#I mean it this time!

[laundrybiscuits]

I had zero plans to continue this but @shdwsilk came in with the extremely good takes sooo…

If you don’t know Inception this is probably incomprehensible. Soz.

“Shouldn’t you be talking to the mark?”

Steve visibly startles as Eddie slides onto the barstool next to him. Steve’s in a suit, because the mark is the most boring person alive and thinks a fancy cocktail party in a hotel is the stuff dreams are made of; Henderson was extremely specific about the number of dashing rogues Eddie was allowed to drop in for passionate speeches and/or dueling purposes.*

“Eddie?” says Steve. 

“Mm, no, Johanna Berger.” Eddie tosses his head, letting ice-blonde hair cascade over his bare shoulders, and smirks up at Steve. “I am quite charmed to meet you, darling.”

Johanna is a young widow who may or may not have had something to do with her late husband’s untimely death, so she’s wearing a plunging black dress designed to show off some real bombshell curves. He’s pretty proud of her rack, honestly; it’s harder than you’d think to make sure everything looks realistic. 

“Are you doing an accent?”

Eddie scowls. Johanna went to an international school, so her accent’s subtle to the untrained American ear, but he spent two solid hours last weekend reviewing Austrian vowels with his dialect coach. 

“Are you not doing an accent?”

“Uh, no? Because I don’t need to? The mark’s from Connecticut.” 

“Perhaps the both of you could use a little more exposure to…foreign affairs.” Johanna leans in coyly, trailing one red nail up Steve’s arm. 

Steve lets out a snort that sounds completely unrehearsed. “Does that ever actually work for you, dude?”

Johanna tilts her head, gazing up at Steve. She’s not the type to get intimidated, but she is the type to be curious. She’ll take risks if it means getting a chance to pry someone open. 

“You don’t spend much time with other forgers, do you?” she says. 

Steve shrugs. “I don’t really do the whole, uh, dreamsharing community. I mean, I guess I’ve kinda been doing this a while, but like—not seriously, you know? It’s not really my thing. Wasn’t planning on any more jobs at all, but Henderson showed up, and you know what that kid’s like.”

Steve looks so openly fond just saying Henderson’s name that Johanna has the sudden urge to shield Steve’s face from the crowd somehow. The poor fool, she thinks in despair. He has yet to learn that a tenderness like that is to be protected.

Or—maybe Johanna would be contemptuous. Maybe she’d think: what a fool. Anyone could see how to break Steve Harrington’s heart.

“Yeah,” says Eddie. “I know what Henderson’s like. Biggest pain in my ass imaginable.”

The soft look on Steve’s face shifts into a real smile as he glances over. “Tell me about it,” he says. “Hey, you sound like you again.”

“What, no I don’t,” says Eddie. 

“No, it’s good. It’s better than whats-her-name.”

Eddie looks down at himself, thoroughly-researched curves straining at the satiny bodice and a manicured hand still resting on Steve’s arm. “Maybe you just need to get to know Johanna,” he says. “She’s a hell of a dame.”

“Sure.” Steve winks. “Tell her to give me a ring sometime.”

“Oh my god, why are you hanging out with projections,” says Mike freaking Wheeler, popping up like a bad penny in a cater waiter outfit. “Steve, go talk to the mark! We’re running out of time!”

“Okay, okay, sheesh,” says Steve, pushing away from the bar.

“Jesus, Wheeler, we’re two levels down. We got plenty of time,” says Eddie, pointedly not watching Steve weaving through his crowd. 

“Wait, is—are you—Eddie?” The kid is openly gawking at Johanna. 

“Eyes up here, champ,” says Eddie. “This is Johanna Berger, and she’s here to make sure everything goes according to plan. Also, she’s here to look appropriately and publicly devastated at the tragic death of her husband, because the yacht club wives are getting gossipy.” 

“Whoa,” says Wheeler. “That…wasn’t in the briefing.”

“Keep up, yeah? You’re in the dreamshare business, the briefing never covers everything.” Eddie puts a tray of champagne flutes in Wheeler’s hands and snags one for Johanna as Wheeler fumbles to keep from dropping the rest. 

Johanna sips the champagne. It doesn’t taste like anything at all. 

“Darling,” she says. “If you learn to let dreams surprise you, I think you will have a better life, yes?” 

Across the room, Steve looks up from charming the mark. He smiles at Johanna, just a quick and completely unprofessional flash of teeth before turning his attention back to a Connecticut banker who probably wouldn’t have a hope in hell of catching Steve’s attention in the waking world.

