can still barely open his jaw, so he has to direct the pills individually past his front teeth. The inside of his mouth tastes absolutely horrendous. He drinks all the water.

“You can go back to sleep,” Dew says as he takes the empty glass from him.

There are so many things he wants to say — there’s thank you, of course, but also how are you so thoughtful, and what did I do to deserve this, and, most of all, I love you so much, but he can’t figure out how to say any of it right now.

Instead he reaches out and grasps Dew’s hand — more like his wrist, because he overshoots a bit — in his sleepy, floppy grip and tugs it closer. Dew understands, and crawls into the bed next to him. Rain dozes off again with Dew’s head tucked against his shoulder.

When he wakes up again, Dew is sitting up, looking at his phone, which he holds in one hand, and absentmindedly stroking the other up and down Rain’s arm. He looks up from his phone when Rain stirs.

He frowns, his eyebrows raising and pulling together, and reaches out and brushes his fingertips over Rain’s cheek. “Are you hurting?”

Rain shakes his head.

“I’ll be right back.”

Dew has been saying that a lot recently. The thought makes Rain’s chest tighten. Dew is a rather independent person, not really one to announce his intentions like that. But recently he’s been so careful, so considerate. Rain feels like he’s seeing a secret part of him, a hidden side, something precious.

When Dew comes back, he hands him the two ice packs from yesterday, refreshed by an overnight stint in the freezer. “For the swelling.”

Rain presses them to his cheeks. It feels like they’re easing some kind of pressure inside his head.

“Are you hungry?”

He nods between the ice packs. He’s been subsisting on slop since yesterday.

“What do you want to eat?”

It’s been barely twenty-four hours of soft foods only and he desperately wants something crunchy. “Cereal,” he requests. It’s a truthful answer to the question but he knows what Dew is going to say.

“...No.”

“Potato chips.”

“Also no.”

He tries to think softer. “Strawberries.”

“Probably not a good idea.”

He whines wordlessly.

“Is it okay if I just bring you something?”

Rain resigns himself to a mushy world devoid of substance. He nods.

“I’ll be right back,” Dew says, and he slips out the door.

Rain rolls over onto his side. He makes a sandwich of his head between the two ice packs. The one on top slides off his face when he removes his hand from it, flopping onto the bed with a sad, wet sound. Instead of replacing it, he presses his fingers against his cheek, probing, curious. His skin is cold, but so are his fingers. There’s a huge lump underneath, solid and radiating heat, like a golf ball embedded in his jaw.

He rolls off the bed, leaving the ice packs on the pillow, and pads to the bathroom, where he stands in front of the sink. His reflection in the mirror above it has puffy, round cheeks, like a chipmunk. He leans forward and brings his hands to his face in an inadvertent imitation of a shocked expression.

He returns to the bed and flops back onto it, face down, maybe a little harder than advisable, his abused head bouncing against the pillow. He feels blindly for the ice packs and replaces them on his cheeks, holding them there with quickly cooling hands.

He lies there, motionless, until he hears Dew’s footsteps again. He rolls over laboriously, still holding the ice packs to his face, to see Dew standing over him.

“Here.” Dew hands him mashed potatoes. When Rain takes the bowl from him, eschewing one ice pack, he immediately turns back around and goes right back out the door without another word.

Rain marvels at how thoughtful this menu selection is. When he puts some in his mouth he nibbles with his front teeth, completely unnecessarily, pretending he’s eating chips. It’s not very convincing, but it makes him feel better.

Dew returns a few minutes later, holding a glass of something pink. A smoothie. Rain feels like he could cry, which is quickly becoming a theme.

“Strawberries?” Rain asks.

“Strawberries,” Dew confirms, casual, matter of fact, like there was no other possibility, like he never considered bringing him anything else.

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[yanderespamton78]

Edit since a lot of people seem confused - your "real" name is the name that you want to be referred to in real life. It doesn't have to be your legal name. So if you're trans and you have a different name to whats on your birth certificate, even if not many people call you by the name, it still counts as your real name.

Edit 2 : Holy shit guys please stop reblogging this post my poor inbox im getting like 20 notifs an hour asjfhkajshdkh /lh /srs

[transannabeth]

btw if you borrow dvds or cds from library you can rip them onto your own blanks or onto your hard drive or whatever. librarians don’t care and they won’t know if you do it or not

[spectral-honey]

AU where Jason gets his revenge by becoming a lawyer and getting joker sentenced to the death penalty

Bruce is conflicted about it but any time he tries to say anything on the subject Alfred just talks over him like "oh we're so proud of you master Jason you finished college and you didn't even use your father's extensive resources that could've easily gotten someone in this family a degree aren't we so proud master Bruce that Jason got himself a respectable profession--"

[tumatawa]

I wish she had more scenes... Whateva

[mariana-oconnor]

The AO3 search/filtering system has just ruined me for every other search function ever. I genuinely go onto websites, click 'advanced search' and then look at what paltry options they've given me in utter horror. How does anyone find anything? How do people survive?

[uncanny-tranny]

The whole "breasts shouldn't be politicized because the primary purpose of breasts is to feed babies!" can be a fine jumping-off point, but I really wish people thought deeper than that when we talk about the ways in which bodies are politicized and restricted.

