you know. sometimes i think. in the face of tony’s obvious trauma and ptsd. in the face of the more obvious pain that bucky has suffered. we forget that steve’s motivation in the film isn’t just his tendency to hold stubbornly fast to his ideals, to do what he feels is right and damn the rest.
steve’s hurting too.
like. guys. we are so ready to give weight to tony’s emotional boiling over point at the end of the film, to say “this is why he tried to kill bucky, and it’s not right but it’s understandable.” we are so ready to acknowledge the fact that bucky was a victim and motivated to run by his fear of further persecution and hurt from nefarious forces. what about steve, though? when do we acknowledge that steve’s not just acting with righteous arrogance, but a deep anger, isolation, fear, loneliness, sadness, and hope?
steve died. like, his last memory before waking up seventy years in the future is a few days after watching his best friend fall from a train and he was unable to stop it he willingly flies a plane into the fucking Arctic, ostensibly to his death.
guys. guys. tony was fucked up for years because of untreated ptsd after falling from space and thinking he was dead. why is it so hard to remember that steve probably is fucked up, too?
this dude, he wakes up seventy years in the future and he has to make his way without really anyone or anything familiar, and the only person who is familiar is suffering from memory loss, and he’s now operating under the thumb of shadowy organization that he’s not 100 percent does good things and that continuously lies to him. there’s no war to fight, but that’s all this body is good for. it’s all he knows.
he doesn’t know what makes him happy. guys.
and so he goes through another trauma when he discovers this villain who is trying to kill him is in fact the dead best friend who—surprise!—was actually captured after falling and losing an arm and his brains were scrambled to turn him into a murder assassin. we know for a fact steve feels tremendous guilt over this. but imagine beyond guilt, the sorrow, the nightmarish possibilities, that are turning over in steve’s head. the idea of what his friend suffered. remember when rhodey fell from the sky and tony blasted sam in the chest? imagine the anger in steve’s heart at the idea of what bucky’s suffered and the unwillingness to let that go unchecked and unsaved.
oh, plus. that shadowy organization he’s been fighting for? the people he’s been taking orders from? the top dog in the neat little hierarchy that’s arranged his world? yeah. hydra. everything steve has known turns upside down. he can’t trust anything. imagine the paranoia. the suspicion. imagine the fear that must take seed at that betrayal.
and then! of course, then he begins fighting these battles with the avengers where the collateral damage is on such a bigger scale than it was at war. where there are aliens. aliens, you guys. and he’s tasked with leading this motley crew of superheroes in a world he’s still getting used to and people die, lots of people die, and we know that even if it doesnt visibly affect him like it affects tony (who always seems shocked when he’s confronted with loss, because it’s presented to him on a personal, individual level) it does affect him. that steve feels the guilt of lives lost. imagine that burden. imagine the weight of the shield, the mask, the responsibility. imagine the loneliness. the fear.
so then. then. in the space of a few days. steve deals with more guilt from the deaths in lagos. he shoulders that burden. then he deals with the moral quandary of signing the accords. he wrestles with that decision. peggy dies. he grieves, oh goodness does he grieve. vienna fuckin blows up and that elusive best friend is now the suspect. so steve is grieving, he is confused and conflicted, and now he feels doubly guilty—that’s the person he has been looking for, should he have already caught him? did he do it? he couldn’t have. does he bring him in? does he shoulder this responsibility too? what will they make him do when he catches up to bucky? what should he do? steve might act like he always knows what’s right, but a decision like this isn’t easy. it messes with a person. and when you’re dealing with all that mess in your head, sometimes you don’t think. sometimes…you act.
like when bucky is triggered, when steve stops a helicopter with his bare fucking hands, you can feel the desperation. that’s not ordinary heroics. that’s not steve just trying to stop bucky from escaping and possibly hurting others. it’s steve fighting for bucky. for this piece of his past. for the possibility of an end to loneliness. for the possibility of redemption for letting him fall.
and when they go on the run, when they know they have to stop the supersoldiers, when they clash with tony’s team, can you imagine steve’s sheer frustration that no one gets what is at stake? that no one is willing to listen? and yes, he didn’t even try—but why is that, you think? is it possibly because steve is used to institutions and those in power ignoring what he thinks is right and causing disaster anyway?
when steve says, “pal, so are we.” when steve acknowledges to natasha that he’s 90 not dead, when he openly references the fact that he and bucky are 100, can you imagine knowing that? adjusting to that? being 20-something in body and memory but 100 in actuality? living in a body that people perceive as a weapon so strongly that you’ve become a weapon when you are still longing to rediscover the man you were? steve’s not just cap. steve’s steve, and he doesn’t know what makes him happy you guys. he’s a guy, he’s a human, and he’s dealing with A Lot.
i get that he makes some bad calls in the movie. so does tony. my beef is that while tony’s decisions are often supported by his very obvious trauma and emotional burden, we rarely seem to give enough weight to the very real and very similar turmoil that is going on inside of steve.
when tony is fighting him in siberia. when steve says, “he’s my friend,” so simply, so sadly, without any righteousness, just clean tired truth, that’s steve as steve. when he hid the truth from tony, that’s steve as steve. when he drops the shield, that’s steve reclaiming himself as steve. we expect cap all the time, because often, steve is cap. it’s easy to see him as the moral police that way, if reductionist.
but we forget to see steve as steve. that he is a kid, in some ways. and a grieving, lost, lonely kid with a lot of anger, sadness, confusion, and power boiling under the placid-seeming surface.
