Passing on advice I received growing up as someone who grew up around alternative adults of several flavors and heavily tattooed folks with "job killer" tattoos (and was raised by one such person!) that I have had to put into practice as someone who is alternative themself now:
If you are a young alternative person, it cannot be understated how important having a couple "normie" pieces of clothes in your closet "just in case" is.
Sometimes you will have a job interview, a doctor's appointment, a housing application, or some other kind of obligation where for your own safety and security you need to tone yourself down for a brief period of time.
It's not fair. It's bullshit. But sometimes you have to eat your vegetables you know? And it's a cost benefit analysis and it depends on the things you personally prioritize in your own life, but sometimes minor sacrifices have to be made in order to keep yourself safe and get yourself things you need to do so.
248 notes
·
View notes
I hate drake so much i hope he dies a painful death in your royal AU 😡
Fairly certain this is gonna be a common agreement yes
Honestly in one version of events I just imagine Drake making a stupid mistake in a battle or border dispute and getting himself killed like a coward or an idiot because he is both of those things
In ANOTHER version I was talking about with @jtl-fics and @paradoxolotl we can make it as dramatic as we want ✨
And honestly I’ve been meaning to write it! I even started writing it, but as I went I realized it has the potential to get wayyy out of hand by way of scenes (in that it would become several scenes bc there’s so much to cover) so instead of waiting to be fully finished, I am going to give us all an early sparknotes or summary of events
What I DID write all the way was what might happen when Abram and the prince run into Spear at a ball/event: here.
(⬆️POV you are a very stupid baron and you’ve just made your very last mistake)
Find the royal au writing masterpost here 💕
After all that (the snippet) goes down, Spear is probably very angry. How dare the prince act so ungrateful to his family, how dare he be threatened by the Evermore mutt, and how dare he be publicly embarrassed like that. He’s too proud to even go fume about it on his own. He’s always had people and things to take his anger out on. So he reverts back to what he knows.
No one in the castle stops him on his search of the halls. They all recognize the Spear family - of course the Spears visited often, at least before, and often enough to send their prince to live with them. The twins and anyone else in the know about the prince’s time there are extremely private about it. The staff that see Spear have no reason to think anything of his presence at all.
But Abram is still standing watch at Andrew’s door, and he doesn’t seem about to leave. Spear likely thinks it doesn’t matter much - the brat is small and unassuming except for those nasty scars. Abram even gets distracted by a small crash coming from the direction of the stairs, wandering a little way down to see.
It should have been obvious not to underestimate an official royal bodyguard. Spear hasn’t even touched the door before Abram is there, pinning an arm behind his back as something sharp again presses to Spear’s jacket. The surprise knocks Spear against the prince’s door before Abram pulls him up and back a few steps.
Andrew does answer. Likely he thought it was Abram knocking, but as soon as he sees Spear he freezes. Spear doesn’t even have time to revel in the fear he caused - Abram uses all his weight to swing Spear around and shove him hard against the far wall. What Spear vainly thought was an empty threat before feels suddenly much more real, the way Abram doesn’t try to be at all gentle or careful. The blade is biting into Spear’s clothes.
And Spear is angry. The Evermore filth on him, the gall to treat Spear like this when Spear should be allowed to trample this brat under his horse. The brat thinking he had any say over the Palmetto prince.
He snarls, “Andrew, control your dog!”
And he doesn’t see it, but that snaps a little of Andrew’s panic. The only thing more potent than Andrew’s memories is his white hot anger at Abram’s, and even though Abram doesn’t react, Andrew absolutely refuses to let that slide.
Spear hears, “Dont let him touch you,” and then he’s released. Finally, he can get a little justice for this treatment. He turns and raises a hand to strike Abram.
Abram takes off his hand as he swings.
Andrew gets full oversight on Spear’s punishment. They have him convicted of untoward behavior, trespassing, and then Andrew allows ‘attempted destruction or harm of royal property’ only when he’s told it adds heavy consequence.
