no cryptids here

the sunshine one and the goth one at the same time | Nell - he/she | an adult

[absolutely-not-a-cryptid]

hi! call me Nell

Welcome to my multifandom (and extrafandom, where the extra is as in "extrajudicial") clusterfuck of a blog. I spend a lot of time thinking about hope, and art.

currently writing jujutsu kaisen fanfic about several permutations of our boys being mean to each other other/flirting. Fire Emblem, The Locked Tomb, and various books by Martha Wells, also make regular appearances here.

Older and more Australian than your statistically average tumblr user.

[emily-e-draws]

a tasty hoard for a tiny beast!🍓🐉✨

[powerful-owl]

pick one

your ship goes canon

your favorite ao3 writer drops 100k of your ship + your favorite trope

Voting ended onJun 10

[absolutely-not-a-cryptid]

if you’re young and sick of hearing “It gets better”

Random internet stranger, I know nothing about you. You might have good reason to think the bad parts of your world are never going to change. Or that if they do change, they’re more likely to get worse than better. I’d like to give you hope, though, if you’ll let me try. Rather than the fantasy of “It gets better”, I offer you something more mundane:

Miles was abruptly weary, sick to death of the noise inside his own head. Haroche the puppet-master had him running in circles, trying to bite himself in the back. What if he didn’t play Haroche’s dizzying game? What if he just... stopped? What other game was there?

Who are you, boy? Who are you who asks?

On the thought a blessed silence came, an empty clarity. He took it at first for utter desolation, but desolation was a kind of free fall, perpetual and without ground below. This was stillness: balanced, solid, weirdly serene. No momentum to it at all, forward or backwards or sideways.

— Memory (1996) by Lois McMaster Bujold

(if you want to read the Vorkosigan saga, don't start with Memory. There's reading order info here.)

The book is about Miles Vorkosigan, a 30-something year old man (with bipolar disorder (ish), and significant physical disabilities) who, in an impressive feat of self-sabotage, has just destroyed the career he spent his entire childhood yearning for. He became who he wanted to be when he grew up, and screwed up so badly that he put thousands of lives in danger. He burnt his own dream to the ground. But he survives it, and becomes himself in the process.

When I was 18 and reading Memory for the first time, I didn't really like it. Compared to previous books in the series, nothing much happens. It's boring. Miles goes from being a chaotic space mercenary double agent to a government detective.

A decade later though, I keep on finding the quiet moment that he describes in the passage above more and more often. I have a metric fucktonne of childhood trauma that is seriously messing up my life, and I'm miserable... and I'm okay? It's hard to explain.

"It gets better" has always rung hollow to me, but there's some truth to it. Time does not guarantee any sort of healing, but to exist is to gain more experience existing. It doesn’t make things hurt less, but it gives you more space around the hurt.

Like Memory, it's a bit boring, but the truest hope that I can give you is that:

If you stick around long enough, you'll find the quiet place inside you that is yourself.

It sounds cheesy as fuck. Maybe a bit "good for you, but that's not going to happen to me." But I promise every one of the ~15 people I've asked (who are between the ages of 30 and 90) has agreed that this is A Thing. Really. And some of them don't even like me.

Whether the world gets better or worse, you’ll get better at living in it. And that makes all the difference. I don’t promise less pain, but I promise more of it will be the kind you can live between, and more room to find meaning in the absurd. The signal in the noise.

[stealingpotatoes]

i don't know what older adults were on about when they said being a teenager was good <3

[ragesharkbritain]

one more post about vorkosigan saga before i unworm my brain: i genuinely cannot think of another piece of media that unironically uses the evil clone cliche with full sincerety and love. the whole thing is just

clone: im going to take your place and kill your dad!

miles: OUR dad

clone: what?

miles, pointing: baby! baby brother!

clone: What??

miles, still pointing: your names mark!

mark: WHAT???

[saltedweather]

my favorite was

mark, bitterly: I don’t have a birthday.  I have whatever it’s called when they open a uterine replicator.

his mother: Well, my family called it a birthday, but we can make up a word for yours if you want.

[terriwriting]

Mark: “Hello I am your assassin here to kill you.”

Aral Vorkosigan: “Here, let me show you your pony.”

[queerian]

aral: time for some awkward but earnest father-son bonding

mark: i could still kill him. i could do it (he wouldnt tho)

aral: *oops a heart attack*

mark: OH FUCK NO YOU DONT

[ahresprite]

god i love yellow

[runasulienadanika]

i'd touched your intestines, which is usually what, fourth date,

[redtiebear]

FINISHED THE HEATHER HALF LET'S GO

Nepheather my Tellius beloved

[song-of-the-spheres]

Aral Vorkosigan, talking to himself in the mirror at some point during Shards of Honor, probably: "all right you've gotten to first base (fighting alien monsters together) and second base (telling her about your disastrous first marriage). next is third base (proposing to her) and then fourth base (asking her to mercy kill you if necessary). then maybe you can think about kissing her."

Aral Vorkosigan at the end of Shards of Honor, probably: "holy shit it worked?! oh thank God."

[charmwitch]

Ranulf for #FEModernPulse !!!

He's tired of dealing with everyone, esp. Skrimir.

[mandi-bul]

Them in my brain

[yuutaguro]

guess what starts tomorrow 🙂‍↕️🤚

[yuutaguro]

guess what starts today 🏳️‍🌈

[wacuoms]

[absolutely-not-a-cryptid]

🏳️‍⚧️ reluctant trans ally Ivan Vorpatril 🏳️‍⚧️

reluctant not because he's transphobic but because a) he had been really looking forward to hooking up with the person in question and b) he is afraid (on pain of assassination) of getting involved in politics and drawing attention to himself

trans ally because despite his reluctance he agrees to publicly support the first trans person he's ever met almost immediately

[wanhyutji]

Actually I DO think twelve year olds should get hrt. That’s the normal age to start puberty, so why does it have to be different for trans kids?

[starsharts-blog]

If you think trans kids don’t deserve the right to a timely and correct puberty – the same way cis kids already get – you are transphobic.

[wre7ch]

if trans kids are too young to start puberty so are cis kids

[absolutely-not-a-cryptid]

btw if you encounter uneducated but loving and supportive parents who are fretting over whether to let their kid take hormones, this is the most effective argument by far.

Reframing it as "your kid is facing the risk of going through the wrong puberty either way, so you might as well let them pick" works incredibly well, because in their head, transitioning is a scary medical intervention rather than an alternative to what was going to happen anyway.

[absolutely-not-a-cryptid]

My favourite catchphrase from any fictional character ever is from Gregor Vorbarra (and his badass foster mum): "Let's see what happens."

which is a pretty mundane sentence. but it's a lot less mundane when it's coming from the emperor of three planets who once drunkenly "fell" out a window and ran away to accidentally work in construction, and is one of two people who can consistently outscheme Miles Vorkosigan. He has the kind of pent up rage that can only be amassed by a lifetime of sitting through meetings with the dullest people alive. He is a quiet, mild mannered man who itches to watch the world burn.

"Let's see what happens" is a signal that Emperor Gregor has switched into chaos gremlin mode. Be afraid. Be very afraid.