I saw you were doing mini fics for Marvel and I thought you mentioned something about being a huge X-Men nerd in the past. Any chance you could write something short and fluffy for Kitty and Colossus? If not I totally understand but!!! Yeah!!!
All right, let’s fucking GO, Kitty/Piotr is everything to me, the dearth of fic is painful. Pertinent details are as follows. Movie-verse (and honestly FUCK the whole Kitty/Bobby plot, I do what I want) because otherwise this is gonna be obscure as shit. Timeline: right after the mansion is stormed by Stryker in the second movie, after Logan orders Piotr to get as many kids out as possible. For reference, he does, and takes as many students as he can get his hands on out into the forest, per the novelization. We’re going to pretend that they actually cast someone Russian for Piotr. Canon ages, so Kitty’s 16, Piotr’s 20.
Kitty sighed and leaned back against the tree, wishing that she could slide down to the ground. It was dark outside, especially almost a mile into the forest behind the mansion, and the adrenaline was making her hands tremble. She just…wanted to sit for a while, or go back to sleep and wake up from this nightmare. But, of the ten students she’d managed to get out, she was the only one who was a full member of the team, and the others needed her to be an X-Man.
“Shadowcat?” Rahne asked, tugging gently on her sleeve. Her eyes flashed in the moonlight, tossing back the glow like something wild. “Are you a'right?”
IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT KIND OF WRITER YOU ARE YOU CAN BE WRITING: POEMS, FANFICS, IDK NORMAL FICS, NOVELS, SHORT STORIES, IDK ANYTHING!! JUST REBLOG!!!
But what about vampire history teachers. Vampires who read something from a text book then proceed to light the book on fire and throw it out the window because “No. that’s not even close to what really happened. Listen up nerds I’m about to teach you what really happened in France during the revolution”
I need this as a series
Vampires sharing the recipe for Greek fire.
Vampires speaking in dead languages.
Vampires being able to translate untranslatable scripts.
Vampires who react to straightwashing historical figures like “Are you kidding me everyone knew that man was queer!”
Vampires from cultures who were once antagonistic towards each other stubbornly maintaining a friendship that’s lasted longer than their civilizations.
Vampires who honour forgotten deities you won’t find in mythology books.
Also, vampires who secretly saved stuff from the Library of Alexandra.
A vampire show that does not revolve all around sex and eternal cursed love.
nerd vampire whose knowledge of current events is terrible but they can always remember everything that’s considered “history” so they have a super-detailed knowledge of everything up to about thirty years ago and then ?????
vampire who couldn’t tell you what caravaggio was known for but duelled with him at least three times and slept with him at least ten. “cara-who OH YOU MEAN MICHAEL yeah he was cool”
vampire who spent 100 years in a convent and is still so bitter that in all that time they never made her mother superior “GODDAMMIT I HAD SENIORITY! I HAD SENIORITY!” “okay so first off janet, that was six hundred years ago, but more importantly, maybe if you didn’t always start those complaints off with blasphemy…”
vampire professor who just sort of showed up at oxford when it was founded and is still there (and nobody’s noticed because he still never actually shows up to his lectures)
vampire politician who lifts all their campaign speeches wholesale from speeches given 200 years ago and just waits for someone to catch them out (nobody ever does they’re prime minister and their approval ratings are through the roof)
WAIT I HAVE MORE
queer vampire who constantly talks about the fashion for straightness and you need to be really careful because if you tell them straight is default they WILL scream at you for five days straight about what a modern concept heterosexuality is
vampire hoarder who has an entire town where they just kept having to buy new houses to keep their stuff in and some of it’s probably worth tens of millions by now but you’ll never find it in among the 1950s kitschy kitten sculptures and boxes of newspaper (the newspaper is a wonderful mix of yesterday’s guardian and daily courants from 1725)
vampire sailor from manderville’s time who just has so many stories and some of them might even be true
vampire bluestocking girl who took to the internet like a fish to water and spends her whole unlife engaging reddit antifeminists about women’s rights because that’s one fight she’s determined to see through. also with the advent of cheap dyes she literally wears blue socks every day and hopes one day someone gets the joke
vampire doctor who just gets SO CONFUSED about the literature because do you know how hard it is to keep up with medicine kevin? when i got my doctorate we thought leeches were good and then they were bad and now they’re good again? i was published in issue one of the lancet kevin that is 387 lancets kevin how the hell am i meant to remember which one’s current kevin why are they saying cannabis is good for pain like this is news??? (but also lives in a state of wonderment every day in hospital because wow look at all this stuff we can do now look at it kevin!)
entire coven of vampires constantly quibbling over manners because they’re all from different periods: “HATS OFF AT TABLE” “SCREW YOU LEONARD ONLY PEASANTS EAT BAREHEADED” “TABITHA THAT HASN’T BEEN GOOD MANNERS SINCE THE 1500S NOBODY HAS LICE ANY MORE” “IT ISN’T ABOUT LICE LEONARD IT’S ABOUT GOOD MANNERS YOU NEED TO HAVE GOOD MANNERS WHEN YOU HAVE PEOPLE OVER FOR DINNER” “I SWEAR TO GOD TABITHA IF YOU MAKE THAT PUN ONE MORE TIME I WILL SHOVE YOUR STUPID HAT DOWN YOUR THROAT”
Everybody I meet that’s not from Flint is always like “is it really that bad?”