Really, it doesn’t matter all that much. Everyone in that room for the proceedings knows why he’s really there, and maybe those three charges wouldn’t always add up to a death sentence, but Aaron has been waiting for this chance. He adds ‘intention of treason’ to the trespassing charge and tells Andrew to do what he will.
Andrew doesn’t let Abram near it when they carry out the sentence. He does go through with some of his plans for Drake - he won’t ever make Drake pay 1:1 for what he’s done, but the magnitude would have been similar, had they gotten that far. They don’t, though. Andrew is doing just fine watching the proceedings, letting it pass through his eyes and ears and only be remembered when he really wanted. He had been sure he wanted this, he’d been sure it would be satisfying and cathartic. But he wasn’t feeling those things as much as he should have been.
Part of the punishment for treason is flogging. Andrew sees the strikes fall and it looks vaguely familiar. He’s seen those wounds and scars before. And suddenly it comes to him all at once; he doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to watch this. He just wants Drake dead. He wants Abram.
So he moves for the first time in several minutes.
“Enough. I’m finished.”
Aaron gives him a look but gestures to the soldiers or whoever else. Andrew stands and goes to leave and there’s a scuffle behind him, yells and pounding feet. Something unsheathed and then a heavy, sickening thud. Maybe even a cut off scream.
Even then he doesn’t turn around. He can’t make himself. Spear had charged him, he understands distantly. He doesn’t know who was just struck, but the only person that should have been so close to him was his brother.
He whispers, “…Aaron?”
“Go, Andrew,” Aaron says quietly, and Andrew finally breathes again. “Abram is waiting.”
So Andrew does go, and he spends a long time holding Abram, assuring himself that Abram is there in one piece and isn’t being harmed, Drake is no longer there and can’t harm anyone else. Maybe this is far enough in that Andrew can even let himself be held, too. So he does find the catharsis and satisfaction, but not in watching Drake suffer. Just in the fact that Abram allows him close enough to hold, to play with his hair, to fall asleep there curled up in the middle of his bed. Unused mattress to every side and no space between them.
210 notes
·
View notes
Fig's line "I don't think I'm an artist, I think I'm just a good friend" has not left my head at all. Just...
You're Fig Faeth and your horns came in over the summer and you pick up the bard class as a form of adolescent rock 'n' roll rebellion, and it works! It's exactly the outlet you need! You give a guy you just met drumsticks and you start a band and it's good enough that within a year and a half you're touring. You are, in every sense, good at being a bard.
And then, finally, your junior year, you start to take it seriously. Your art goes from an outlet and a form of rebellion to a practice. A discipline. (Can rebellion exist within a discipline?) Your classmates know what they want to do with their work. They all have a thesis statement. And yeah, there's cohesion in the music you make, but you've never had to think about why you make it. You've never sat down and dissected what it is about bass that speaks to you. You've never poured over your lyrics to pick at any deeper meaning. Why should you? You don't play music for a grand design, you do it to... huh, why do you do it?
(Your art is the one form of self-expression that feels as safe as Disguise Self does, because even if you're pouring your heart onto the page and then screaming it in front of thousands of people, it's not like you're really making yourself known. You can sing I'm lonely, I'm scared, I'm furious, and your fans will sing it right back, and there will still be the distance between performer and audience to keep your heart safe.)
Now you're being asked to look inward to explain the artistic choices you're making, and you can't help but recoil at that, because you'd rather do anything than look inward. Meanwhile, your classmates have no problem with it, so you start to wonder if you're a real artist at all. Can your art be authentic if it only exists to bolster a thesis statement? Has your art been unauthentic this whole time because you've never really thought about a thesis statement before? Is that what makes it art, and not just the next track on somebody's teen angst playlist?
You can't think about yourself— acknowledging your own existence makes you want to puke. So if your music is an extension of yourself, (and it is, even if it's just because the spotlight reveals only what you want it to,) you can't think about your music. You can't. You have to. Your grade depends on it.
