Queer, geeky, and periodically forgets that tumblr exists. No pronouns, please - hint, if you get stuck, just toss “Fire” or “Fire’s” in instead, unless it’s a reflexive pronoun in which case “themself” is acceptable. If you need consistent tagging, this may not be a safe account for you. Current main hyperfixation is Linked Universe/Legend of Zelda (LOL NOPE PROJECT HAIL MARY NOW), but who knows when that will change. CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED: if you follow me with a totally empty blog and you’re following more than a handful of people, I will assume you’re a bot and block you. I regularly go back through people's blogs and reblog huge bursts of things from the same person, so, uh, hi. (Header by @theshitpostcalligrapher)
“This means… of Rocky, possessive. Of the speaker.”
“My.”
“Correct. But only for names.”
“So you’re calling me…?”
Rocky repeats the word: “My Grace. Yes.”
“Are there other Graces? Why do you need to specify?”
Rocky considers this, tapping his xenonite-encased claws idly against the floor.
“No other Grace,” Rocky says. “We just do this.”
“Like an honorific,” Grace guesses. “It goes before everyone’s name? Everyone you know?”
Rocky whirs in surprise. “No, no, no. Not at all.”
“Okay, then who? What makes me qualify?”
Rocky is silent for a moment.
“...Does this offend Grace?” he asks, voice lower.
Grace blinks. “No! I don’t think so. Is there a reason to be offended?”
“Good,” Rocky says, relieved. Grace is starting to recognize what Eridian relief sounds like. “No, no reason.”
“Who else do you call that?”
“You don’t have this on Earth?”
Grace considers. What for, friends? He couldn’t call Marissa “my Marissa.” That would be weird.
“I still don’t know what it means,” he settles on. “So I couldn’t tell you.”
Rocky groans in frustration. He’s a very impatient tutor. “We just say it.”
“Are you my Rocky?” Grace asks. He hits the two keys to make the my note.
“I don’t know!” Rocky says. “You decide this.”
“I decide? Who do you use it for?”
“You. Adrian. I will use it for my pebbles.”
Grace blinks. “So few?”
Rocky shifts. “I am… you do not have the word yet. Eridian who works alone often, not close to many other Eridians.”
“What, mechanical engineer?”
Rocky chitters with amusement. “Acceptable.”
“Is Adrian your only friend?”
Rocky draws back, like he’s taken offense. “I have friends. Coworkers. But different.”
So just Adrian. And him.
“This worries you,” Rocky says.
“Adrian is your mate,” Grace points out. “I’m not your mate.”
“Correct. You are not. You do not like to be a mate.”
Grace isn’t sure how to respond to that, so he ignores it.
“I’m your friend,” Grace says.
Rocky hesitates, for a second. “...Correct.”
“Like your coworkers.”
“No.”
Grace sighs, rubbing his hand across his face. Okay, maybe that’s fair. It’s not like he felt about any of his coworkers like he feels about Rocky.
“Best friend,” Grace amends. “You’re my best friend, too.”
Rocky hums. “Acceptable.”
“Just acceptable? Now you are offending me. Can you just explain?”
This makes Rocky fall silent for a minute longer than usual. Grace is half-ready to apologize and to say let’s move on and to retype his own name without the superfluous my.
“The Earth ‘best friend’ is not strong enough,” Rocky says finally. “It does not translate this way.”
Grace runs his fingers through his hair, a little nervous, for some reason. “Okay.”
“It is…” Rocky pauses. He has to pause more often, now that they’re not using the translator, to simplify his language. “It means that I am not Rocky without my Grace. You are part of… of the whole. When I wake up, I think of you. When I work. When I eat. When I think I am going to die.”
Rocky speaks slowly, but it’s still a lot of Eridian for Grace to grasp all at once. Even as he works out the sentences in his head, he can feel hot tears rising in his eyes.
“It means that when you are sick, I am sick,” Rocky continues. “And it means I will take care of you, because taking care of you is taking care of myself.”