It’s so much more than bad water. Its your children having seizures from lead poisoning. It’s the fear of contracting Legionnaires. It’s not being able to pay the hospital bills for your sick elderly and children. It’s not being able to bathe. It’s not being able to cook. It’s paying some of the highest water bills in the United States despite Flint being largely in poverty. It’s the fear of losing your house because you can’t afford to keep the water on. It’s the fear of losing your children because you lost the house.
Do you mean doctors who spent years learning about abled white cis men’s bodies
do you know anything about the world besides what you read on tumblr
Okay but this is true?? Shut up with your bullshit, the medical industry for a very very long time has used the able bodied white cis male as their standard and that has very real healthcare consequences for a lot of people.
Do you know why most women don’t know when they’re having heart attacks? Why heart attacks kill more women than men? Because symptoms of a heart attack are different for women and the ones that doctors usually recognize and publicize are the symptoms experienced by men. Do you know why it’s so difficult for Black and Brown people to get diagnosed if they have skin cancer? Because doctors have been taught to recognize it on white people. People of size are constantly told that their problems are entirely because of their weight and doctors don’t even bother to look beyond that to be sure that’s the case. So those people have medical conditions go undiagnosed properly for years, and die in the process. Fuck, even just the fact that people think it’s okay to charge women more for healthcare because “they have extra parts” (?????) is indicative of the way the male body has been considered the standard for fucking ever. And the healthcare needs of disabled people or trans people? Forget about it.
OP is 1000% right. The medical industry has used the able cis white male body as their standard of care for CENTURIES and that has real consequences for the rest of us today. It’s getting better but it’s not where it should be. So fuck off with your snarky commentary, you’re wrong. The healthcare industry is not equipped to handle the needs of people with disabilities, women, PoC, trans people, people of size, etc. and that’s in large part due to the fact that the established body of medical knowledge was created by studying able, cis, white male bodies almost exclusively.
Hey there folks, speaking as a trained EMT and a pre-med student, I can confirm that the above person is approximately 7000% accurate. In my EMT training, I would repeatedly ask ‘’but what if my patent is a woman” or “what is my patient is a person of color” and at first all I got was shock. Then I got confused bumbling. I got some answers–basic symptoms of a heart attack in women, how to recognize cyanosis in someone of color, the basics of how to work with an autistic patient or someone who for whatever reason can’t communicate well with you. In fact, EMTs and other EMS workers are getting a lot better at learning the differences between the health care for a person of color or someone disabled. We were even told that we would need to ask our patients for their biological sex (I know, I’m really sorry, I know that there are people who find this intensely uncomfortable or even harmful, but there are real medical reasons for this and most decent EMTs will use whatever pronouns you ask them to). But most if not all of the answers we were given about women were directly related to gynecological issues. The guys teaching me? They were good guys. Nice. Funny. Smart. Devoted to caring for patients. Impassioned about protecting people, especially women and teenaged girls, from assault. Largely not sexist toward me or their coworkers. Hell, they were even smart enough to say “listen, boys, the women in this class have a higher pain tolerance than you, they just do, and as a rule if a women says their pain is a 5 on a scale of 1-10, assume it’s somewhere around an 8” when a kid laughed during the gyno unit. But they just didn’t know what to say when I asked “so if you’re supposed to palpate the patient’s chest, what do you do if your patient’s a triple-D” or when I asked “so if your patient gets menstrual migraines, how do you know if this headache is a stroke or not.” They had never been taught. This is a real problem, one that many medical professionals work hard to remedy once they start practicing. But this is not bullshit. At all. The standard patient is a cis white guy with no disabilities or chronic illnesses. It’s a huge fucking problem and I’m going to need you to step down with your bullshit, there, friend.
This is an issue with mental health too, where people of color (black and Hispanic people especially) are less likely to be taken seriously with mental issues, and where community outreach for these groups is very very different from the kinds of programs that might be effective for white people.
Autism is rarely diagnosed in women because the symptoms doctors look for are all specific to men. Doctors used to blame depression and other mental illnesses in women on a misbehaving uterus, and it’s still a struggle for women to get their symptoms taken seriously enough to merit proper treatment.
Mental health for LGBT people has a long history of being an oppressive shitshow, given how long it took the medical community to stop pathologizing sexuality and gender identity. (Conversion therapy is still legal!)
As well as autism rarely being diagnosed in women, it’s also harder for a person of colour to be diagnosed, as it’s perceived as being a middle-class+ white man’s disease.
And! We didn’t know how large the clitoris was until THE NINETIES because no-one thought it was worth investigating. Thanks to a female researcher in Melbourne, Australia, we know that it’s roughly a wishbone shape, and has two ‘legs’ that extend down under the labia majora.
