Happy Trans Day of Visibility 🏳️‍⚧️

love that if you’re depressed and gay you become a poet and this hasnt changed in like 1000 years

Someone captured the solar eclipse on an airplane

watching Arthur's handwriting get messier as time goes on hurts me more than anything.

usual handwriting

and then towards the end of chapter 6...

never fails to make my heart shatter

@solastalgic-elegies adore this. adore her. thank you 🤍

date a selkie, but don’t hide her cloak. let her go home and visit her family now and then, knowing that she’ll come back and hang her seal cloak in the closet like she always does. trust is important.

The first time she lets the redhead take her home, she’s diligent about hiding her cloak. She folds it carefully against tears and rips and abrasions, and hides it in a sea cave whose entrance is concealed by the tide.

She does the same, the second and third and fourth times, careful, wary, mindful of her mother’s lessons. Remembers the way her mother’s hands had chafed on her soft cheeks, rough with cooking and cleaning for her fisherman husband, the way her mother’s peat-dark eyes had been tense and harsh with the lesson.

“Mind me, Niahm. Never let them find your cloak.”

The way her mother’s mouth had curved, a sickle of dissatisfaction and relief and envy, as she had escaped into the waves.

So she minds her mother’s lesson, and she takes care with her cloak.

Would that she had taken as much care with her heart.

The fifth time, she wears the cloak to the girl’s door, clutched about her throat, dripping along the darkened lanes.

She enters the home, welcomed with soft kisses and gentle touches and kindling passion. She drapes the cloak, artful in her carelessness, across an old wooden chair, the one that creaks and tilts slightly if you don’t sit just right.

When she wakes, in the wee hours of the morning, even before her lover, the cloak still rests, supple and dappled by the sea, on the back of the chair.

She frowns into the softening dawn, dons the cloak, and returns to the sea.

And again, the sixth time. And the seventh.

The eighth time, she finally breaks, prickling and hurt with longing, gripping a handful of russet hair in her hand, firm with emphasis.

“Surely you know what I am,” she says to her lover, the cool froth of sea foam and the call of gulls curling around her voice.

“Of course,” her lover responds, soft and tender in the dawnlight, throat arched willingly, pale as the inner whorls of a shell. “You taste of the sea,” the girl whispers, reverently.

She shakes her lover’s head gently, fingers tangled still in russet locks. “Why?” she demands. “Why won’t you keep me?”

A long silence that waits and fills, like a tidepool, stretches between them. Cool as a current. Deep as the Channel.

Her lover’s eyes are dark and tender. “Must I trap you to keep you, my heart? Is that the shape of love that you desire?”

She sinks into the thought, struck and stymied, remembering her mother’s harsh hands, her cold eyes. Her hand eases into russet waves, caresses where her grip had punished. Her lips press cool and damp as the sea against the arching curve of her lover’s shoulder. “What shape of love will you give to me?”

The answer is easy, quick, certain. “Myself. Only myself, whenever you should wish it. Your cloak by the door, your body in my bed, and the freedom to go, whenever you must. As long as you wish.”

It’s not an answer a fisherman could ever give, nor would think to.

The ninth time, she hangs her cloak by the door, draped in careful dappled folds next to a drying oilskin jacket.

Ohhh I really liked this! Beautiful job!

No but seriously imagine it:

You’re seeing fall out boy on a concert. Everyone is having a great time. Fall out boy seem a little excited. “We have a surprise for you guys.” Partick says. All of a sudden P!ATD come out and start singing “this is gospel.” When Brendon gets to the chorus, someone else starts singing… “When I was a young boy my father took me into the city to see a marching band.” Lights flash everywhere, and you see FOB singing “this is gospel” along with P!ATD, while MCR is singing “Black parade”. Everyone in the crowd is going wild and crying. Then if things couldn’t get any better, Dan and Phil walk onto stage and kiss, holding the gay flag.

String identified: t ag t: ’ g a t a cct. ag a gat t. a t a tt ct. “ a a g.” atc a. A a !AT c t a tat gg “t g.” gt t t c, tat gg… “ a a g at t t t ct t a acg a.” gt a , a gg “t g” ag t !AT, C gg “ac aa”. t c gg a cg. T tg c’t gt a tt, a a a t tag a , g t ga ag.

Closest match: Fragum fragum genome assembly, chromosome: 11 Common name: White strawberry cockle

"We need more unapologetically weird folks!" you guys can't even handle furries

shout out to everyone who participated in the january-february mass depressive episode

Thank you everyone for another great turnout to the january-february mass depressive episode

i am a woman at war with herself, torn forever between my love of detective fiction and my hatred of cops and cop media

it's so fucked up that detective is a type of cop irl. it's more like a gender to me

Hell is when book covers get redesigned with the actors of the show/movie that was made based on it.

stop saying there are exceptions to this post there are literally no exceptions!!!

I stand corrected there is ONE exception

these two months of 2024 have been five years respectively

"who radicalized you" ever since i was a child i wanted other people to be treated nicely and fairly because i didnt understand why theyd deserve otherwise and it fills me with disgust seeing how people treat their fellow human beings sometimes

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?

the secret is:

if you want to send people actual book recommendations, do.

the people who don't like that will politely excuse themselves. the people who desperately wanted someone to actually answer their fucking question will cling to you for dear life.

your life will be richer and much, much, easier.

it is what it is (I can't do this anymore)