Or maybe that’s Steve’s type. Maybe he’s got some smart, boring wife in a conservative pantsuit tucked away somewhere. Maybe she comes home every day like clockwork to a hot meal and freshly-bathed children and has absolutely no idea that her trophy husband inhabits dreamscapes in his spare time. 

No, he is better than that, thinks Johanna. In my soul I know that he deserves better. I would take him away from such a woman in an instant.

Which is just—

Okay, so Steve Harrington might be a slightly bigger problem than Eddie’d thought.

*“Zero, Eddie! Zero rogues, zero secret Cinderellas, whatever that means, zero drama. Just assume the answer is always going to be zero with this guy!”

“Then what’s the goddamn point, Henderson?”

“Uh, maybe the nice fat paycheck coming our way?”

At this point, Eddie can either admit that he isn’t actually in it for the money (gross, not an option) or subside into a sulky silence. So: zero dashing rogues. It’s fine. He’s not bitter at all.

#okay yes I DID have fun with the fucky identity stuff but! I’m still not planning to write any more! #I mean it this time! #I cut out the dialogue coach's backstory though #the short version is that he thinks Eddie's a struggling LA actor named Gregory who gets the weirdest auditions in the world #Inception AU

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

year in review

one thing i did this past year was set my "win condition" for daily habit resolutions at 183 days in the year, because if you do something on 183 days in a year, that means you technically did it most of the time. i found this really motivational because it meant everything counted but there was also a lot of room for slack, and i feel like even for the resolutions i did not do so hot on that style of tracking gave me information and helped me think about what i really want out of that habit. so i am definitely planning to repeat it this year! as for the actual daily resolutions, they kind of fell into four categories.

nailed it

spend some time with some art: 232 days

work out: 216 days 💪🏼

drink at least 64 ounces of water: 277 days

pretty good

log my little habits & other trackables: 189 days

don't go on the internet before noon: 189 days (but see earlier posting about how i don't really feel like that addressed what i wanted it to address)

nice try

write out a plan for my day: 164 days

make something with words or with my hands: 153 days

get my room back into its baseline acceptable condition: 135 days

abject failures

meditate (147 days), journal (116 days), yoga (69 days) - yoga i just never found a place in my routine for this year but the other two i'm putting into this category even their numbers are not that high because i actually started off pretty strong and then just fully stopped around the beginning of september because life was hard. then like a month later i started having a mental breakdown where i couldn't stop crying and/or thinking about death. coincidence? you decide! (it's almost definitely not.)

i also had some goals to accomplish for the end of the, areas i wanted to make progress in without a specific endpoint, & vibes to cultivate, with mixed results:

memorize at least one (1) keyword/phrase for each tarot card - lol no

listen to sondheim's full body of work in chronological order - lol no

finish all unread books in my room - lol no

get my apartment into a state that would be okay for guests - lol no

post all WIPs - partial credit! i had a very ambitious count of 12 in mind when i made this resolution; i wound up posting 5 and a half, one of which was for & event and not on the list. idk i feel good about this tbh, especially since i did post everything that already had a substantial amount of writing in gdocs when i started the year (so, like, really all True WIPs rather than WIPs + various half-baked notions) and i like pretty much every fic i posted a lot.

up my walking till i'm regularly hitting 70k a week - i didn't put this one in my app for some reason and i am definitely too lazy to go through 12 months of notebooks but a glance at my apple health app suggests... sure? kinda? definitely for a while and then i got sick and then it got cold and dark and less so since then?

make progress towards figuring out routines that serve me: i... think so, yes? i spent a lot of this year, especially the spring and summer, just feeling sooooo dysregulated physically and fatigue-embattled and so on and so forth, and although my sleep cycle at the moment is not ideal, i am not, like, beset every day by the challenge of having a physical body anymore. i don't have one single daily routine i swear by, which is what i always fantasize about even though i know i would inevitably get bored of it and reject it (cap sun / sag stellium problems........), but i have some mini-routines i feel like i can call on, and i also have a set of meals that are boring but easy and reliable to eat basically every day so that i am not spending all of my disposable income on take-out anymore, and i also definitely now think of myself as A Person Who Works Out, so.... yes. i'm gonna say yes.

figure out a way to tackle my gigantic and ever-increasing Backlog Of Tasks: lmao no. not even a little bit.

make progress towards feeling more connected: i think so on this one, too. my most socially proactive friend moved out of the country for six months this spring and as the date of her departure was approaching i realized that i could either watch my social calendar virtually disappear for half a year or i could Try Harder, and then i did try a little bit harder and it went pretty okay. as much as part of me really wanted to, i did not drop my efforts during my extremely busy september/october, either. so.... yeah!