SHOCKER!! Turns out that small and vulnerable children being physically attacked by the large and strong adults they most love and trust in this world has negative effects. Who knew?
I’m adding onto this by providing the PDF of the actual study (thanks to still being able to access the journal post-graduation) and uploaded it to google docs here
So if you want the exact source, it is there (and without paying a dime and you can download it as well!!
Petition to sit down all the people who make coma theories about Adventure Time and tell them “listen, this fucking show is about the last human living in a post-apocalyptic world where deadly magic has been reawakened following a global thermonuclear war that wiped out the rest of the human species, how much fucking darker do you want it to be”
Even though I thought my first Creative Writing professor was kind of a douche, he made a good point about this. One of our first assignments was to write in this eerie, otherworldly style (we were mimicking a specific author whose name escapes me), so we had to write about eerie otherworldly things happening. It’s no exaggeration to say that more than half the class had a “big reveal” where we find out that the story’s strange events and themes are all in the mind of some person in an insane asylum, or someone having a drug trip.
My professor said something like, “you just successfully wrote a world that feels separate from our own, but got frightened last minute and shoe-horned in normalcy. You showed that you were afraid to commit to something different and interesting.” Though I’m typically a contrarian and a piece of garbage, I am inclined to agree with my professor. I feel like people who write coma theories and the like are afraid to accept that the world of the story is separate from our own. They like everything wrapped up in this crazy little realism box where nothing out of the ordinary happens in fiction.
you win the Best Addition to a Post prize
Thank you :)
This pretty well hits the nail on the head as to why I generally hate coma/dream theories and people who think they’re so fucking deep for coming up with it. In my book it’s LAZY, plain and simple.
Request from @littlestartopaz: I has a Plunnie for thee. Little snit bits between Wanda and Vision at the compound about Vision learning to do things like when it’s okay to go into someone’s room. Or being the only one to knock on the wall like it’s a door. Or that one time he knocked on the floor under her bed because she was having nightmares and scared the shit out of her.
Pre-Civil War, so no spoilers.
“Pardon me, Miss Maximoff, Captain Rogers asked me to–”
“Hey!” Wanda yelped in alarm, casting a hand out toward him. Red light lashed out and left scorch marks on the wall, passing through him harmlessly. He looked startled, eyes widening as he hung there halfway through the solid wall, and she dropped her arm, scowling. “Do you mind?” she asked, tightening her grip on the towel wound around her chest. Her hair dripped down her shoulder, a neat twist, and she could feel each drop of water leaving a cold track over her skin. “It’s polite to knock if someone’s door is closed.”
- dont take 3 hr classes that only meet once a week
- sleep
- when u write an essay pick out the quotes/examples u want and write the essay around it
- email ur teachers and meet with ur advisors regularly
- quizlet
- TRIPLE CHECK YOUR ALARMS
- bring tupperware to the dining hall to smuggle out extra food
- dont wear your lanyard around your neck
- try to group your classes together in back-to-back time blocks. you wont want to go back to class once you get home
- STAY ON TOP OF YOUR HOMEWORK EVEN IF THERE ARE OPEN DUE DATES
- when walking on the sidewalk keep all the way to the right especially if your pace is slow
- yes, sometimes we can hear the music through your earbuds. we really don’t care or mind
- try not to eat a whole bunch after 10PM, especially fatty foods like pizza or lots of pop. you’ll get stomach aches in the morning
- nerd clubs are 100% okay and there are tons of students who share your interests with you, you just have to look
- take out the fucking trash
- sometimes you gotta pick: homework or sleep. pick sleep if possible. you can get an extension on homework, getting enough sleep to catch up on serious deprivation is nearly impossible.
- learn which teachers will back you up, then use this knowledge ruthlessly.
- learn which teachers give extensions, then use this knowledge ruthlessly.
- learn who, in every class you’re having trouble with, is both doing well and not a dick. learn to ask for help.
Vision/Wanda "We are snowed in and the power's out, how do avoid hypothermia." Mini-fic PLEASE??? Also, mid-air kissing if it isn't too much trouble?
All right *cracks knuckles* gonna do kind of a combo to hit as many of those aspects as possible. Post-Civil War, minor spoilers, I guess, and I’m assuming they’re not all actually holed up in Wakanda.
The apartment T’challa had acquired for them–in Brooklyn, because Steve left it up to Sam and Sam had pointed out the advantages of knowing the terrain–was middling in size, but it seemed echoingly huge at night. Wanda hadn’t realized just how quickly she had grown used to the quiet noise of the others in the compound, someone always on hand to sit with no matter how late she was awake. Insomnia and nightmares were rampant among the Avengers, and she was no exception, but now…now there was no one. Steve was in his room, probably awake himself and trying to work their way out of this impossible problem. Sam was better at sleeping than most of them, only really awake about one night in seven. Lang was gone, Clint was out on a recon mission to check up on an old contact. Barnes–Bucky–was still comatose in Wakanda, while they tried to find a cure for seventy years of brainwashing and torture. She had offered her services, nervous, and T’challa had agreed to keep her in mind as a last resort–Wanda’s experience was all putting stuff in, but she could probably learn to take things out. Until they found a solution, though, the man with the metal arm and the haunted blue eyes would stay in his glass coffin.
