hiiii please tell me abt tiayf (i think?) bc that One Image That Is Apparently Themcore Fascinates Me <3
YES YES OKAY
SO tiayf is part of a set of ocs made based off of a dream i had a while back!! humanity has been ravaged by this undefeatable demonic parasite capable of possession + murder, and so to survive they’ve locked themselves away, in bunkers, warehouses, wherever they can. schools and hospitals and office buildings have been converted into shelters, which all have to follow main criteria - no cracks in the windows, no gaps under doors, no little ways to get in.
tiayf is that demon !! it doesn’t have a visible form, and appears only as a black cloud. it came to earth from the space between life and death, intent only on destruction. before it began to murder, it was discovered by scientists, caught, and brought to their lab to study as a new form of life. but it wasn’t really captured - it let them take it. it amused themself with their experiments for a while, before breaking containment and killing everyone in the lab, forcing one of the scientists who had originally caught it to kill the other.
from there, it began to bring the world to its knees, possessing people and making them do horrific things so then they killed themself out of guilt after the possession ended, or just killing people outright. once the destruction becomes more widespread, humanity begins to lock themselves inside - but it doesn’t help. tiayf still makes its way through the safe places that humanity has set up, waiting for someone to slip up and let it in - and they always slip up. someone always opens a window to get fresh air, opens a door to let in an abandoned loved one. humans always break the rules for their own benefit. it’s just a matter of time.
so tiayf continues killing humans, by bit, until there’s one safehouse left - the one a character called marcy leads. it waits and waits until something happens, and finally it does. a girl named halli, a human that tiayf missed, reaches the house. they open their doors to let her in, and tiayf slips inside. it doesn’t start the massacre immediately: over the time it’s spent on earth, it’s started to enjoy watching humans partake in their stupid little activities. so it waits and watches, as halli’s injuries heal. as she becomes closer with marcy, and the two develop a mother-daughter relationship and help each other through the crisis that’s befallen them. as halli is accepted and loved by the other citizens of the safehouse, and betters the lives of everyone inside. and then it strikes. it kills everyone in its path, except for halli and marcy, and leaves them stood in the middle of the rubble of the life they’d built. it swirls around them, cutting into their skin as they mourn, and as it leaves marcy clutches the bodies of her family and screams “this is all your fault!” and, previously nameless, tiayf takes this sentence, this agonised scream in the midst of despair, and turns it into their name.
it leaves halli and marcy to pull themselves back together, bandage their wounds, plan to bury their dead, and then it returns. it possesses halli when she’s defenceless, trapped in grief, and takes control of her body. with her hands, it kills marcy. while at this point it would usually leave its host, it keeps halli. releases her body just long enough for her to see what she’s been forced to do, and then takes control again. she becomes its new permanent host - she’s invulnerable while tiayf is inside her, so it brings her with it to travel the destroyed world, putting her in danger time and time again with no way for her to break free, trapped forever under someone else’s control, forced to relive her memories of marcy’s death on a constant loop :)
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you get used to it, but it's tiring, because they need you to understand your own life as a series of goalposts. what college are you going to, what's your major going to be, whatcha gonna do with that, oh where will you settle down, when can i expect grandkids.
for the longest time my goals have been so blurry that they track into each other, their undefined edges slipping quietly back into the soft night. today i want to be a writer; tomorrow i will want to be a doctor, later i will wish i took that law school free ride. how the fuck do people just know what they want to do with their life?
where do you want to be in five years? i want to be alive; which is a huge step for me. ten years ago i would have said i want to be asleep and meant i hope that i'm dead by then.
but i want a yellow kitchen and a stand mixer. i want a garden and a fruit tree (cherry, if i can make that happen) and a big yard for my dogs to play in. i want to come home and read poetry out loud to someone and have them close their eyes to listen. i want a summer watergun fight. i want to make snowmen. i want to be the house to go to for halloween. i want my life to settle around me in a softness, for it to lay down gently. if i am very, very, very lucky, i want to travel; finally go someplace overseas.
of course i don't know what i want to be doing professionally. what i actually want to be doing is curling up beside my dog, settling in to read. i want to be making myself a cup of good coffee.
i can't answer the other questions. whenever people asked me what do you want to be when you grow up, i used to say i hope i'm happy.
i hope i'm still kind, five years from now. i hope i never get jaded and mean. i hope i have stayed in therapy. what do you picture yourself doing? when will you actually be an adult about this? why are you so afraid of being ambitious?
am i not ambitious? the other day i rearranged my furniture which doesn't quite fit into my apartment. i watered my plants. i'm going to try to propagate a cherry seed. my five year goal is to spend more time laughing. to lie down in a patch of sunwarm moss. to relax for a minute. to close my eyes and think oh thank god. this is why i stayed. this is finally it.
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So long as the political and economic system remains intact, voter enfranchisement, though perhaps resisted by overt white supremacists, is still welcomed so long as nothing about the overall political arrangement fundamentally changes. The facade of political equality can occur under violent occupation, but liberation cannot be found in the occupier’s ballot box. In the context of settler colonialism voting is the “civic duty” of maintaining our own oppression. It is intrinsically bound to a strategy of extinguishing our cultural identities and autonomy.
[...]
