content note: discussion of suicide.
this next monday will be the six year anniversary of losing one of my friends to suicide.
when he died, my high school barely mentioned his death, even though for other students who died by things like car crashes or illness, there were so many public expressions of grief. they believed that having any memorials for a student who died by suicide would encourage other people to die the same way. in their rush to erase the circumstances of his death, they erased the memory of his life.
there are so many things i am angry at that high school about in terms of how they treated mental health (mandatory reporting and collaborating with cops, their refusal to recognize the ways in which that system led to peer-to-peer crisis support, their refusal to recognize the ways that trying to keep each other alive through trial and error was scary and exhausting, carceral disciplinary policies, etc etc etc). but i think one of the things i am still angriest about is the way they enforced shame around his death. it felt like they were retroactively blaming him for the constellation of circumstances that made suicide an option in his life. it felt like they were blaming those of us who missed him and cared about him and wanted to grieve him. it made those of us still there who were actively suicidal feel even more scared about the reaction if we did reach out for help from one of those mythical safe adults.
as an adult now involved in psych abolition/mad liberation work, it makes me so fucking mad to see the ways in which he was discarded by people in authority positions. and the older i get, the more options i have found in my life for making sense of the world and finding healing and community and support which were never available to him because he died when he was 16 and the only things offered to him were a carceral psychiatric system that blamed him for his own fucking death. it feels so incredibly unfair.
i miss him and i think i always will; i can't remember his laugh or the sound of his voice or his favorite color any more and that aches. this grief is so heavy and it feels harder in a new way each year, when i become older than he will ever be. sometimes meeting new comrades or seeing new anticarceral suicide support models hurts because i wish so fucking bad that we had that back then. i remember how close we came to losing even more people that year and i know it is simple fucking luck that i'm still here when he's not.
i remember another letter (never sent) that i wrote to a friend while they were in an ICU bed after a suicide attempt when i didn't know if they would live or not. i have spent so much time in the past 10 years begging for anything to keep me and my friends alive, but even in that letter i knew that there is so much fucking violence that is hidden beneath psychiatric logics of cure and safety that promise a "solution" to suicide. I knew that institutionalization, coercion, and shame would not have helped build a life more liveable for him or **** or any of the people i've loved and lost since.
there needs to be more fucking options for care and support that aren't so incredibly cruel to suicidal people. i know so many people doing incredible work in alternatives, peer respite, a million different frameworks for healing and liberation. but it makes me so mad every day i have to live in a world where there are still people restrained, locked up in psych wards, having all autonomy and personhood taken away from them. knowing there are dozens of people every day getting blamed for their deaths the same way he was blamed for his.
i miss him. i cared so fucking much for him. and he died by suicide, and all of those things are true. he has been dead for 6 years and he lived before that and the people who loved him want to remember all of him; our celebrations of his life should not require hiding the way that he died.
Image description: [1000 origami cranes in all different colors and patterns that are tied together in strings of 25]
(these were the 1000 cranes we made to give to his parents, in memorial and recognition of how much he meant to us.)
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steve becoming the ultimate mother hen happens gradually. sure, he’s always been a leader, someone that people look to when they need something to follow, but that just came naturally. he had never really been the guy who takes care of people until suddenly he was and he had a car full of rowdy 13 year olds as they fought inter-dimensional beings together. what started as ruffling hair and making sure the kids didn’t kill themselves in whatever scheme they were thinking up turned into combing back stray pieces of hair, making sure they all ate a vegetable every now and then, tucking t-shirt tags in.
then it became second nature and he was a fully fledged surrogate mother. he was the arm thrown in front of the passenger seat when he had to slam on the breaks and sandwiches with crusts cut off and doing head counts when they’d go out so he didn’t forget someone. everyone came to expect that if steve was around, they’d have his observant presence as back up to make sure everyone was taken care of. and he liked that. loved that he was reliable and dependable for his friends even when they didn’t specifically ask for him to.
it was different with eddie. he was new and steve didn’t want to freak him out; they were both grown men, after all. so he kept his pestering to a minimum, kept his hands at his sides instead of picking fuzz out of eddie’s hair or wiping crumbs off his face. there was also the tiny, little, minuscule part where steve was absolutely infatuated with him which didn’t exactly make it easy to keep his hands to himself.
it all came to a head one day when eddie was tugging on his jacket before leaving steve’s after hosting max’s birthday party. the stupid collar on that stupid vest was sticking up all wrong and had caught some of eddie’s curls around a button. he watched as the other man pulled at the vest and at his hair, trying to get it sit right but he just couldn’t get it and steve could only watch for so long without stepping in.
“here, just let me-” he stepped into eddie’s space and, damn it, he smelled good. up close, steve could see the way his eyes followed along with his fingers as they eventually got the curl out from around the metal. it didn’t stop there. steve noticed the way the collar was still popped up, so he brought his hands to fiddle with the fabric, pushing it down and thumbing at the corners of the collar to make it sit flat against his chest.
there was an agonizing moment where they were both still, silent. steve let out a breath, hands patting at eddie’s shoulders. “there, perfect.”
he didn’t expect the warmth of eddie’s hands coming up to cover his own. he didn’t expect eddie’s eyes to be wide as dish plates and staring into steve’s. he didn’t expect the way he saw a breath catch in the other man’s throat as he leaned in the tiniest bit to press his lips oh so softly onto steve’s. but the kiss being absolutely perfect? that he did expect. and if steve could take care of everyone, then maybe it was time to let someone else take care of him in return.