make progress towards fiscal responsibility: yeah. not, like, in leaps and bounds or anything, but i am definitely 3000% less stressed about money than i was a year ago.

stop treating everything like an emergency: hmmmm. i think i did well on this one for things that i can or should or need to take action on, but not so well for things i actually can't - like, i've gotten better at reminding myself that it, whatever it is, isn't fucking brain surgery, and in the worst case scenario life goes on, but i am still prone to the occasional despairing google spiral where i "research" some issue lying to myself that i am gathering important information but knowing deep inside i'm not planning to act on any of it at the moment and therefore really i am just feeding my own anxiety about it. partial credit.

don't push unless i have to: you know what? i think yeah. i mean, work in progress, but - yeah.

be proactive about looking for the stuff that makes me be alive: partial credit.

make more stuff, see more people, experience more art, have more fun: in order, maybe not strictly speaking "more" but between the amount i wrote and getting back into knitting i feel pretty happy about it; yes; probably?; definitely

fuck temperance: not as much as i maybe wanted to, but often enough to be glad when i did

i'm gonna come back on a full resolutions post later i think, maybe tonight maybe not (don't push unless i have to), but some current thoughts on this review:

keeping unedited; the 183 day goal (although i guess since we're in a leap year technically it should be 84, lol) in general; the daily habits of art, working out, drinking water, logging my little habits

i'm debating whether to keep planning my day as a habit or not. i feel like i've sort of internalized enough of a daily structure that some days it's helpful but other days i can just kind of jump into things and not feel like i missed something (today, for example, i've been toggling between work stuff and other goals, including sitting down to write this post, and it's felt pretty seamless)

internet: still thinking of a good way to phrase this. might just go with "make good internet choices" with the option to redefine or be more formal about "good internet choices" if i feel the need

making stuff: debating whether to keep unedited or now that i have gotten into knitting and definitely WILL be doing it pretty much anytime i'm watching something, do a teeny tiny daily writing resolution, like 100 words a day (or "100 words OR time spent doing actual research for something e.g. rewatching [redacted] for the sake of this newsletter i'm drafting")

room: i think i'm gonna keep this one, which lives in my app as "room maintenance," but mentally redefine it to EITHER re-setting my room to its zero position OR spending 20 minutes making progress towards that to disincentivize my current practice of leaving any messes i can't take care of in 20 minutes until i feel like i have a whole day to work on them

meditating, journaling, yoga, aka the self-care shit: i think i'm gonna swap meditating & yoga for mindfulness & mobility. so, like, one (1) yoga video, done while nothing else is playing and containing some degree of stretchiness, would get me a checkmark for both of those things, but i could also achieve both of them by doing, like, three minutes of silent deep breathing + stretching or foam rolling or one of those pilates butt workouts that always helps my back while watching TV or listening to a podcast or whatever. journaling... debating about this one but almost definitely planning to switch to digital journaling of some kind. the therapeutic value of handwritten journaling is real but it's clearly not something i'm up for at this period of my life lol. beyond that might keep it as journaling but just switch the mode, might split it up into reflection & recording, which are the two things i want out of journaling (the latter of which traditional journaling is actually terrible for for me because my handwriting is so bad i never reread my old entries) but could theoretically be accomplished by, like, a tarot pull + a social media post relating to the book or movie or whatever i'm reading. (i said i was gonna bring back blogging this year with my yearly personal tag and then i used it all of twice lol. BUT THIS YEAR I MEAN IT!!!)

walking: definitely gonna put this one in the app lol and also might switch to a monthly goal? i saw someone say that and it seemed crazy but then i was like, well it's true that if i get my period on a saturday and i haven't been going crazy with steps that week i'm basically done..... lol

it's been funny seeing posts all over the place encouraging "fun" new year's resolutions because those were the ones i failed the hardest at! lmao. clearly setting "do this by the end of the year" is not a productive framework for me personally. i will probably take some of my failed year-long resolutions from 2023 and make, like, a funsies list & a serious list, and then set a daily habit goal like "chip away a little at one fun project & one serious project"

the elephant in the room of my brain is, do i want to set some kind of numerical goal regarding Getting Out Of The House And/Or Spending Time With Human Persons? it feels intimating and scary and hard but also less so than it would have had i considered it before my friend moved out of the country. so....... maybe? idk.

similarly, debating if i do want to set some kind of goal regarding how much writing i accomplish, or if doing 100 words a day is enough since the hardest part of writing is absolutely just sitting down and fucking doing it. lol.

also considering a reading goal? that can but doesn't necessarily always count towards the art goal? hmmmm.

#isabel 2k24 #i mean it this time!