Since we cannot expect those selected to rule in this system to make decisions that benefit our lands and peoples, we have to do it ourselves. Direct action, or the unmediated expression of individual or collective desire, has always been the most effective means by which we change the conditions of our communities.
What do we get out of voting that we cannot directly provide for ourselves and our people? What ways can we organize and make decisions that are in harmony with our diverse lifeways? What ways can the immense amount of material resources and energy focused on persuading people to vote be redirected into services and support that we actually need? What ways can we direct our energy, individually and collectively, into efforts that have immediate impact in our lives and the lives of those around us?
This is not only a moral but a practical position and so we embrace our contradictions. We’re not rallying for a perfect prescription for “decolonization” or a multitude of Indigenous Nationalisms, but for a great undoing of the settler colonial project that comprises the United States of America so that we may restore healthy and just relations with Mother Earth and all her beings. Our tendency is towards autonomous anti-colonial struggles that intervene and attack the critical infrastructure that the U.S. and its institutions rest on. Interestingly enough, these are the areas of our homelands under greatest threat by resource colonialism. This is where the system is most prone to rupture, it’s the fragility of colonial power. Our enemies are only as powerful as the infrastructure that sustains them. The brutal result of forced assimilation is that we know our enemies better than they know themselves. What strategies and actions can we devise to make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land?
We aren’t advocating for a state-based solution, redwashed European politic, or some other colonial fantasy of “utopia.” In our rejection of the abstraction of settler colonialism, we don’t aim to seize colonial state power but to abolish it.
We seek nothing but total liberation.
Voting Is Not Harm Reduction - An Indigenous Perspective
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[Image one: The first page of a digital comic about Miles Morales from the Spider-Verse movies. It begins with two panels of Miles' face resting on his closed hand. The first shows him in his school, wearing his uniform. He looks bored. The second has him in his first, store-bought Spider-Man costume. The forest surrounding Alchemax is behind him. Both of the panels cut off around his eyes. Next to them is two smaller panels, one showing someone in a classic Spider-Man costume swinging on a web, while the other shows their feet flying through the air. At the bottom of the page, there's Miles' legs flailing as he falls during the Leap of Faith scene. A panel is behind them, in a purple halftone gradient. Shards of glass surround the legs like lightning bolts. The page says "you always thought that the scariest part of a leap of faith would be the fall".
Image two: The second page of a digital comic about Miles Morales from the Spider-Verse movies. The first part of the sentence says "but really... it feels like flying;". This is interspersed with close-up panels of Miles in his first black suit. There's one of his outstretched hand, one of his chest symbol, one very close to his eyes and another of his outstretched feet. Behind the panels, there's a rock pigeon mid-flight. The sentence continues with "floating;", followed by four panels of Miles floating as his fall is flipped upside down. The pose is identical in each, but the background gets gradually darker for each one. Then, "free in a way that feels unnatural -" is written, accompanied by a panel of Miles in his school uniform. You can't see above his lips and he's sweating nervously, shoulders hunched. Scribbles, like the portals on The Spot, crowd around him. The sentence finishes with "you love it". The final panel zooms into Miles' hand clutching his backpack strap. His Spider-Man suit peaks out of his sleeve.
Image three: The third page of a digital comic about Miles Morales from the Spider-Verse movies. At the top of the page is Miles' shoes stood on the side of a wall, one foot hanging over the edge slightly. Above it, it says "the fear is in the precipice -". Below the drawing, it says "the edge", alongside Miles standing on a wall from behind, cut off around the ankles. The sentence continues "and what you gaze at beyond it", the last two words in a bubbly black and white font over top of a purple halftone gradient panel. Then, the sentence finishes "(and what you're scared will slink back in)". On the left side there's two panels, one a close-up of Kingpin's tie, and the other shows The Prowler's cape laying in a pool of blood. The other side has two panels set out the same. The top panel has one of The Spot's portals, while the one below it shows Jefferson Davis' glasses discarded and broken, one lens shattered and bloody.
Image four: The fourth page of a digital comic about Miles Morales from the Spider-Verse movies. It begins with Miles' shoes, one planted on the wall while the other hangs is elevated, hanging over the edge. Two panels beneath it show his feet with one lowered slightly, and then both planted on the wall. They're accompanied by the sentence "the hovering moment where you can still simply step back". After this there's two different Miles, standing with their bodies facing the viewer but eyes facing each other. The first is taller, unmasked, and wearing his outfit from the rooftop party. His expression is pinched together, worried. The other is in his ill-fitting store-bought Spider-Man replica suit, body posed as if he's been caught by surprise. His eyes, from what is visible, are wide. Two panels separate them - one is completely black, while one has a spark of blue lightning bursting out of it. Finally, the sentence ends "... but then you'd just be there; waiting, doing nothing".
Image five: The final page of a digital comic about Miles Morales from the Spider-Verse movies. It starts with Miles' hand in the darkness, unfurling as he reaches out his index finger. Blue lightning sparks off of it, leaving his finger like a claw. This is surrounded by the line "and you can't let that happen,". Below that, Miguel O'Hara's gloved hand creeps towards Miles, curled and claws out, like he's just failed to grasp something. It is large compared to Miles, who is swinging through the air, looking back at the hand. His body is fairly loose. The page ends with the line "even if the first step is the steepest".]
looking down
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