trauma doesn’t often feel like trauma is ‘supposed’ to feel. it feels like indifferent detachment, watching from outside yourself because nothing can hurt you there. it feels normal, just how people interact, so why are you making a big deal about it? it feels like a joke – just how kids play, just how adults tease, just how some relationships work.
you wake from nightmares five years later and still wonder if you made it all up.
trauma can look like bad behaviour. like the stubborn refusal to get better, to stop self-destructing. trauma is putting yourself in harm’s way because you don’t really mean it, or because it’s funny, or because you just want to feel something, or because you just want to stop feeling. it’s wanting to destroy and reassemble yourself into another person entirely, so your real life can begin. because this isn’t real. because really bad things don’t happen to people like you.
trauma is the constant feeling of being an impostor. it’s the drive to survive twinned with the impulse to make yourself more sick in more ways. to hurt yourself to prove how bad you feel, or to punish yourself for exaggerating. you want people to believe what you’ve been through, to tell you your feelings are real, that your memories really happened. but when people do take you seriously, you play it off as a joke, apologize for bringing the mood down.
you go on and on about how it wasn’t that bad. you seek permission to still love the ones who hurt you, because it’s the people closest to us who can hurt us most deeply.
you can feel like the people who hurt you are the only ones who really knew you. in low self esteem, you can mistake cruelty for honesty.
there will always be people who have been through worse. that doesn’t make what happened to you okay.
there will always be people who don’t believe you. that doesn’t mean you are lying.
at some point, you have to take yourself seriously. you have to make a life you can stand to live. it’s the only way to survive.
It’s the end of November and in many places, winter is quickly moving in. If you’re in Buffalo, you may still not be able to find your damn car in order to winterize it, but for everyone else, please review these simple tips to protect your car and stay safe this winter!
when people say shit like “if you’re at an antifacist event, don’t talk to reporters” they mean you. you aren’t an exception to that. you can be the smartest, most articulate person on the planet and right wing news stations can still edit shit to make you look like a dipshit.
when people say to not take selfies or leave your face uncovered at antifacist events they mean you. when people say not to get into public debates with nazis (because it just gives them a platform and a persecution complex) they mean you. the way to actually, effectively combat fascism is by organizing en masse – you can’t be a hero or get famous as a black bloc activist and you shouldn’t be trying to.
your fifteen minutes of fame on local news isnt worth potentially giving your political opponents soundbites of “crazy sjws” to pass around on reddit and recruit more scumbags with. it’s not worth risking the safety of other people to take photos at events that might get other, more vulnerable people identified. it’s not worth it to get into pointless arguements with fascists in atmospheres where you’re just giving them an excuse to spout their bullshit and a soapbox to do it on. if you think feeling like a hero is more important than the actual, physical safety of the people you’re supposedly trying to protect, you’re just a narcissist who happens to have left wing politics.
this goes x10000 if you’re white. instigating police violence at protests or riling up violent fascist shitheads isn’t noble in the slightest when you aren’t the one who’s going to get stabbed in the ribs.
i feel like age of ultron is like that one really bad fanfic set in canonverse that you read until the end because well you started it and it looked promising and youre halfway through so you might as well finish it and afterwards you sit there feeling confused and weirded out like ‘wtf did i just read’ and spend the next 3 weeks trying to forget you ever read it or pretending it doesn’t exist
Okay, but has Homestuck as a fandom ever considered, like, Moonswap?
The dreamers of Prospit become the dreamers of Derse and vice versa? Nothing else changes. Just the fact that they dream on different moons.
Idk I didn’t think this through I really am just interested in the aesthetics of Trolls and Humans in different colored royal moon jammies.
I like this idea!
Because it changes much more than it sounds like, too! Plus I just like the aesthetic.
But seriously, just consider:
Jade spending her childhood already involved in Dersian politics instead of fun Prospit shenanigans.
Dirk, already awake constantly both on Earth and on Prospit, thwarting an assassination attempt against Roxy.
can you imagine if John had been a Derse kid and actually kinda, like, designed as a Derse kid – like can you just imagine the very silly but startlingly relatable thirteen year old angst????? the secondhand embarrassment that would just emanate from a Derse John????
in general PROSPIT GAL ROXY
I didn’t even bother with the trolls but Karkat and Jack’s interactions would probably be interestingly shaped and more frequent??
sorry Sollux
Possible other ideas for your consideration:
Rose who, instead of being obsessed with what lays in the dark, is enamored with the Light. She’s still snarky and has that Lalondian attitude we all know and love, but she’s a lot less obtuse, less “scary”, more obviously friendly but there’s still a thousand gears going inside her mind.
