#comments also welcome

[maddilynmuse]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Spoilers for In Stars and Time!

And a quick content warning, this fanfic contains discussions of trauma, religion (the in-universe change belief but still), but for once not religious trauma.

Bonnie doesn’t understand why Frin is still acting weird. Sure, he had to go to endless school, but he’s had a break since then, so why isn’t he better yet?

Three adults have to explain the concept of trauma to a child, and our lovely Vaugardians have to come contend with the fact that sometimes Change isn’t intentional nor wanted.

Primarily Hurt/Comfort.

Enjoy, lovelies!

——

I prefer tea, but buy me a Kofi?

[frankie-forever]

Send me asks maybe? 🤓

[skyguyed]

hey friends what’s ur new years resolutions?

here’s mine

get a new job

finally finish my rebels gifset-per-episode series

stop using plastic bags for shopping and bring my own to the store

work through the french textbooks i bought

start drying my own herbs (and veggies)

im feeling chatty, anybody wanna tell me yours?

[robotmoxie-blog]

A Very Millennial Post

Okay, look. Punctuation and capitalization and everything. Suitable for reading and healthily truncated to not look like shit. Formatting OK. Motive OK. All systems nominal.

I’ve been “anti-social” my entire life. And by that, I mean quiet. I mean fucking quiet. As a very small child sleeping in the same bed as my parents, I once rolled off, and rolled under the bed. And nobody found me for more than an hour, because I didn’t make any sound.

I’m still quiet. There are days when it doesn’t feel right for me to speak, and I don’t.

Old people know what a fucking phone is. Telephones have been around for 140 fucking years. And now I can get on my phone, whenever I feel like it, and I can talk to you.

I can talk to you, and not the people calling me anti-social. Or fat. Or telling me that I need a haircut. Or buying me fucking axe body spray for Christmas. Or insisting that I eat, so that they can tell me that I eat too much.

If you’re not starting to see the problem, then I’ll spell it out: The people saying these things to me are my family, and my family is 99% old people. I’m talking the 50+ range, bare minimum.

They hate, viscerally, stridently, that I have a choice. That I can choose, while being no more or less quiet than I have been for the past two decades, to socialize with someone who’ll be kinder to me than they will.

They see that as a problem I created. Of course they don’t reflect on their own behavior, why would they? They’re perfect, everyone in the graduating class of 1958 told them so. How could I possibly not want to be in their company?

Or perhaps, more frustrating to them- how could I so openly prefer the company of someone else, who “isn’t even there?”

My phone hasn’t separated me from anyone that I didn’t want to be separate from. If I don’t want to join the conversation about who wants to tongue-wash Donald Trump’s balls this upcoming election, I can opt out. “Oh, he’s buried in that damn phone again.” You bet your ass I am. I’d rather be making damning accusations about the violent capitalism of the Floo company in Harry Potter. There are people in my life who will talk to me about that, and they don’t make remarks about my weight, either.

They hate texting especially, because I can opt out without even looking busy. I can disengage from their awful behavior without even opening my mouth. All I need is a phone in my hand, and I can healthily socialize instead of letting people who, in over twenty years, have rarely ever behaved as if they think of me as a friend, mistreat me.

My phone isn’t sucking me in. My phone has let me attend more parties than I ever have before. It keeps me calm, helps me not notice when someone makes a horrible joke. Helps me keep my mouth shut when someone I’m expected to trust uses the words “Muslim” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

So I go to the function, and I have a little something to eat, and I talk about the ball game because I checked the highlights on my phone before showing up.

And then I check on Neko Atsume. I scroll my dash. I flip around the panels in 2048 a little, or log into WoW Armory and talk to the guild.

And while I’m doing that, I can’t hear an 83 year old woman singing the praises of segregation. I can’t hear the modern tragedy of someone in my family saying they “forgot to season” the chicken. I definitely can’t hear a whole room full of horrible, loud laughter, as someone makes a joke about racist violence. I’m “too sucked into my phone,” I must not have heard, that’s why I’m not laughing, definitely.

I could make a scene. Morally, there are times when I feel like I should. But if I did, I’d be homeless. I hear everything they have to say, and I say my piece about it here, so that they don’t have to hear my voice, and they don’t have to feel any inclination to put me out of their home.

I’ve gone on for a long time, but I’ve tried to keep this as linear as I can. Owning a smartphone has been good to me. It’s lowered my anxiety level at family functions, it’s helped me not say something dangerous and get thrown out, and it’s kept me in contact with the people who have treated me best. But being able to make that choice- opting out, talking to people who make me happy, not being a nervous wreck- seems to be the defining reason that the old people I know feel opposed to “Millennials” and their modern tech.

I don’t have any fantastical insight or really brilliant parting words, here, but this is where the post has to end. I guess what you can take home with you is that the past several generations have taught each other that being able to control someone, even in a casual situation, is good. And ownership of a smartphone is, in a handful of ways, the counter to that control that they never saw coming.