You're Fig Faeth, and you keep multiclassing because you'd rather be a good friend than a great artist. If introspection is what great art demands, then fuck it. You must not be a bard at all.
63 notes
·
View notes
Stranger Things has a HUGE fandom. I think just one way we could come together and make an impact is by donating to the Entertainment Community Fund (they mention it specifically on the WGA Strike site).
Something fandoms do all the time is come together and manage to donate hundreds upon thousands of dollars, and bc there’s so many of them, each of them don’t even have to donate a lot.
News articles popping up that it’s been reported the fund received hundreds upon thousands of donations over a short time, likely as a result of ST fans coming together to do their part, feels like the least we can do right?…
Im trying to explore all options here.
Most of us live nowhere near the studios so protesting isn’t an option.
Spamming Netflix social media with our qualms seems like a lost cause bc they deal with fans hounding them every other day for canceling their favorite shows and don’t bat an eye, granted those fandoms obviously weren’t too big in the first place otherwise the shows probably wouldn’t have been canceled in the first place so that’s not saying a lot. Regardless, that also feels like a dead end, assuming our help starts and ends with us spamming Ted Sarandos’ instagram, that won’t go very far.
My point is, we don’t have that many options.
We can spread the word and hopefully those that do have the ability to do something more active in person will be inspired to.
We can do what we can online to be heard.
But it only goes so far.
I feel we are fortunate to have a HUGE fandom, so the prospects of focusing on spreading the word about the strike and encouraging fans to donate to that fund, is something that feels substantial, that would 100% make an impact in terms of it directly benefiting the writers.
I personally don’t have much money to give and I know that’s the case for a lot of people. But I could do it at least once and if we managed to pull together hundreds upon thousands of fans to do the same, that’s gotta be worth something?
207 notes
·
View notes
you can just not like a fandom joke without it being racist
Absolutely! I see posts on my dash every day I don't find particularly funny, so I just scroll right past.
However, as I said in my original post, "jokes" about Ed not understanding how to use soap not only aren't funny, but are racist as well.
I really hope I do not need to say that white people have a long history of accusing people of color of being ignorant savages and simpletons as an excuse to brutalize and enslave them and to decimate their communities. I'm just going to assume you're already aware of that angle.
But there's also a very long history of people of color being viewed as dirty and unclean, based solely on the color of the skin or the texture of their hair. This article includes an advertisement from 1884 showing a white child washing a Black child with soap and, gasp! The blackness just washes away in the tub. And lest you think that's a distant phenomenon, Dove got called out for a similar advertisement in 2017. This article also cites a number of examples of the ways white people are allowed to talk about how little they shower or wash their hair in a way that people of color cannot. Not to mention the articles that are in the news seemingly every other day about school/workplace bans against natural hair. Granted these are not scholarly articles because I'm just pulling this together quickly while I have a few minutes on my lunch break, but trust. The sources are there. It's a disgusting stereotype that has done, and continues to do harm to our society, end of.
Also, frankly, I find it really difficult to believe that if the roles were reversed, and Stede commented about yummy lavender soap, that we'd see anywhere near the amount of posts and art about Stede eating soap. Because why wouldn't we assume Stede was just commenting on how good it smelled? Because obviously Stede knows soap is for washing and not eating because he's a grown ass man.
And yet it's supposed to be funny that Ed, also a grown ass man, would not know not to eat soap because???? Very curious. Would love to hear what's funny here. What exactly is the joke?
Not to mention, as @thermoskind pointed out in their tags on my original post, Ed clearly washed up between the raid and properly meeting Stede, and he also commented to Stede's crew that they looked grubby. The man knows how soap works.
I get it. It's "just a silly joke, it's no big deal." And to that, I'd urge to reflect for a few minutes why it's more important to you to have a quick giggle than to stop perpetuating rhetoric that actively plays into ugly racist stereotypes.
236 notes
·
View notes