She will dance circles around you linguistically and there’s a chance that compliment there was meant to poke fun at you but that’s alright.
Instead of going grimdark, she does the opposite: a blazing witch filled with the wrath of Skaia. The trolls’ don’t experience a blackout so much as an overload. A holy warrior that will stop at nothing to destroy Jack for killing her mother.
Seer ==> Ask: “Is Skaia really good?”
Dave hides his insecurities behind a facade of being a generally friendly guy. He’s nice, he’ll talk to you about your troubles, how you feel, what he’s having for lunch; literally anything but himself. The subject of Dave Strider is a conversational topic locked in a vault deep in Fort Knot, submerged in the Bermuda Triangle, and without a key.
Dream-wise, his shades and music are keeping out the constant flood of light and imagery from Skaia. The war going on underneath the planet, the visions from the clouds; it’s all too much. Knowing his future is hard enough as a time player. Knowing other peoples’ futures? He can’t take that pressure. He doesn’t want that burden.
He likes Prospit well enough? It makes him kinda uncomfortable what with how everyone praises him and treats him like the best thing since sliced bread. He has enough attention while awake, he just wants to dream alone.
Jade is a master of political schemes. Her grandpa is surprised by how clever and deceitful she can be despite being totally innocent. He’s proud at what he calls her ‘innate hunter skills’, she can even sneak up on him when he’s not expecting it!
Jade is mostly the same as canon, but she’s a little more mysterious. Unlike Prospit!Jade who’s very bad at hiding what she knows about the game, Derse!Jade has a great poker face, and knows how to hide her hand. She does it all for her friends’ benefit, of course, she just doesn’t want them to bite off more than they can chew.
She met the Queen once. Well, not so much met as much as I accidentally stumbled upon her throne room oh my god please tell me she didn’t see me. She didn’t. But it taught Jade to be very careful
She treats the horrorterrors like Feferi does. Sweet, kind, and friendly once you get to know them. But she also knows how dangerous they can be. She respects them, asks for help only when needed, and keeps a polite distance.
John just kinda shrugs off most of the weird bits of being a Derse dreamer. Whisperings of horrorterrors? K, that’s cool, he’ll just ignore you. Assassination attempts? Lol, good luck next time, here’s a whoopie cushion for your efforts. (He doesn’t even kill them like Dirk did, he just. Pranks them til they leave in disgrace.) Dark and heavy atmosphere? He carries a flashlight.
His attitude is mostly the same, thanks to his blessed ability to shrug things off and focus on the now, but if it’s at all possible, I think he becomes a bit more serious. Not scarily so, but more akin to his attitude later in the comic, with how he called Aradia (and Terezi) out for their ridiculous actions. A bit of a straight man to the weird things that happens in Sburb.
Okay but consider. His comedy routine being as finely tuned as Rose’s linguistic stunts. He’s the thing keeping his friends (and troll onlookers) happy and entertained, a bit of a distraction from the general strangeness of it all.
I totally went overboard with this but I love this AU, it’s gold.
“He carries a flashlight.”
I love these additions and I love you.
Has anyone yet thought about Derse Jake tho. I feel like maybe there’s this entire dimension to Derse Jake where he’s almost exactly the same person but instead of being just earnest about it he’s ironically earnest and genuinely earnest at the same time. Metamodern Jake English. Holy shit.
(What the heck would Prospit Dirk be like? – other than probably intensely preoccupied with Derse Jake.)
considering his “simultaneously awake” thing, his “will do anything to help/protect his friends” thing, and prospit’s predictive clouds im guessing a LOT of cloudwatching and a lot of Lil Hal-like manipulation (but maybe less shitty)
think jade with all her reminders but more effective since he can immediately switch to the waking world and act NOW instead of having to wait until he wakes up.
im thinking he’d have a lot more convoluted plans like the one that got them all into the game alive in canon
ways to amuse yourself when you fail at sleep: google a cryptid
i have discovered that there are three types of lake monsters:
it has a head like a sturgeon and a tail like a sturgeon and a body like a sturgeon and ok yeah it’s probably a sturgeon but it was really big you guys
it’s exactly like nessie but it’s here in East Armpit, Michigan where your tourist dollars are needed most
it’s bigger than the lake and it breaTHES FIRE AND IT CAN FLY I SWEAR I’M STONE COLD SOBER ITS NAME IS INEZ AND I’M GOING TO MARRY IT (here i drew a picture it looks like 1800′s trogdor and i’m never backing down from this story as long as i live)
guess which kind is my favorite
@evtrained can you confirm this very important taxonomy?