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Not to sound too insane or delusional right now BUT...
I was looking at pictures of Roger and my attention got caught by the jolly roger on his hat.
Specifically on the mustache of his jolly roger, and suddenly I realised that it reminded me of something...
Luffy's twirly eyebrows during the gear 5's transformation!
And that's even more weird because if you think about it, jolly rogers are supposed to represent the captain of a crew, right? Like Whitebeard's jolly roger has exactly the same type of mustache he has, Luffy's one has a straw hat, Shank's one has his three scars and so on...
But Roger doesn't have his mustache curved like that or even of that white/light colour. He has normal (and beautiful) black mustache!
So... Why did Roger choose that kind of jolly roger, when it doesn't represent how he normally looks? 👀
You know what I'm hinting at right? Even without taking into account all the similarities between Luffy and Roger's behaviour...
Also I know that the fruit hasn't been awakened in 800 years, but it can't be a coincidence that the moustache on his jolly roger looks exactly like it would've looked like if he ate the fruit (and then awakened it)... even if we know that nobody between the era of Joyboy from 800 years ago and Luffy in the present has ever awakened the fruit, Oda might have still drawn his jolly roger like that for a reason that is linked to that specific devil fruit...
Or I might be wrong and it doesn't have anything to do with it, but in that case the question still remains... why did he choose a jolly roger that is so different from him?
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Jumanji kind of AU where Steve and Eddie are frenemies (aka they would like each other if they weren't both dumb) but they're stuck together helping Dustin's mum to clean up her attic. Or better, Steve is cleaning and Eddie is snooping around, despite Steve's scolding. In his snooping, Eddie finds a worn-out notebook and a set of two dice he has no intention to put back in the box he has found them, no matter what Steve says to him.
They argue about it, then fight, and finally wrestle for the items, making the dice fall on the ground and land on a 2 and a 3.
Suddenly the room around them shakes, and before they realize what is going on, they find themselves catapulted into a fantasy land where creatures like trolls and dragons are very much real and alive, and every step of their journey seems to be described inside the mysterious notebook.
Eddie's thrill about being stuck inside a D&D campaign goes away quickly once he realizes that only Steve has the physical abilities to do the heroic acts he has always dreamed of. Steve, on his part, has difficulties relying on other people, not even when Eddie is the only one with the knowledge that can get them out safely.
Will they learn to work together or are these two idiots destined to be stuck forever?
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Man, so I'm not normally the biggest fan of Modern AUs, nor am I overly fond of fiction focused on kids, but...last night, my sleeping brain decided to concoct this Trigun (Stampede-flavored) Modern AU that now is living rent free in my damn brain! I want to get it out of my head and into the ether. I don't know if I'm going to do anything long-form with it, and I'm having to translate dream weirdness into more coherent storytelling, but here we go.
So it's modern day Earth, like 2024 or some shit, right? And that's when this version of Earth had just begun fucking around with Plant cloning. It's early enough that the SEEDS project hasn't even left the planet, the scientists haven't yet figured out how to put Plants in bulbs and use them for fuel, none of that! But they've already had Tessla happen, and the boys have already been born. Since they're not in space, even though they had to have found out about their sister, Nai hasn't had a chance to literally nuke humanity from orbit, and I guess Rem has had a chance to try and curtail some of his trauma, so he's...more stable? Ish? Stable enough where he's not actively trying to murder everyone. And the boys are "older," like we see in the flashbacks for the time Vash encountered Nai during the Last Run, so probably around 6 years old but looking 16 or so.
Rem has managed to fudge their paperwork so they've started going to school with human kids, to try and give them a normal childhood. Nai isn't as eager to play ball with the whole "being human" thing as much as Vash is, but Vash has got so many friends, Meryl and Milly and Lina are there and they're like the cutest, most stupidly adorable group of friends, just a bunch of little goofballs, like kids that age are. And the school has a field trip to a theme park (it was Disneyworld in my dream because my school actually did this, but ours was a band trip) and Vash manages to convince Rem to let him go. Vash and Nai and Rem are still paranoid about humans figuring out who they are, so you know, he's told to be extra careful and take care of himself, and Nai gives him one of his blades or something for self defense, just in case something happens. Even though Vash would never, that boy has trauma around knives and trying to defend himself, if you've read Trimax, iykyk. But he takes it anyway, and somehow, he manages to sneak it into the park. Maybe the metal doesn't register on metal detectors or something, who knows.
But he's a kid, and kids are dumb. Especially when they're 16. Especially if those 16 year olds aren't actually 16 and don't have the actual lived experience to know better. So he starts playing with the knife in front of the girls, showing off and just being a silly little guy. And then the knife slips. Bad. We're talking "this is how he probably lost his arm in this AU" bad. Blood everywhere, the girls are panicking and take him to the school chaperones and it's like "HOLY SHIT WTF DUDE, We're taking you to the ER, someone call his mom!"