And Wanda was awake and alone and cold, at three in the morning on a Saturday, sitting on a couch and staring at a dark television.
I write. I swear to God. I actually love writing fanfic. BUT, and here’s the catch, I have a ton of trouble coming up with short fic ideas. Short anything ideas, really. The most memorable example is that one time I decided to write how I thought someone being able to see the future would pan out, just a few pages of character study, dicking around with super powers, nothing fancy. Smash cut to a year and a half later, I’m wrapping up my 350 page novel and staring dismally at my 200 additional pages of worldbuilding. And it’s always like that, it gets so out of hand.
SO. My solution to that is this. If you have a craving for a specific pairing that you know I ship, shoot me a prompt and I’ll throw together a short fic for you and post it. I’m trying to unwind after finals, so it’ll be good for me, and you’ll get fic, so it’ll be good for you.
Like I remember when my mom declared bankruptcy and we were going to school with a fucking slice of cheese between two pieces of bread and a Baggie of powdered milk to add water to for lunch.
I remember my mother crying at the table with bills spread out and a calculator, looking at the numbers and crying.
I remember having this jug we saved all our change in for YEARS, trying to save up for a nice vacation somewhere, and the day all of our hearts broke when we had to empty it out and roll the change up to use for gas money.
I remember being that poor. And I remember my mother taking us to McDonald’s - often.
I remember being that poor, and I remember my mother treating herself to a cup of Tim Hortons on days she just wanted to have something nice. That was my mothers “treat yourself” days. A fucking cup of god damn coffee.
So seriously? Fuck every single person who scoffs at poor people who eat fast food and grab a cup of coffee on the go.
Fuck each and every single one of you who judge the FUCK out of those people. Who the hell are you to judge?????
can we please talk about how t'challa, a very masculine, badass, powerful character, admits he was wrong as soon as he realizes it?? he was really, tremendously wrong and he admits it and changes his behavior with like… no problem or ego or bullshit whatsoever? he doesn’t hang on to that masculine “i must be right all the time” thing. he doesn’t. that’s just so magical and pure. t'challa for president 2k16
HEY TEAM. Let’s not put “inspirational” coco chanel quotes on things. she was literally a nazi. like i don’t give a fuck what she said about being a woman or an individual or whatever. i promise you there are quotes from other people that can get the same point across. People who didn’t directly get incredibly rich off nazi seizure of jewish owned businesses and property. People who weren’t literally NAZI SPIES AND PAID AGENTS OF THE SS like coco chanel was. Remember when you put “A girl should be two things: who and what she wants. - Coco Chanel” on some post that what and who Coco Chanel wanted to be was Abwehr Agent 7124, code name “Westminster"
Coco Chanel was a collaborator, the most despicable thing that anyone could choose to be in Nazi-occupied France, and it’s revolting that people brush over that. There was a reason she fucked off to Switzerland after the war and didn’t re-enter fashion until she was 70, and it’s very telling that the British and Americans embraced her comeback but the French didn’t. That should reflect very badly on English and American people, tbh…
I would, however, like to mention that the company Chanel S.A. is owned by Alain and Gerard Wertheimer, the nephews of Chanel’s Jewish business partner, whose share she tried to convince the Nazis to seize for her. (He’d already sold the company to a Gentile friend and gotten the hell out of France, so that came to nothing. He later won control of her name on the product in court.)
So buy their lipstick with a clear conscience. If you can afford it.
Thank you for adding this! I bring that up all the time, but sometimes feel like I’m the only one.
So my dad has new clients and their son is transgender. He got pregnant with his boyfriend and put the baby up for adoption and the baby was adopted by a gay couple….which means that his baby daughter has 4 dads and no mom.
This kid is going to own at the ‘my dad can beat up your dad’ game.
“My dads can out-barbershop quartet your dads”
I just choked on air, I hope you’re proud of yourself.
robot friend does not agree. 'failure' is inability to fulfill directive. human has no programmed directive. human evolutionary directive is to live. you are alive. everything else is bonus.
I’ve been saving this message in my inbox for a long time because it always makes me feel better. I needed it today. Thank you
There are a couple of things about current shipping culture that confuse me.
1. The focus on whether or not a pairing will become canon as a reason people should ship something or not. Do you not understand what the “transformative” part of “transformative works” means?”
2. This idea that saying “I ship that” means “I think that, as presented in canon,this is a perfect, healthy relationship that everyone should model their relationship after.”
Sometimes shipping something does mean that. Sometimes shipping something means “Person A is a trash bag who doesn’t deserve person B but I would love to explore how Person A might grow to deserve Person B.” Sometimes it means “I want these characters to live together forever in a conflict free domestic AU.” Sometimes it means “I want Person A to forever pine after Person B. Nothing is beautiful and everything hurts.” And sometimes it just means you like their faces and want to see Person A and Person B bone in various configurations and universes.
Listen to your parents, kids.
This really should be one of a handful of Public Service Announcements randomly and chronically inserted into one’s dash.