There is one important cryptid missing – “No it’s this vengeful Native American ghost octopus woman from before time, it drowns people in the swimming hole that was dug out with a backhoe in 1962″
The best cover for Bruce Wayne would be dumb carefree playboy who is also Instagram Optimistic, everyday he’s posting a selfie of his smiling at his breakfast with a caption like “it’s a waffle day! #goodvibesingotham #grateful” or a picture of a sunrise with a caption that’s just “wow #blessed”
Bruce Wayne ending up as Gotham’s favoured son because he may be an idiot, but he’s a cheerful idiot, and he donates tons to charity and genuinely loves Gotham and actually, truthfully does put a lot back into the city. And his instagram is a bright ray of sunshine, and honestly there are a lot of people in the city who get surprisingly defensive of their Dumb Carefree Playboy because, okay, sure, every month or so Bruce Wayne falls off a yacht or sleeps with a reporter or whatever. The man clearly never met a healthy coping skill even once in his life.
But as far as news regarding Gotham’s prominent citizens go, Bruce’s ‘scandals’ are so normal that it’s downright refreshing. When a headline has ‘Bruce Wayne’ in the title, you know you’re either going to read some Celebrity Gossip level non-drama, or else something to do with a charity. Maybe he’s been kidnapped again, but that’s only happened a few times. Bruce Wayne news is like the Gotham equivalent to special reports about dogs who rescue their owners from drowning, or raccoons who’ve figured out how to get past the new self-locking garbage can lids.
And there’s something weirdly reassuring about following his twitter. Like, if Bruce Wayne is tweeting about a really neat old tree he just saw, things must at least be sort of alright.
(Meanwhile, Bruce’s social media persona is 100% him flanderizing Clark.)
My favorite thing is that Europe is spooky because it’s old and America is spooky because it’s big
“The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way.” –Earle Hitchner
A fave of mine was always the american tales where people freaked out because ‘someone died in this house’ and all the europeans would go ‘…Yes? That would be pretty much every house over 40 years old.’
‘…My school is older than your entire town.’
‘Sorry, you think *how far* is okay to travel for a shopping trip?’
*American looks up at the beams in a country pub* ‘Uh, this place has woodworm, isn’t that a bit unsafe?’ ‘Eh, the woodworm’s 400 years old, it’s holding those beams together.’
A few years ago when I was in college I did a summer program at Cambridge aimed specifically at Americans and Canadians, and my year it was all Americans and one Australian. We ended the program with a week in Wessex, and on the last day as we all piled onto the bus in Salisbury (or Bath? I can’t remember), the professors went to the front to warn us that we wouldn’t be making any stops unless absolutely necessary. We’re headed to Heathrow to drop off anyone flying off the same day, then back to Cambridge.
“All right, it’s going to be a long bus ride, so make sure you’re prepared for that.”
We all brace ourselves. A long bus ride? How long? We’re Americans; a long bus ride for us is a minimum of six hours with the double digits perfectly plausible. We can handle a twelve hour bus ride as long as we get a bathroom break.
The answer. “Two hours.”
Oh.
English people trying to travel around Australia and wildly underestimating distance are my favourite thing
a tour guide in France told my school group that a particular cathedral wouldn’t interest us much because “it’s not very old; only from the early 1600s”
to which we had to respond that it was still older than the oldest surviving European-style buildings in our country
China is both old and big. I had some Chinese colleagues over; we were discussing whether they wanted to see the Vasa ship (hugely expensive war ship which sank on it’s maiden voyage after 12 min). They asked if it was old, I said “not THAT old” (bearing in mind they were Chinese) “it’s from the 1500s.” To my surprise they still looked impressed, nodding enthusiatically. Then I realised I’d forgotten something: “…I mean it’s from the 1500s AFTER the birth of Christ” and they went “oh, AFTER…”.
My dad’s favorite quote from various tours in Italy was “Pay no attention to the tower – it was a [scornful tone] tenth century addition.”
My last boss was Chinese, and she said when her parents came to visit her from Beijing they pronounced Chicago “A very nice village.”
fig. 1: the gender diamond, centered on two axes, at a jaunty angle because i wanted it to be
fig. 2: the gender prism, with the top and bottom binary faces and the four societal faces, and one more because it got messy
fig. 3: the gender dodecagon, which i think is a crime against graphic designers
fig. 4: we took some of your concerns into consideration and have reworked it into a fantasy map, because that is how the gender is, like the game of genders, haha
fig. 5: the gender rabbits, we heard your concerns again and we decided to go for more of a symbolic gestalt representation of the manifestations of gender
ah but how do you account for aggregate genders such as: i am extremely masc and smelly but mom is my spirit animal
just moving along like everyone else 