I feel like when I say ‘relatable’ what I really mean is ‘resonant.’ I don’t want characters who I feel are like me, I want characters who have emotions so strong I can feel them through the page.

I think this is important because a lot of us forget the power of stories to make us feel things about characters who are not like us, who have experienced things that we never will. The purpose of listening to someone else’s story should not necessarily be identification, but understanding.

not now sweetie mommy’s blogging about something that 5 people care about

you don't know the answer (til someone's on their knees and asks you)

Please enjoy 6k words of best friends faking proposals to get free dessert (until those pesky feelings get in the way) - hope you enjoy <3

*rated T, 6.1k words *read it on AO3

Summary:

“This might be the best one yet,” Henry comments, picking up another forkful of cheesecake and holding it out toward Alex. “Cheers to another successful con.”

They clink their forks, sharing small secret smiles over their free dessert before exiting the restaurant with their fingers interlocked and thanking the hostess, while all the servers watch them leave with hearts in their eyes.

Exactly the way they’d fucking planned it. --- Best friends Alex and Henry pretending to get engaged every week to get free dessert, until those pesky feelings get in the way.

take figures out of their boxes btw. sew patches on your favorite jacket. go to bed with your favorite plushes. wear the pants you usually save for special occasions. draw something cool on your wall. put a sticker on your laptop. dye your hair and pierce your lips. glass is meant to break, metal is meant to rust. items are meant to be used. that's how the world knows that somebody loved them.

Americans, these are things we are NOT saying in 2024:

"Voting blue won't solve anything." Yes it will: if enough of us do it, it will solve a problem called Trump's second term in the White House. We unfortunately live in a two-party system. If you refuse to vote, you're effectively voting for Trump. I shouldn't need to explain this to people, yet here we are.

"It doesn't matter who's president. Both candidates are the same anyway." No, they are REALLY not. Biden was never my first choice, and his shipments of arms to Israel are despicable, but don't try to tell me even for a second that a second Trump term would be the same for the world as a second Biden term.

"But voting blue won't fix [fundamental underlying problem in America]." Voting for Democrats cannot fix every issue, this is true. But by saying this and ONLY this you are discouraging people from voting by making them feel hopeless. Voting is one of many tools in our arsenal, not the only tool, but an important one, and it does matter.

"You shouldn't vote blue, you should do [other thing] instead." See above: you can vote and protest and organize at the same time. It's not either/or. You can do it all. Stop discouraging voters from exercising their rights under the guise of leftism.

"Voting is just legitimizing government power. It makes you part of the system." Literally just shut up. Women and people of color didn't fight for their voting rights to have you say things like this. If you live in America and you can legally vote, then you should fucking vote, and vote blue. There is no neutral option.

"Voting blue just makes you complicit in [this bad policy]." Inaction, and allowing Trump to have a second term, is worse for the entire world than any Democrat policy. Yes, even that one. Voting is not about finding a perfect unproblematic candidate. It is about choosing the lesser of two evils.

"Voting doesn't work because—" STOP IT. STOP DISCOURAGING PEOPLE FROM VOTING.

You know who wants you NOT to vote? Trump supporters, that's who. You should be suspicious of ANYONE who is suggesting that your vote doesn't matter, or that both candidates are the same, or that Biden's policy on XYZ means you shouldn't vote for him. Trump supporters aren't trying to get your vote by saying, "Vote for Trump!" They're trying to get your vote by DISCOURAGING YOU FROM VOTING AT ALL.

I don't like Biden either, but Trump is unequivocally worse. Voting doesn't fix everything, but it is the minimum fucking requirement of living in a democracy. Voting for president has real, tangible, immediate impacts on people's lives, and choosing not to vote is not the rebellion you think it is, it is just relinquishing your voice. So fucking vote. THIS IS A GROUP PROJECT AND DAMN IT WE ARE NOT FAILING BECAUSE OF YOU.

Reblogging this again in honor of the dipshit in my notes crying and screaming about things I did not say. “Why do you like Biden why are you saying he’s good” I don’t. Says it right there in the post. “But voting won’t fix everything” I know. Says it right there in the post. “Voting is the bare minimum” Amazing! Says that in the post too. “Why aren’t you telling people to do things beside vote” I literally did. Read the fucking post.