Grace bunches up his sleeve, wiping it across his face, blinking furiously.
Rocky’s voice is soft. “So Grace is part of Rocky. Grace is like a cell. You see? My Grace.”
Grace is quiet, for a moment, trying to get himself together. When he speaks, his voice is shaky.
“...Oh.”
Rocky hums, pressing his carapace gently against Grace’s arm. “You are leaking. Does this make you sad?”
Grace shakes his head, sniffing, crossing his arms across his knees and resting his chin on his sleeves. “Not at all.”
“Good, good.”
“I feel like that,” Grace mumbles. “Just like that. Just exactly—exactly like that.”
“About your old mate?”
“Don’t act stupid. You know I’m talking about you.”
Rocky hums, burrowing closer. Grace curls one arm around his carapace. That’s not enough, so he leans over, dropping his head down so his forehead presses against the xenonite.
“My Rocky,” Grace whispers in English.
“My Grace,” Rocky echoes in Eridian. Grace can recognize the note at the start. He will add it when he plays Rocky’s name.
“How long have you called me that?” Grace asks. “Must’ve been a while. I didn’t notice it change.”
Hey, everyone; I'm sorry to be asking for help again, but it's that time. While I currently have an extremely limited and unreliable source of income to help with covering food and medicine (and I don't know how long that will remain viable), I'm still deep in the red mentally, physically, and financially. I wish I had been able to make this post with more of a runup to the deadline, but my current housing situation is extremely poorly equipped to handle the heat wave this area is experiencing, and I've been battling the resulting illness just to stay conscious a fair amount of the time.
For those who are unfamiliar with my story, more in-depth explanations of what has gone down up to this point are available here. To summarize the important parts:
I am a severely disabled queer trans person with long COVID, living in poverty after escaping a series of abusive living situations involving neglectful caretakers, physical and emotional abuse, financial and sexual exploitation, and domestic violence. The most recent of these, which I escaped earlier this year after a murder attempt which the law did nothing about, was my family who have mostly cut ties with me since.
I have almost no income, and since my escape have been living out of Airbnbs with the help of donations online. I have been trying to get into a more stable housing situation and apply for disability for quite a while now, but have been met with walls and obstacles at every turn; right now I am simply trying to a place where I don't have to lose sleep over where I'm planning to sleep next month, let alone how to pay for it.
My current housing is not safe for me to keep living in, for the reasons I mentioned as well as many others. I can't leave before July 26th, but if I can raise the money to return to my previous Airbnb--which, despite not being perfect, isn't Literally Falling Apart, and has a relatively trustworthy host who likes me and only ended our first tenancy due to a genuine misunderstanding--I will be back in a house with actual functioning A/C and plumbing, where strangers are not constantly cycling in and out in large numbers with little accountability for bad behavior, and where my host is not constantly trying to trick me out of hundreds or thousands of dollars.
I have severe autoimmune-induced nerve damage, including spinal injuries, and cannot drive, use any software not accessible from mobile, hold a steady job, or safely leave the house. I have to be extremely careful about even what position it's safe to lie down in without causing myself further injury, and because of this--combined with long-term abuse, neglect, food insecurity, and illness--I am severely weak and atrophied. I may have at least one abdominal hernia as a result, though jesus christ I really fucking hope not lol
The autoimmune aspect of my condition is extremely heat-sensitive, and my health spirals rapidly when I am too hot for too long. Not only does this cause pain, brain fog, and worsening nerve damage, it makes me prone to severe, dangerous repeat infections that have already caused me lingering lung damage and hearing loss. I am also extremely vulnerable to heat exhaustion and heat stroke, especially with the medication I am on to control the inflammation.
There is a horrendous heat wave going on where I live, and with the timing it will almost certainly segue straight into one of our godawful summers with no reprieve. We're talking regular heat indexes of 96°F with humidity that has not gone below 70% at very minimum for weeks straight. It's really fucking bad, y'all. I am terrified at the idea of being trapped outside when I am already struggling this much indoors.
