šš in bio = no socials break/communication slowdown
šš„¾š§š±- It's Irrigation Season Baby! (who the fuck knows when I'm online)
Me: Mildly maniacal mountain man (approximate). Hugely enthusiastic and helpful, if sometimes brusqueā my inbox is always open, same with my asks. I have a truly concerning number of interests, but at the core is creativity and learning. I love to push myself to learn new things and improve my skills. Ignore the associated wip graveyard please.
Hugely anti censorship. If you think that makes me problematic, good, screw off.
I'm over 30 and while intergenerational friendships are incredibly important, I'm bad at self censoring and like lewd shit, so š this is NOT a minor friendly space š If you're old enough to be online unsupervised then you're old enough to curate your experience: I am not the one to get upset with if you hang here anyway and see something you are uncomfortable with. I wont police where you go online, but I'd rather you not engage with my works, please look up 00s internet safety recs for minors.
Currently hugely into the Fallen Hero Games and very down to nerd out about the impacts of telepathy on sense of self.
I'm frankly terrible at tagging but I do my best: #my art and #my writing (plus #raz becker if you're looking for my Sidestep) are the most reliable...
Also trying to be brave and write/share fanfic:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
If you accidentally hurt someone or cross their boundaries and they make you aware of this, literally all you have to do is apologize and stop. You don't have to beat yourself up internally for months. You don't have to hate yourself for fucking up. You don't have to feel like a horrible person. No one benefits from any of that - and at worst, such an extreme reaction will make the person in question less likely to speak up around you in the future, cause even if your negative reaction is directed at yourself and not at them, it's still unpleasant for everyone involved.
Actually, you are enough. Even if you donāt work. Or study. Or go out. Or have friends. Or have family. Youāre enough because you exist and your existence is enough to be enough because you are not a product. You are not a sum of output. You are not a task to complete. But because you are something the universe wanted and put here even if youāll never understand why. Somewhere in the cosmos your existence makes a difference, even if itās not the way others existences do.
Fanfiction is supposed to be cringy. You're allowed to write bad. You're allowed to be cringe. Fanfiction is supposed to be self indulgent. You're allowed to be cringe. Let yourself be cringe. Fanfiction is supposed to be fun. Stop putting arbitrary rules on yourself and be free.
This isn't necessarily literal. It can apply to characters who aren't children too. But there's something about characters who are either certain of the fact, or terrified of the possibility, that they are just fundamentally wrong and bad at their core
the semantic drift of the term "liminal" genuinely pisses me off and i know its petty. LIMINAL IS A TRANSITIONAL STAGE BETWEEN TWO STATES- OR. IF WE WANT TO WIDEN THE BOUNDARY HERE. IT COULD BE ON THE VERY EDGE OF BECOMING SOMETHING ELSE. just because something is abandoned doesn't mean its liminal. in fact, that shopping mall was MORE liminal when it was dying off and shutting down outlets every month than it is 5 years later when the space is fully abandoned.
here's a secret: whatever you're doing, you have to root for your peers with all your heart because it forces you to root for yourself too. I've seen people in various spheres of my life (workplaces, education, art, activism) fall into the trap of envy and resentment when they see others succeed while they struggle, and it always always goes hand in hand with them pulling back and giving up and stagnating.
when you let yourself get sour grapes about shit, you tacitly give up on yourself. when you sit around hoping other people will flop and fail so you can catch up to them, you stop trying. it's a fantasy of mediocrity, the vain wish that other people would walk so you could take the gold medal at a jog. wouldn't you rather come last place at 27mph?
a lightly unedited still piece from 2019 era
still not totally in love with it and will not be posting to ao3 atm
When Julia (Esperanza Maria GarcĆa) Ortega was born, the universe lined up, the perfect mix of daring and luck, with just enough common sense to be a success and a dash of looks for good measure.
Ā When her twin brother Ricardo was born minutes later, the universe twisted in on itself and became a parody of logic and collectively decided his life would be some long inside joke it had with the stars.
Or at least that's how he felt sometimes.
While he was the cause of many of his mother's grey hairs and his fatherās wrinkles, Julia was the cause of their smiles and beaming looks of joy.Ā
Or at least for their father, and considering he was a joyless bastard half the time, he figured it made Julia a valid candidate for canonization.Ā
Julia was always the better child, more responsible, pulling her younger brother out of the fire when his antics caught up to him, the perfect older sister in comparison to him, at least in the eyes of their father.