If you don't like Biden's support for Israel, you should know that it is nothing compared to Trump's support for Israel, and the Republican Party in general. And they are using American influence in entirely different ways.

Biden: "Israel is our ally, and we support our allies. However, let's talk behind the scenes and use our material support to put pressure on them to stop their part of the violence and come to a viable peace agreement."

Trump: "Fuck yeah, genocide is awesome! Let's kill all the brown people! Let's kill all the Muslims! I'm going to give you everything you could ever want with no strings!" Trump is supported by Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians, who believe in the Rapture, which is a completely whacked interpretation of Revelation in which, for Jesus to come back, Israel has to be destroyed and all Jews killed, except that God will kill all the people who destroy Israel. Therefore, Rapture believers want someone else (preferably Muslims) to destroy Israel and commit genocide against Jews, so that both Jews and Muslims will be wiped out.

Those are your two choices.

On the one hand, a guy who stands by Israel politically and militarily but is also advocating for justice and peace behind the scenes, or a guy who is 100% ride-or-die for the worst of Netanyahu's violence and backed by people who are hoping to use this to create more genocide in the future.

And if you say "well, I just won't vote," you are contributing to the victory of the guy who is vocally pro-genocide.

I think it's important to point out that Republicans are not just interested in pushing Bad Policies; they are actively pushing for the end of a system in which voting is an option at all. They are pushing the idea that our system is so broken and rigged that the only solution is for their strong authoritarian leader- whoever he may be- take complete and total control of the government, dissolve all of the "rigged" systems in his way completely, and exact his will entirely and without anything inhibiting or weighing in on that will.

it's incredibly difficult to make the sorts of changes to the system that leftists want and need right now, but there are still areas that we have sway in. utilizing the power we have now in order to expand it is how we make change, and continue to make change, that empowers the people as a whole in the long-term.

if Republicans win, we aren't just looking at Things Getting Worse; we're looking at the complete and total dissolution of any and all power we currently hold. we're looking at the strengthening of a system that can and will strip us off the ability to make any change at all.

even if your position is that we need a Great Revolution to destroy the system so we can rebuild from the ashes, you should be asking yourself: what conditions are easiest to revolt under? do we want the system we're revolting against to be any stronger and more violent than it currently is? will it actually be easier to revolt if the system is not only capable of, but openly advocating for, the outright killing of anyone who so much as hints at their distrust in it?

who suffers first: privileged people in progressive areas with liberal state governments, or marginalized people with little to no protection from an extremist, openly genocidal federal government? who will be impacted first and most severely by that sort of change?

Someone wrote me a reply saying that if we want Biden to win, people on the left need to focus on getting him to support Palestine. A totally valid point to make. (I’d add that we should be pressuring him regardless of this being an election year.) And we are pressuring him. Of course we need to keep it up—I’m just saying, it’s very much happening.

“But you’re saying you’ll vote for him no matter what”—well, I don’t think Biden’s campaign staffers read my tumblr account and then blithely conclude that they can do whatever they want and they’ll still have Democrat support. The fact is Biden’s approval ratings are low. The more people tell him they disapprove of him arming Israel the more he will be forced to take notice. Keep doing that.

But some people have framed this as a binary choice, like you can either pressure Biden on Palestine right now OR support voting (“why are you putting your energy into encouraging voting in an election ten months away when you could be pressuring Biden right now?”). It’s not a binary choice. You can do all of the above.

Some people have also asked me why I’m urging people to vote blue even though the primaries aren’t even over yet. It’s because I’ve seen so many voter suppression posts on this website. I’ve seen way too many bad takes like the ones I listed in the original post. “Voting is pointless blah blah blah…” I’ve just seen too much of that shit, that’s all, and I don’t want to let it go unanswered.

In the three weeks since I wrote the original post, these things have happened:

More than 800 voter suppression bills have been passed nationwide since 2020. THEY ARE TRYING TO SUPPRESS YOUR VOTE.

Random Animal Generator - Perchance

a WEASEL literally reborn as the thing I HATE

(Part 2 of this)

“Wait, back?!”