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

#yeehaw #1k #5k #10k #posts that got cursed. blasted. im making these tag updates after... 19 hours? #also i have been told it should say speech loss bc nonverbal specifically refers to the permanent state. did not know that! #unfortunately i fear it is so far past containment that even if i edited it now it would do very little. but noted for future reference #edit 2: nvm enough ppl have come to rb it from me directly that i changed the wording a bit. hopefully this makes sense #also. in case anyone is curious. though i doubt anyone who is commenting these things will check the original tags #1) my friend did not do this on purpose in any way. it was not intended to distract me or to hit on me. im a lesbian hes a gay man. cmon now #he felt very bad about it afterwards. i thought it was hilarious but it was very embarrassed and apologetic #2) “why didn't he use 🫵🏼?” didn't exist yet. “why didn't he use 🆗?” dunno! we'd been using a lot of hand emojis. 👌🏼 is an ok sign #like it makes sense. it was just a silly mixup. also No i did not invent 👉🏼👌🏼 as a gesture meaning sex. do you live under a rock #3) nonspeaking episodes are a recurring thing in my life and have been since i was born. this is not a quirky one-time thing #it is a pervasive issue that is very frustrating to both myself and the people i am trying to communicate with. in which trying to speak is #extremely distressing and causes very genuine anguish. this post is not me making light of it it's just a funny thing that happened once #it's no different than if i post about a funny thing that happened in conjunction w a physical disability. it's just me talking abt my life #i don't mind character tags tho. those can be entertaining. i don't know what any of you are talking about #Except the ppl who have said this is pego/ryu or wang/xian. those people i understand and respect #if you use it as a writing prompt that's fine but send it to me. i want to see it #aaaand i think that's it. everyday im tempted to turn off rbs on it. it hasn't even been a week

[wildbasil]

things haven't been great but i think they will be. eventually 🌻🌼🩷

#personal #comics #tw abuse #digital art #personal comic #for the record no i don't think my mother loves me #but the idea that she did kept me in an awful situation for a very long time #the number of times people said “she's your mother. she's trying her best. of course she loves you” etc etc #but i don't think “love” and abuse are mutually exclusive #like even if someone DOES love you it doesn't mean it's not abuse and it doesn't mean it's ok #art tag

[greykolla-art]

Imagine spending all your energy being cool and mysterious 24/7.

What an idiot have I mentioned I love him?

Idea came from a cool post @nouverx made about Alastor’s possible sleeping habits. 💕

#grey art #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel fanart #hazbin hotel comic #Oh I am DONE coloring stuff for a while! it’s so boring! #I mean it looks great but I haaaaaate spending time on it! #get used to grayscale stuff for a while #also coloring multiple characters is stupid! no no no. #angel dust #husker #sir pentious #alastor #charlie morningstar #hazbin husker #hazbin alastor #god I’m glad to be done with this one

[seriousturd]

#tumblr polls #random polls #poll time #i love looking at usernames and wondering what it MEANS #so many of you guys have such cool sounding usernames #i just picked random words i like LMAO #serious because people always see me as super serious irl (i'm just a very anxious perfectionist lol) #and turd because i have the sense of humor of a toddler and think poop jokes are funny

[officialspec]

can i say something. for years i thought the joke of the song short skirt/long jacket by cake was that he wanted a woman who was hung like a horse. like i thought when he says jacket it was a last-second fakeout because he very obviously meant to say cock. and the rest of the things in the song were just her personality and interests. which were secondary to her awesome penis

#is anyone else doing this. or am i stupid #i didnt question it at all i thought that was just the obviously intended meaning of the song #and i was like damn this is pretty progressive for the 90s i wonder why no one talks about this song when theyre talking abt #popular songs about trans women at the time. i guess some of the stuff mentioned could potentially rub people the wrong way- #OH. SO IT WAS JUST ABOUT A WOMAN WHOIS PRAGMATIC AND BUSINESS CASUAL WITH IT. I SEE #EDIT THE LINE 'a voice that is dark like tinted glass' LIKE....U GET WHAT I MEAN

[heyhoneylook]

Everyone please say hello to Sock!

She is very small!!

#sock was a foster failure #i mean honestly that was pretty much inevitable #just look at her! #the most baby of all time #cats #tumblr blaze #kitten #foster failure #cats in hats #cute

[wasyago]

Can you draw that snail? You know the one who got out of Grian's power and started to eat Gem's lighthouse?

little guy <3

alternatively: big guy.