Like, why's it that when we talk about breasts, they must have some Higher Purpose? It's true that breasts aren't inherently sexual, but they aren't valuable solely because they can potentially feed a baby. A human body doesn't have to serve a Higher Purpose in order for it to not be legislated against or policed, and I just wish people would remember it isn't always about babies, about other people, about anything else other than the people who have that body.

[bitegore]

Zionists want you to conflate Judaism and Zionism. Zionists want you to believe that Judaism cannot exist without Zionism and that all Jews are Zionists. Zionism would have Jews believe that a Jewish state is the only way that they can be safe from antisemitism and will point to any instance of antisemitism as proof that Zionism is the solution- so Zionism wants gentiles to be antisemitic in their support of Palestine. They want you to conflate all Jews with Zionism and the state of Israel, and they want you to treat all Jews regardless of political affiliation as the face of Israel. Antizionist Jews exist, and incidences of antisemitism ostensibly acting against Zionism will not help dismantle the forces propping Zionism up.

Don't do their work for them.

[hotpotghosts]

[cobaltfluff]

I genuinely thought it was his stage name ???? who names their child the equivalent of herlock sholmes??????

bonus because my joker is, unfortunately, an idiot:

[miwtual]

im so fucking tired of the disrespect gifmakers get on the gifmaker website

[whumpacabra]

Writing Accessibility PSA

Please avoid using long strings of characters as line breaks in your writing - these are not screen reader/TTS friendly!

Every ‘°’ will be read as ‘degree’ - can you imagine how long it takes to read out a string of 25? Let alone more complicated combinations of characters (eg. imagine listening to TTS read out ~*~ |°| ~*~ multiple times per line break)?

A good rule of thumb is to stick with short, 2-3 character line breaks (eg. I don’t find — or *** too egregious to listen to). Your readers can tell there’s been a scene change whether you use two or twenty em-dashes, but if you use twenty, some of us might have to listen for 30 seconds to read the next scene. If you’re more concerned about aesthetics, you can insert an image of your aesthetically pleasing line break with alt text simply reading ‘line break’ for accessibility.

Don’t feel bad if this is something you’ve never thought about before - now you know better and can make your writing more accessible moving forward!

I would like to invite any other screenreader users to add their own thoughts or preferences to this post. We’re not a monolith and there’s a variety to how different softwares interact with repeating character strings and images with alt text, so there’s bound to be some conflicting opinions on what I’ve suggested above. Let’s try to make the stories we share accessible for everyone :]

[inkskinned]

you wanted to be a good friend, because you loved your friends, but the truth was that everyone else somehow had a pamphlet on being normal that you never received. most of the time you learn by trial-and-error. you are terrified of the next big mistake you make, because it seems like the rules are completely arbitrary.

you've learned to keep the prickly parts of your personality in a stormcloud under your bed - as if they're a second version of you; one that will make your friends hate you. it feels feral, burning, ugly.

instead, you have assembled habits based on the statistical likelihood of pleasing others. you're a good listener, which is to say - if you do speak up, you might end up saying the wrong thing and scaring off someone, but people tend to like someone-who-listens. or you've got no true desires or goals, because people like it when you're passive, mutable. you're "not easy to fluster" which is to say - your emotions are fundamentally uninteresting to others around you; so you've learned to control them to a degree that you can no longer really feel them happening.

you have long suspected something is wrong with you, but most of the time, googling doesn't help. you are so-used to helping-yourself, alone and with no handbook. the reek of your real self feels more like a horrible joke - you wake up, and, despite all your preparations, suddenly the whole house is full of smoke. the real you is someone waiting to ruin your other-life, the one where you're normal and happy. the real-self is unpredictable, angry.

your real self snarls when people infantilize the whole situation. because if you were really suffering, everyone seems to think you'd be completely unable to cope. but you already learned the rules, so you do know how to cope, and you have fucking been coping. it's not black-and-white. it's not that you are healed during the other times - it's just that you're able to fucking try. and honestly, whenever you show symptoms, it's a really fucking bad sign.

because the symptoms you have are ugly and unmanageable for others. your symptoms aren't waifish white girl things. they're annoying and complicated. they will be the subject of so many pretentious instagram reels. if they cared about you, they'd just show up on time. you care, a lot, so deeply it burns you. you like to picture a world where the comments read if they loved you, they'd never need glasses to see. but since that's a rule you've seen repeated - "one must never be late or you are a bad friend" - you constantly worry about being late and leave agonizingly early. there are no words for how you feel when you're still late; no matter how hard you were trying.

so you have to make up for it. you have to make up for that little horrible real you that you keep locked in a cabinet. you are bad at answering emails so every project you make has to be perfect. you are weird and sensitive so you have to learn to be funny and interesting. you are an inconvenience to others, so you become as smooth as possible, buffing out all the rough parts.

all this. all this. so people can pass their hands over you and just tell you just the once -how good you are. you're a good friend. you're loveable.

[raycatzdraws]

ribbonwood

[yew-yew]

there are only 2 types of artists

and i'm second. without the inscription "masterpiece".