John Ashbery, from "My Philosophy of Life" [ID'd]

Happy new years… let’s stay hydrated together ✨

I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before

I put my lips to the hands of the man who killed my son

Ben coming back to the cabin to see yet another cannibalistic ritual

tim and bernard who break up and it's nothing big, no one cheated or anything. it's just their lifestyles didn't work out well together. tim cannot give up vigilantism currently and bear cannot handle the level of danger tim puts himself in. and on the other hand, tim cannot handle the fact that bear chooses to run into danger as an emt bc he already worries about everything but now he has to worry if he'll find his boyfriend convulsing from fear gas in a random alley but also bear who felt the life drain out of darla cannot stand the thought of not helping people and runs headfirst into dangerous situation after dangerous situation hoping that every person he saves can somehow make up for the fact that he could not save darla.

(he very pointedly does not think about the fact that there was nothing he could do because if he thinks about that, he'll spiral until they have to lock him in arkham too)

and so they break up but they were tim & bernard in high school and when they started dating they balanced out the worst of each other and they became tim&bernard. and everyone who knows them, knows that they're better together but they cant be together, they refuse actually because they cannot lose another person to the violence of gotham and by the time they figure out that they cant work together as long as the other is an emt or vigilante, it's too late for both them. they've already left too many pieces of themselves in each other.

tim still knows what bear means when he says "tim" in that exasperated voice. tim still goes boneless when he hears bear say "baby" in that firm tone. bear can still read tim like a book. he still knows the right way to massage tim's neck so that tim can go to sleep. everyone at the first responders gala knows not to bother ceo drake-wayne and senior emt dowd when they're talking.

(and if they're standing a little too close to each other than what is normal, who are they to judge? everyone knows that dowd and drake-wayne have history)

and if everyone on the night shift has caught red robin with his head tucked into the crook of emt dowd's neck as emt dowd runs a soothing hand up and down the vigilante's back, well then, they just quietly back away.

(after all, dowd's one of like, five, emts that can get the bats to receive medical treatment so if turning a blind eye to whatever the fuck they have going on is what allows them to give back to their heroes, then the night shift will do it every time)

and of course, tim and bear are practical people. they loved (love) each other sure, but when your lives are fundamentally incompatible, well, you cant get too stuck on the what-ifs, that's for sure. and so they do find love with other people and yeah, maybe it's not what they expected love to be when they first fell in love with each other. it's not the bubbly, stomach-swoopy, cant stop grinning, feeling that permeated tim&bernard's early days or the i Know you/you Know me that was their middle or the quiet despair that was their end but it is contentment. and in a life with as many losses as theirs, contentment is something they hold dearly

and they're happy! truly! but sometimes, at galas when they're making each other snort champagne out their noses or in darkened alleyways when their clothes are both stained with blood or at rallies for stricter gun regulations in gotham where they both sit too close to each other, fingers enclosed around each other in a death grip, when the presenters inevitably bring up grieves

(worst school shooting in gotham in decades, there's blood on their hands and blood in their mouths and darla is dead in between both of them and there is a chasm so wide that they are screaming to get their voices across and she will always be dead and maybe this had always been the problem that she is dead and there is no coming back from that and that there is blood on their hands and blood in their mouth and blood on their han-)

but sometimes, most especially on opposite sides of the street, as life pulls them in different directions, just sometimes, they see each other and just for a second, nothing too long, the flap of a hummingbird's wings, the time it takes to blink, an electron's orbital, they look at each other and for the briefest moment, blue on brown, a barely noticeable stutter in their steps, the space between heartbeats, because this is all they will give themselves because they do not dwell on what-ifs or what-could-have-beens, or what-should-have-beens, or delusions of a softer world, their eyes meet and they think to themselves, god, in another life, i would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with him.

«The lost one.»

Lyrics: Kanaya - "Little hero".

An illustration for one of the RP arcs that still rips my soul. One abandoned, frightened cadet.

idk i wish people would talk more about papua when it comes to occupied nations.

free papua.

i love hearing about you and your wife it gives me so much warmth and hope - if your comfortable, do you have a first meeting or first date story? totally ok if you'd not share! i hope you and your wife have a wonderful anniversary, 11 years is quite a feat!

oh ho ho you've unlocked my special interest. i love talking about our first meeting/date.