#hermitcraft #grian #geminitay #my art #sketch #drawing a snail with teeth wasn't on my bingo card for this year but here we are #ALSO god can you imagine a dungeon meshi au with grian as a dm and snail as his animal? all he wished for was a mending book....... #the brainrot is strong im being tormented by the demons ( my own ideas ) #ALSO 2.0. does anyone remember that snail from adventure time? i mean. cmon. i mean..? hello?

[noknowshame]

why is religious Christmas imagery all so joyful and pleasant? where is the inherent horror of the birth of Christ? A mother is handed her newborn child, wailing and innocent. Her hands come away sticky. Red. Simply by giving her son life she has already killed him. He is doomed from the beginning. Her love will not save him from suffering. Because the thing cradled in her arms is not a baby, it is a sacrifice: born amongst the other bleating animals whose blood will one day be spilled in the name of what demands it. the night is silent with anticipation. Mary, did you know? That your womb was also a grave?

#instant conversation enders for my multiple youth pastor cousins #don’t say it (I’m gonna say it) #The Child is The Price #but i mean come on #as someone who isn't actually even christian the real-life historical version of this is still cursed as fuck #i mean we know that jesus was a person who existed. whatever circumstances he was born in #its terrifyingly ominous to imagine being so unaware of the affect your child will have on the future of humanity #time itself will one day be counted around your birth of him #and all because he will suffer an excruciatingly painful death that you will not be able to prevent #not only that. but regardless of his or your intentions #regardless of whether there is a god #for millenea unfathomable millions will have blood spilled and will spill blood in his name #atrocities will be committed that you cannot even conceive of #and all on his and your behalf #you love your child. its beautiful. but there's horror in what you've done. because everyone else will love him too #and what's more dangerous than that?

[kimdokjas]

though the movie might be cancelled, yuri on ice will live forever in our hearts. thank you yoi fandom, it's been real ♡

#yuri on ice #yoiedit #yoi #victuuri #ice adolescence #anime gif #*gifs #animangahive #dailyshounenai #userkarura #usergojoana #userhanyi #useralphonse #usertorichi #usermoonz #usericybtch #userheidi #usergokalp #userartless #homuras #himawaari #this is not goodbye this is still my house!!! #devastated but not surprised tbh but i still wanted to channel my emotions somehow and just. express how much this show means to me so here #this thank you goes out to u guys. the fandom #mappa can eat a brick btw <3 #god i wish i could articulate just how special yoi is to me #it truly resonated with me like very few other pieces of media have (i can count them with one hand in fact) #it was sooooo revolutionary and ahead of its time not just in terms of queerness but also in terms of mental health #it truly changed me as a person and i just. really appreciate how earnest and kind it was above all #thank you yoi. you will be a part of me forever <3

[perfectlyripeclementine]

calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.

#nonbinary love #nblnb yearning #nb4nb #nblnb #wholesomeposting #yearning hours #ive been thinking about how some languages dont have a possessive tense #so you dont say “i have a thing” but rather “a thing is by me” #and like im not usually one for psycho linguistics and like critical thoughts etc etc etc #but i really like the framework of responsibility/commitment rather than ownership #i think about this mostly in terms of ecology #and relation to land #but i also love it as it applies to language shared between lovers #like i LOVE calling them mine or for them to call me theirs #but i'm also nonmonog and that was kinda weird to square for a while #and it clicked one time when i was talking about my neighborhood and i was like well #when i say my neighborhood or my city it's understood i'm not taking it away from anybody else #its understood i just mean the city where i live #so why cant we apply the same to lovers? #mine in the way i want to show up for you again and again #ok #done now

[absolute-artlad]

Huzzah!

#spidersona #spiderman across the verse #across the spiderverse #spiderverse #spiderverse oc #atsv #miguel o'hara #atsv miguel #spiderverse miguel #i dont mean to give miguel a hard time but he just makes it just so easy #my draws

[adyophene]

I couldn't get the idea of Alastor holding Husk like that one ferret gif during his lament in the finale out of my head.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin art #husk #alastor #radiohusk #i mean not really but #anyways did i spend way too much time on what is a shit post #yes of course have you looked at my blog thats all i do

[ylissebian]

WOMEN ARE MY FAVORITE GUY 💥

#im so obsessed with this song. women ARE my favorite guy #dj crazy times #a hero to the people… #art #sound of the summer and i mean this #my favorite part of this video is that it was filmed in the lovely oculus. new york CITY baby #ms biljana electronica #IM SO SORRY MAAM I DIDNT KNOW U HAD A TITLE

[brionbroadway]

got his ass

#lisa gilroy is the funniest woman on the planet i will not be taking questions at this time #and in front of zac don't you mean herstory oyama #make some noise #game changer #lisa gilroy #sam reich #dropout