All of this together is to say that if I am unhoused for even a day or two, I will almost certainly die or suffer serious, permanent injury, including loss or impairment of my ability to walk or use the bathroom unassisted. I do not have the ability to carry my belongings with me, either, so being unhoused for even one day will almost certainly mean losing everything I own and starting over. I absolutely cannot afford to do this. If it happens I am fucked.
The expenses I am currently trying to cover, in order of urgency:
$800 (the amount of this month's rent that I do not currently have, and do not foresee raising by the 10th without help. This is the top priority.)
$800 (first month's rent for the other place, which is due at time of booking. If I wait too long to do this, it may end up booked out from under me for months again.)
$150 (replacing the cushion of grocery money I've been lucky enough to build up for this month, which is currently earmarked for rent)
$190 (rent for the remainder of my stay in the current place, due July 10th)
$800 (rent for my second month at the other place; I am really hoping I won't be expected to start paying this before I've even arrived for the first month, but all my efforts to figure out how the fuck the payment scheduling works have failed, so better safe than sorry. May be due July 10th)
$130 (the rest of my grocery money for this month, which I may or may not be able to cover myself especially since I may have to start paying my own phone bill soon)
Every donation helps, and I am so unbelievably thankful to everyone who has helped me get this far. As hard as this year has been, and as hard as this summer will be if I live through it, I am alive because of you all, and for the very first time in my 30 years of life I am not actively being abused. I am struggling but I am still fighting, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to keep working toward a better life for myself instead of dying on the street.
Please help if you can. Moogle is my best and dearest friend and I am so grateful to everyone who has helped them survive this long. Please: I don't want to lose them now. Please signal boost if you cannot help directly.
the thing about the whole "should old timey narrators count the servants as People" discourse that goes around ( that is, should a person consider themselves Alone if they have servants) is that every time half the examples are like "oh alas would that I had a friend to tell all the hot goss and talk about my feeeelings" and like yeah screw that , your servant doesn't need to do that free therapy but then the other half of the examples are like "alas that I have no one to tell about the Skull Eating Horror of Knobblington Range, which is coming to eat the skulls of everyone in this curséd abode" and honestly I think those narrators should bridge the class gap there and face a little social awkwardness in favor of avoiding the inevitable Chapter X: The Skull Eater Ate The Servant's Skull
"do you think the servants would believe them about the skull eater" listen. if my boss calls me in to say " Servant Worker Person, Whatever I'm Calling You, there's a curséd monster that's coming in to eat everyone's skull; truly you should Away" , then I am not staying to find out what the actual dealio is, I'm getting my Character and I am GONE , "you're gonna die if you keep working for me Ooooor you could Leave" thank you employer I am leaving right now immediately
I feel like I've seen the opposite at least a few times, where the narrator writes in their journal that "the Skull Eating Horror circles ever closer now, the estate lies in shambles, all the servants have fled in terror" and the implication is lowkey supposed to be that the servants are cowards for having abandoned their post and leaving the protagonist to fend for themselves but idk, I feel like they've got a better handle on the right way to deal with the Skull Eating Horror of Nobbington Ridge than maybe you do mx. narrator
i think baby-priority-seating should be a thing on planes. like. not, "they go on first", i mean how seating is ARRANGED. like o shit there's a baby on this flight? then the attendants ask everyone in the waiting area "who here is good with babies and enjoys the communal human experience of helping a parent soothe a scared child?" and then they rearrange everyone to make sure those people are sitting next to the baby just in case, and boom, less stress for probably literally everyone including the baby
i have no idea why i am thinking about this. i have no baby and have not been on a flight in years. this is dan levys fault
directors using colorful or "impossible" lighting to convey mood and meaning and beauty my beloved. directors making night scenes impossible to see for the sake of realism my beloathed.
I'm imagining a world where RPGMaker somehow made it as the de facto codebase for software and you have to navigate your banking app by walking around in a huge room full of NPCs named "make deposit" and "make withdrawal" etc and there's loud as fuck stock music playing
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
gummygunk
romaincrisis