(a read more because i did not make this short)

we actually "met" on tumblr! we both signed up for this penpal blog where you got matched with someone who had similar interests as you. i verified with my wife this morning and we both said we liked cats-i'm assuming that's what they matched us over. i dropped a joke in her inbox that went unanswered for days despite her reblogging and posting and was like welp, that was a good shot, champ, but you messed it up. no friends for you.

now, this was in the days when tumblr's inbox system (which limited you to 10 asks a day) ate every other message. so it's not that she didn't think it was funny, she just didn't get it. i found this out when i dropped the same joke a second time in her inbox and lo and behold! she thought it was funny. (i have recycled this joke many times over the year and always get an eye roll. like, babe. it's a classic. it's the thundapants joke!)

she did not think it was funny when i told her i was a transplant living in the the armpit of massachusetts because-lo and behold a second time-that's where she grew up and was also still living! it was an auspicious start for me, truly. we figured out that we had a bunch of things in common-i did my student teaching at her high school when she was a senior there, i was a substitute teacher for her little sister's 8th grade class, we missed each other in college by a couple of classes, my roommate and best friend worked at the PT office my wife frequented. we kind of went around each other for a while before we finally landed in the same place.

it took me a month and a half of my best jokes to convince her to go on a date with me because, as she said, she was super nervous. i was like, you have not truly met me yet because i am the stupidest person on earth and not worthy of nervousness. but she finally said yes! and we went out to a local chinese restaurant for crab rangoons. it shared a parking lot with the diner i worked at so i ate there all the time and the people there were so surprised i was (a) sitting down to eat and (b) eating with somebody!

(thus began our tradition of ending up on someone else's first date. the couple behind us was clearly meeting for the first time. he was telling her his credit score and that she could order whatever she wanted off the menu, no worries because he could pay for it. we cringed each time he opened his mouth but it was kind of perfect in a way because it gave us something to whisper about. we have since ended up on way too many first dates to count. it is kind of just a thing that happens to us, no matter where we go.)

our date was really, really good. we had talked A LOT via tumblr inbox (messages didn't exist yet) and the conversation just kind of picked up in person. so much so that 4 hours went by and they were putting up the chairs. and then we talked for a while in the parking lot too until my roommate hit me with the "are you alive or did she murder you and dump your body somewhere?" text. i left her on read and kept talking until the restaurant locked up and all the people went home. i just didn't want to leave. i felt like i knew my wife already, you know? like things just clicked. she was funny and intelligent and she listened when i went on the first of many, many tangents. her patience for me is unmatched and started out that way.

we spent the rest of the summer we lived there spending as much time as we could together. i distinctly remember doing short order cook shifts at the diner i worked at and then rolling up to her house to pick her up and drive around. we had to drive with the windows down because my clothes just effused grease from the fryers. we watched so many movies at my apartment-which is hilarious because about a year into our relationship she informed she was NOT a movie person, she just wanted to spend time together. we have watched maybe ten movies together since that first year.

then i got a full-time job on the other side of the mountain, we moved, bought a house, got married, and the rest is history. but we get crab rangoons on every anniversary and do a lame-o instagram post about each other and i continue to be the stupidest person in the room, just very stupid over her.

sometimes you feel lost + adrift in the world, and sometimes you have an interaction with a stranger so steeped in kindness & empathy that it leaves you stunned, still reeling

i think goyim should just shut the fuck up about jewish people forever actually

Joe Bolton, from "Elegy for Roland Barthes" [transcript in ALT]

something something warped funhouse mirror images that keep me up at night

pretty sure every single septimus heap fan thinks of that series when they hear "hey brother" by avicii. even tho that was such a prevalent fandom song back in the day, it doesn't matter. that song is like. THE theme song for SH. no other song fits Better

Our Spotify blends still updates daily and it's such a tender feeling knowing that someway somehow I still know her. I can still answer one question about her. We still somehow discover the same music. And that we can still exist simultaneously

sometimes when people describe astarion as pathetic, they'll list all his more feminine characteristics rather than like

it's fucking pathetic of him to be mad if you save the gnomes, even if you understand why he disapproves it. It's still fucking pathetic. he's also extremely pathetic when he ascends and starts becoming more like Caz, but it's bc it's pathetic that the power goes to his head like that simply bc he would rather insulate himself with power than allow himself to face his past and overcome it.

not because he deserves nice things and finery.

there’s not a day that goes by where i am not thinking about this bit of ghost quartet. i say this a lot but dave malloy you were insane for this one.