Have you read Sunshine? What did you think? (I am low-key always creeping for other people who know who the hell Robin McKinley is and who like her stuff.)
BOY HAVE I. I love that fucking book, even though McKinley, like a real asshole (and I mean that with affection and respect) has declared throughout the years that she’ll only write a sequel if the muse comes to her or the moon is in the seventh house or whatever the fuck. Lady, you sit your ass down and YOU WRITE ME THE SEQUEL.
I love that book a lot; it’s one of my comfort reads, in part because it’s a book that at one point discusses the concept of comfort reads. Sunshine came out during a time when I was having a difficult relationship with my mom, and I really connected with the way that Sunshine’s mother was such a huge, palpable presence in the book - and yet never actually appeared in a scene, never had any dialogue, was never there in the solid sense. That also made me realize that character can be written in ways I’d never previously imagined, much less tried myself, and so it inspired me to write more creatively. It’s such an interesting book that would be impossible to make into a movie, although I’d definitely watch a tv show of it; there’s so little action and so much introspection, so much meditation on the importance of memory. It is - and I mean this sincerely - what Twilight could have, and should have, been: a story not about love so much as partnership and faith and bravery. It makes me believe in people.
I see a lot of lists of things that abusive parents do. But some things I have never seen in a list so far and I would like to add them, because according to the other lists, I’ve never experienced abuse from my parents. But just because it doesn’t appear on a standard list doesn’t mean it’s not abuse, so here is an addendum.
I think most of these points are specific for kids who are disabled, mentally ill or neurodivergent, and that this is the reason why they never appear on other lists. But these kids are especially vulnerable to (emotional) abuse, so I made this.
1. Shaming you for your disabilities, mental illness or neurodivergency. This includes undiagnosed conditions. If a parent sees that their child is having problems, they should try to help or, if they can’t, get external help.
It is not okay for parents to shame you for self-harming.
It is not okay for parents to shame you for having meltdowns.
It is not okay for parents to shame or punish you for things you cannot help, no matter how hard it is for them.
Yes, if parents do honestly have no clue what is happening, they might misinterpret your (re)actions. But no later than when they talk with you about it, they should eventually realize that you’re not doing it on purpose. Parents can and should get help from others and/or professionals if it’s too much for them.
2. Shaming you for mistakes. People make mistakes. Inexperienced people make more mistakes. Young people are by definition inexperienced. Especially those of us who are mentally ill, neurodivergent or intellectually disabled, (but really literally everyone) is bound to make mistakes while growing up.
You might not know that there is a difference between cleaning agents and shower gel. You might not know that lotion isn’t good for a potted plant. You might now know that there is a reason why the cat is in that cage. You might think that something is a good and harmless trick but it actually has really bad consequences.
You might not know these things even if everyone else your age does. It’s not your fault.
It’s okay for parents to be angry, disappointed or shocked. It’s not okay for parents to let it out on you. It’s their job to teach you and if they didn’t do it correctly, it’s not your fault.
(For example, I didn’t know that cleaning agents and shower gel are different things until I was 18. As a little child, I was told to stay away from cleaning agents and not to touch them and I was never told otherwise, so I just accepted that until I was taught otherwise by someone else.)
3. Breaking promises. This sounds vague, I know. And I know that sometimes promises can’t be held. Sometimes they are forgotten. Sometimes even parents don’t have the energy to keep up their end of the bargain. It happens.
But if it’s a constant pattern, if you are coerced into doing things you don’t like by promises that will never be held, it’s not okay any more.
4. Threats. It’s one thing to explain to a child or teen the consequences of their actions. It’s okay to explain that you need to study or else you will fail your tests and it’s okay to explain what happens then.
It’s not okay to threaten you with grave consequences for minor failures. It’s not okay to remind you of these consequences every time you do something wrong. It’s not okay to keep threatening you when you are unable to do whatever it is they want you to do.
5. Threatening you with things that should not be threats. It’s not okay to threaten a child or teen with doctor’s appointments, hospitals, psychotherapy or psychiatry. These things are supposed to help. You should not grow up to be afraid of needing a doctor or a therapist.
Seriously, instead of a parent threatening their child with psychiatry, they should just go there and try to get help for the whole family because it’s probably desperately needed.
6. Sudden and unjustified punishments. It’s not okay to suddenly punish you for something that has previously been okay.
If parents are fed up with their children’s behaviour, they should establish rules and explain and justify punishments, and give their children a chance to actually comply (while also considering their children’s abilities).
(For example, as a teen I never helped with housework. I didn’t have the executive functioning and I never got taught how to do it. But suddenly I was punished for not helping with housework.)
7. Unpredictability. It’s not okay to suddenly change the rules without warning.
It’s not okay if it’s “You should go out more often” one day and “No you are not allowed to go out” the next.
Some parents have trouble offering a constant reliability due to their own illness/disability/neurodivergence. It happens.
But the moment it makes you as their child afraid of their reactions, afraid that they might have a sudden change of heart, it’s not okay any more.
8. Assuming bad intentions where there are none. As I already said, people make mistakes. People even make stupid mistakes. People misjudge, miscalculate, people lose their temper. This happens to parents as well as to their children and everyone else.