And he hears that, pictures the doctors finding out he's not human, remembers what happened to Tessla, and panics. Boy does a runner like only Vash can do, and he manages to get away from them, out of the park, and escapes from security. And when parents get involved in trying to find him, the authorities start looking into the incident, and someone in the government overseeing the Plant research is able to recognize the elemental make up of the blade he dropped, and they start having suspicions. So the feds get involved, and it just goes from bad to worse, right?
Meanwhile, loopy from blood loss and panicking and a little sobbing mess because he feels dumb about slipping up and he's afraid he'll never get to go home to his mom and his brother again and is spiraling the way kids do when they panic, he gets lost in the city and ends up stumbling over teenage Wolfwood, who lives on the streets and has a few street kids that he looks after on his own with Livio. They never got to live at the orphanage, but that also means that the Eye (in whatever form it takes in this AU) never got ahold of them, so yeah, shits fucked for them, but it's actually a whole lot better for them than it might have been. And it's Wolfwood without all of the EoM trauma, so you can just imagine what he does when this delirious, bloody, terrified, severely injured kid runs him over in the street, sobbing about being caught by the adults and taken away.
Big Brother Nico do what Big Brother Nico do.
At that point, I ended up waking up, but damn if my brain didn't give me enough details to come up with a dumb AU idea that I kind of love and want to do something with, but I don't know if I have the time or spoons to do so.
Ideas I'd had following this beginning to flesh itself out in my head; Luida and Brad are Plant researchers brought onto the project to help the feds figure out wtf is going on with this whole situation, and when Luida is told to talk to Rem, because she's not giving them anything they can use, the two of them reach a secret accord to bring Vash home safe and sound and cover everything back up nice and squeaky clean the way it should have stayed.
Vash's arm is bad enough that he can't really heal it very well on his own without medical care, Plant healing or no. He's doing better than most kids would, but it still begins to go septic, and it forces Nico and Livio to make the really hard decision to find adults they can trust to bring him to so he can get the care he needs. He still ends up losing his arm, though.
At the end of everything, Melanie ends up taking Nico and Livio and the other kids in, so they still get to have their momma figure, even if she comes in later. Maybe she's the one that they find to help them. Is she maybe someone they've known was mostly safe but was never able to get them to stick around long enough to take care of them? Either way, the boys get Vash to her, and it starts the process of getting him home and the kids finally staying at the orphanage.
Meryl, Milly, and Lina all end up sneaking away when they realize that Vash is in more trouble than the adults are letting on, trying to go find him, since they know him better than anyone other than Rem and Nai. Eventually, they meet up with Nico and Livio while everyone is trying to avoid federal agents.
Obviously it's lovey-dovey Vashwood and Insurance Girlfriends and Polygun-flavored, but in the "these kids are too oblivious to think about sexy things, yet" sort of way, because I really do headcanon that at least Vash is ace, Wolfwood is probably demi, and also I am not writing children getting intimate like that. >8/ But kids having little crushes on each other is adorable and I can't not have Vashwood and Insurance Girlfriends be the eventual outcome, once those idiots all grow up and get their heads screwed on straight.
Also, because Nai hasn't had a chance to murder everyone, Rem's managed to work with him enough that he's very slowly overcoming his trauma and regaining his ability to trust that he's not in permanent danger. He'll probably grow up to be a Plants Rights activist or something, lbh. Or a politician. But he's not going to murder people, so either way, it's a win/win!
Because Nico's been living on the streets with him, Razlo either hasn't had to manifest as strongly for Livio, or hasn't manifested at all. Livio is still the sweet, shy, crybaby teddy bear we see, and maybe Razlo only comes out when the feds start getting closer and almost managing to grab the kids, and because he's been able to bond with Nico and the other kids so well this time, Livio is close enough to them that the thought of them getting hurt or taken away is enough to make him want to protect their little group instead of just Livio.
Wolfwood absolutely grumbles about how alike Vash and Livio are. Both a couple'a crybabies, geez, what the Hell you two??? But he also is very much a teddy bear who gives the best hugs when one of his little band of gremlins is upset, so he probably spends more time in a cuddle pile than anything else, now that there's two of them to lose their shit at the drop of a hat.
Vash was totally the one very sweet boy in a clique of girls that everyone who'd known him realized, when they were adults looking back, that he was very much the sweet gay kid hanging out with the girls because it was safer to be himself around them than it was to be around the other boys. (This isn't meant as a stereotype of gay kids, this is based on actual kids I grew up with. My friend group honest to God adopted them because we were all a bunch of momma bears.)
Vash is also...not trans? Because he's a Plant and Plants don't work the same way humans do, but he's also not what humans would think of as a cis boy. He expresses a masc presentation, but probably the closest equivalent would be an intersexed kid. Nai, too, tbh, though he's probably more of the "I don't give a fuck" opinion when it comes to his own gender identity. He uses he/him because that's what humans think when they see him, but he doesn't care any deeper than that.
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