Eddie’s head shoots up, his eyes wide. “Then!” he cries. “You liked me back then, is what I was saying!”

“You liar!” Richie laughs, clearly delighted. “You fucking liked me too!”

“I never said that!” Eddie tries to deny, but it sounds weak to even himself.

The thing is, and god, it’s embarrassing to admit, but Eddie had always had a bit of a thing when it came to Richie.

He didnt think it was exactly romantic, and definitely not anything sexual, when he was a kid; little-him would have been positively scandalized at the mere thought of it. But he was drawn to Richie, wanted his approval, his respect, needed Richie to include him in his inside jokes and think he was just as funny as Eddie found him.

Hell, maybe that was Eddie’s version of love. Not that he would know.

“I hate you,” he tells Richie, whose grin stretches even wider across his face. It’s basically an admission and they both know it. “You’re one to talk, anyway.” He gestures to the carving. “I wasn’t the one carving our initials into make-out spots.”

“Yeah, but you were cute. Liking you made sense,” Richie replies. “You remember me as a kid? You were into that gangly, bug-eyed, buck-toothed little dork? Embarrassing.”

“You were so cute!” Eddie cries, throwing away the act, offended on young-Eddie’s behalf to have his taste questioned. “Plus, you were cool.”

Richie bit back a snort. “I was not cool.”

“Shut up, you were!” Eddie looks him over, pouting just a little. “You’re still cool.”

“Cooler than you, Mr. Risk Analysis, but that isn’t saying much.” Eddie throws his arms up, ready to lay into him with the fury of a thousand suns, when Richie speaks again, quieter, “You’re still cute, ya know.”

Eddie flushes, glances at Richie briefly to catch him flushing as well, and bends down to pick up a stick from the side of the road. He gestures to the carving, shyly. “Wanna give this a bit of a facelift?” he asks. “We could grab a beer, after.”

Richie, looking like Christmas has come early, grabs a stick and pops back up, beaming and blushing adorably. “It’s a date.”

There's just something about Nick sleeping in Charlies arms ✨💤

I DID IT! I finished the final chapter of my Reddie fic Helpin' Hand! 25,571 words! Just have to complete edits and then it'll be posted in a few days so watch this space 😉🥰

IT'S HERE!!!!

Oh I reeeally had to draw something about these two!

In all the Six of Craws fanarts I see the forearm tattoo is placed on the upper side, so maybe it’s just me who missed this detail while reading, but I always imagined it on the opposite side, so I hope no one gets offended!

Here are Inej and Kaz :)

this post is basically just hunch curio

So I just saw a post by a random personal blog that said “don’t follow me if we never even had a conversation before” and?????? Not to be rude but literally what the fuck??????????

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

Also, I’m legit confused. Is this how follow culture works right now? It was worded like it’s common sense but is that really a thing?

Saw a sharp increase in my follower count after posting this. The legitimacy of it is driving me nuts so I also feel the need to say that you can follow anyone on here regardless of whether you’ve interacted with them or not. People like the above mentioned blog are exceptions. Perhaps they themselves think they aren’t and therefore will act like they aren’t, but they are, trust me.

Just follow anyone you wanna follow. The worst thing that can happen is maybe getting soft-blocked by the other person, but if they do soft-block you, then they were never that worth following in the first place.

wow. really hope this isn't actually a norm taking hold with new users! this isn't facebook, you don't need to know people before following them

everyone has that one companion who just keeps detonating the traps, right? i cannot be the only one. and it's lae'zel who does it specifically which is funny considering SHE'S THE ONE WHO SPOTS THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE??? thanks lae'zel. where would we be without you, queen

eagerly awaiting the day daniel radcliffe, elijah wood, and robert pattinson just make the most fucked up bizarre unmarketable film together

newbie fic authors, shooting themselves in the foot: This fic is bad haha I suck at writing lol I am being mean to myself in the hopes that you will be nice to me but actually am dissuading anyone from even clicking on my fic because all I have done to advertise it is tell you why you shouldn't read it

me: I am King Big Dick of Fanfic Mountain and I have arrived in your fandom with the Express Intention of writing my Very Favorite Fics, which I will generously allow you to read. You're welcome.