What is not okay is for parents to see you doing something wrong and immediately assuming you’re doing it to harm them.
(For example, I always stayed up late. My parent had trouble sleeping. When I made too much noise, they assumed it was intentional in order to deny them their sleep.)
9. “I want you to do the thing but I also want you to want to do the thing.” This is a tricky one, but I have heard this from so many people that I’m including it as an extra point. I think it’s actually some sort of double bind, because you can only do it wrong or do it wrong in a different way.
It’s okay for parents to demand their children do things they do not like, for example doing chores, doing homework and similar things. (However, it’s not okay to demand more than you can actually do.)
It’s okay for parents to ask their children to do them a favour, for example sometimes do a little more housework, helping them with other stuff, going to the store and so on.
It’s okay for you to not want to do something. It’s okay to do something even if you don’t want to. Actually, most favours work that way, you rarely ever like them but you do them anyway because you want to do something for someone else. Most chores work that way. Almost nobody likes doing the dishes.
However, it’s not okay to make you feel bad for doing something anyway. If you don’t like doing something, you don’t like it, and nobody has the right to demand you to feel differently about it.
10. Making you feel bad for opening up to them. If you tell a parent about your experiences, your feelings, your problems and your secrets, they should be accepting and loving.
Punishing you for things they would have never known if you hadn’t told them is wrong. Shaming you for things they would have never known if you hadn’t told them is wrong. It’s a parent’s job to offer their child emotional support. It’s wrong for them to show you that you can’t trust them.
And nobody gets this. There were times in my childhood that I wished they would just hit me, because the mentality of adults is a bruise is the only proof of abuse. I would tell people what was happening and they would brush it off.
“Parents are supposed to be like that.”
“You’re not supposed to get along great with your folks as a teenager.”
Eventually, even I thought I wasn’t being abused. I just thought I was screwing up somehow and my parents hated me. I bottled that shit up for years.
It took me twenty-two years to finally go see a shrink and one session for her to tell me I was abused my entire life.
Children of color are old enough to face racism when they’re born. Old enough to bear the weight of stereotypes & hate before their little eyes can focus. But somehow white kids are supposed to be too delicate & too shielded to even know race exists because somehow that might hurt them. When your definition of innocent child doesn’t include my babies? I know what you’re on & I don’t have any patience for the lies you tell yourself or your children.
Like you do not sign a legally binding document that puts severe restrictions on you and people like you without reading it fully and getting everything in detail because “oh if there’s something I don’t like I can change it later”?? You are signing as-is you are bound to what that document says right now and even if its possible to change it that doesn’t mean you will be able to and it means you are consenting to everything in it not just to good parts there are now. Like if Steve signs it that means he’s consenting to Wanda being put under house arrest (and if she breaks that something worse) something he doesn’t believe in because it reminds him of internment and he can’t be like “well I didn’t mean that part I only agreed to the parts I liked we have to change that” because no he agreed to it! He’s giving them the power to do that. Like as it turns out even Tony didn’t know everything in it because he had no idea that they would lock everyone up in the Raft aka Supervillian Alcatraz and even though he says he doesn’t agree with it he apparently can’t (or won’t) change it. That is why signing a document you have not fully understood or agree with is a Bad Idea. Steve wasn’t totally pure in his motivations but like signing it and “changing it later” if you don’t like it is such a terrible alternative.
Regardless of what side you fall on in the Civil War, I feel like “international law governing all of your actions for the rest of ever should be taken more seriously than the iTunes terms and conditions” should be something we can all agree on.
So I dunno how many people know this but if you go to burgerking and order anything at all off the menu, even just a drink, you get two little surveys on the back of the receipt
Each survey can get you a free whopper burger or a chicken sandwich with the purchase of any drink (even the $1 drink)
Just fill out the survey and get the code and write it on the back.
If you are short on money and really need a substantial meal, you can keep doing this cycle of getting receipts and free sandwiches for as long as you like
Idk I thought this might help people who are hard up for cash. This works in the US.
Let me tell y'all what my co worker does when her friends go on a date: She takes a picture of the person’s drivers license. She doesn’t delete it until her friend(s) return safely.
Everyone needs to be doing this!
I remember my first time picking my girlfriend up to go on a date, and I met her mom that day. She asked to see my ID to take a picture of it “just incase” I had/have good* intentions so I was cool and went along with it. 😏
Yes!!👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾If someone gives me a hard time about taking a picture of their license, that’s a red flag.
Girl, I take their number, license plate (w flash so there’s no debate on the car color at night) and a last seen wearing photo, smh. All my girls coming back safe or I’m on that ass.
If he doesn’t drive, send your friend the location or address of where you the date is taken place. If you change locations, screenshot where y'all at and send it to them. Stay safe.
There is an app called glympse that will broadcast your location to whomever you choose for I think I max of four hours. It’s a little gps program and as your phone moves a little beacon will move with it on a map
Adding that right now^
Safety is important. This is the first I’ve heard of the taking a pic of his license. I just realized how weird I’d probably act in this situation and apparently it’d be seen as a red flag.