He personally thought he was still their momās favorite child and clung to that belief out of sheer shielding arrogance.
But despite everything, or maybe because of it she was also his best friend. Someone to help cover for him when he snuck away, to distract their father or mother when he slunk back in just like he would do for her. And someone to join him on his death-defying stunts with his friends. Especially if it was their last one.
āJulia, you have to come along. You're shipping out soon; come on one last jump.ā ok her enlisting wasnāt any surprise to him, but it still stung, especially when he found out. Their father had āmade an announcementā at the last big family dinner.Ā
His eldest child, his pride and joy, was following in his footsteps. Her burning face and embarrassment almost made up for it, but the dinner tasted like ash in his mouth the whole night. The unsaid things heard loud and clear, not his son, not Ricardo
āItās not like that, flaco.ā She snapped a rubber band over her wrapped-up braid, safer than using pins for a bun. āThereāll be leaves and training before I ship outā
āAll I'm hearing is whining. Come on, this is Hollywood Hill. Aka The Jump of the decade. And who better than the Ortega Twins to make history?ā- before there weren't any more Twins doing jumps and stunts up and down the west.
Ā A final hurrah for them, before she left.
āFine, stop trying to manipulate me. Youāre terrible at it.ā She smiled at him as they drove out to meet Marek and the others,
Maybe this would be a nice memory, secure them their five minutes of fame on the web, something to look back on years later.
Till it all went sideways.
āI didnāt ask you to save me!ā
āThat's what older sisters do Ricardo!ā
Their mother had thanked god they didnāt die, but as Ricardo laid in the hospital bed, he almost wished that he did. And heās sure as hell wished Julia didnāt jump after him.
What did she even hope to accomplish, cushion his fall, have them both die together.
Try to prove she could save him one last time.
Bullshit.
His spine was hanging on by a thread, her bones smashed, both fucked up, brain damaged.
Dragging her down with him, just like their father always said he would.
Not that he said a word to Ricardo since then, since he woke up and he said he would handle it.
He still wasnt sure if their father was speaking to both of them, or just Julia.
C-571.890 and C-306.875 were special, even in the program. One embryo, split into two, grown together in the same cocktails of drugs at every stage; they even took their first breaths together when they first got decanted.Ā
Two perfect mirror images of cuckoos that survived the experiments and the training; truly, the odds were astronomical. And were connected in ways beyond normal twins. An innate telepathic connection, sensory and cognizant as the drugs morphed their brains in development.
Ā Something even the dampeners couldn't fully block: some of the scientists thought it was maybe not telepathy but a double boost, replication perhaps.
Although this was disproven through exacting tests and means to see which was the original.
And while it meant they were never truly alone, it was both their greatest weakness and strength.
If one didnāt comply, you could punish the other, the perfect team and collateral for obedience on the field.
A leash that couldnāt be slipped.
But they did differ in small, minute ways that could almost be called a personality if their handlers ever mistakenly viewed them as human.
Ā CB-571.890 was less subtle than C-306.875, far more daring, bold, and painfully obvious, while CB-306.875 was far more gentle, soft, a weakness that couldnāt be trained out of her despite the Farmās best efforts.Ā
It was always a risk to send them on the same mission; they were more effective, but far more volatile, independent of handlers.Ā
And when things inevitably went wrong, a sudden aneurysm of CB-571.890ās handler just as they were packing up, leaving them with a chance as CB-571.890 dragged her clone, her twin, with her through the maze of streets and people to disappear in the Human masses.
The gun helped clear the other Handler.
As they camped out in an abandoned gas station, with magazines from before The Big One coated in dust and a few shared cans of tinned fruit, some old beer, and a small fire as they danced and felt sheer joy to cover the fear of the unknown.
They needed new names, to go with their new lives, true lives to be who they want to be. C-306.875 and C-571.890 were gone. Only Cyrus and Cybele now.
What better place to hide your inhumanity than in the city of Devils.
Am walking through Manhattan, there's a woman who can't be more than 25 in a big fur coat, walking with a cane, angrily saying into her headpiece "I want them them destroyed," I feel like an extra in a movie
being single sucks [remembers that romantic love isnt the gleaming beacon of salvation that will fix the chasm within me] #mychasm #isupportmychasm [remembers not to trivialize my emotions] but it is painful to never have been deemed worthy of that kind of lasting love [remembers how many incels there are] but honestly you should be totally self-sufficient and never want anything ever [remembers that im evil] im evil