ALL OF THIS👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 BOOST!
reblogs again cuz this advice is on point
I ain’t giving anyone my license.
It’s lowkey illegal to have someone else’s drivers license info
It’s lowkey illegal to take a woman out on a date and chop her up and leave her remains in trash bags and no one knows who you are.
black mambas probably have my least favorite faces because an animal that venomous should not be making a face like it’s thinking of a joke that it’s the only one in on
That’s all those of you who don’t produce drawings or comics,
fics or drabbles.
All of you who just reblog,
only comment, don’t do anything but look and read.
This one’s for you.
Because you’re the likers, the sharers, the taggers, the
ask-senders. The reviewers, the praise-givers, the supporters, the flailers.
The response, the feedback, the reward for all that hard work. Sometimes the
difference between giving up and continuing.
You’re the cornerstone, the heart and soul of this
community. It wouldn’t exist without you. Please don’t ever ever think
otherwise. Please don’t ever think you shouldn’t talk to the creators whose
stuff you enjoy.
And please let me say this:
Thank you for being awesome.
I’m an author–of original stuff–and the only reason I’m considering trying to get my stuff published is because my roommate is, as she reminds me regularly, a fan in need of a fandom. Having someone like your stuff, leave a comment, scream in the tags, anything, it’s such a godsend.
Deadpool: brings a teenager with superpowers to help him in a fight
Tumblr: DEADPOOL!!. I love the interactions between negasonic teenage warhead and deadpool. Omg so cute. *billions of fanart*
Tony Stark: Literally does the same thing when his friends abandon him. Sends him home as soon as he sees a probability that he’d get hurt.
Tumblr: tony stark is a villian ™. I can’t believe he used peter as a child soldier :) :)
negasonic teenage warhead literally had training??????
she lives in a house that gets blown up every year by super villains???? she has been exposed to fighting and knows how to fight and is trained to fight???????? she is trained to defend herself in a way that is NOT winging it???? she attends Xavier’s School for Talented Youngsters????? where she learns about herself and how her abilities work and how to use them?
peter parker is literally a high school kid winging shit and is underhandedly BLACKMAILED into joining whereas in Deadpool, Wade literally just shows up and says “hey i need to go get the bad guy you let go” which yes is a bit of a guilt trip but literally that was the extent of his pressure.
What Tony does is throw a bunch of money at a kid who has NOTHING. N O T H I N G. This kid is dumpster diving for his electronics. Of course Peter’s going to feel indebted. Of course he’s going to feel OBLIGATED to join Stark. And Stark is a famous person. He is a famous person and Peter Parker is star-struck. Wade? Wade is an asshole. There’s no obligation in Wade telling Negasonic to suit up, she could have easily slammed the door in his face. There is an obligation in Tony’s demand. There is an abuse of power here.
Also, there is no question that Ajax is a bad guy. Ajax is just all around a horrible, evil man. The situation of Civil War is complex and Tony gave Peter NO CONTEXT for what was going on, did not explain Steve’s situation, just said “Steve Rogers thinks he’s right and that makes him dangerous”. If you are going to be dragging a kid into a war, you need to give him a CHOICE. you need to give him CONTEXT. You need to let him have all the variables before he can decide to risk his life for Tony Stark’s agenda.
And also??? Tony literally threatened to tell Aunt May about his Spider-Man activities if he didn’t suit up with them and go to Berlin? Peter’s first reaction to being told he’s going to Berlin - not asked, told - is to say completely seriously that he has homework. YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE WHERE THIS KID’S PRIORITIES AND WORLD VIEW ARE AT. HE IS FIFTEEN.
Negasonic Teenage Warhead? She is literally an X-Man who is trained in managing and using her abilities, and yes she is an amateur, but she was making free will/unbiased decisions the entire time.
so to wrap up, FUCK THIS COMPARISON. TONY STARK BEHAVED OUT OF LINE. HE PRETTY MUCH FANCILY, WHITE-COLLAR PRESS-GANGED A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD KID INTO A WAR THAT COULD HAVE GOTTEN HIM KILLED. AND SURE HE SENT HIM HOME WHEN HE WAS DONE, BUT THAT IS TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE.
fuck this.
Potential X-Men have to train EXTENSIVELY before they’re allowed in the field. There’s a battle simulator in the mansion. They have a support system, access to free medical and psychological care, are allowed to take time off if they need it.
Peter Parker had none of that.
ALSO Negasonic was accompanied by Colossus, aka adult supervision who okay’d her going into the field, who has knowledge of her skills and power set, and was able to make a judgement call on whether or not the situation would be too dangerous.
ALSO ALSO if WADE WILSON is a point of moral comparison for your character then you’ve already lost. If you can compare Tony Stark and Deadpool in a discussion about who was more wrong and it’s even a question, then the answer doesn’t really matter.
ppl who draw/think of rey as a hairless photoshoot-ready makeup-wearing sun goddess weird the shit outta me cos like……… ya girl literally lived her whole life in a desert where all she did was scavenge around for junk and eat nothing but magical bread and probably bugs and shit
tbh rey probably has the most hairy legs in the galaxy, they’re even worse than chewie’s, and even better honestly she and everybody else in the galaxy does not give a fuck about them
