I May Need To Try This

Is the Thargo for sale?

*me, owning a strange boutique housegoods/book store selling a variety of mystic, occult objects but no one realizes I live there, this is literally my living room*

reblog to save and share

as an aroace person with limited sexual experience, no interest in watching porn, and poor sex ed as a teen, there IS something simultaneously funny and vaguely tragic about being 28 adult years old and realising how extremely tiny your frame of reference is for genitalia and deciding you should expand this to better understand bodies (yours and others). and then you're just there like "okay so what the fuck do I even google right now, anyway"

<3

I was feeling agitated and artblocked yesterday so I decided to give my brain a rest by watching TV and then the next thing I knew these were in front of me

Today I met happiness

Hey, look at me. Look at me. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: you need to condition yourself to being okay with being inconvenienced by things. The first time I spoke about this I meant it in a mental health way- it is good to go out to the store and see people versus just ordering alone at home- but there is another more pressing societal issue you should be more concerned about as well.

Any service you rely on for convenience can be weaponized against you the moment you begin to rely on it. Streaming used to be a cheap and convenient way to see movies at home. It is now exorbitantly expensive, you need multiple accounts just to get what you want, and any of those movies can be taken from you at any time. And unless you have gotten used to going through the “inconvenience” of owning physical media, you can do nothing about it. Same goes for buying things on Amazon. Same goes for any service like DoorDash etc. These companies WANT you to be reliant on them for convenience so they can do whatever they want to you because, well, what else are you gonna do?

Same thing goes for the uptick in AI. If you train yourself to become reliant on AI for doing basic things, you will be taken advantage of. It is only a matter of a couple years before there are no free AI services. Not only that, but in the usage of AI’s case, it is robbing you of valuable skills that you need to curate that you will be helpless without the moment the AI companies drive in the knife the way they have done with streaming. Delivery. Cable. Internet. Etc. It will happen to AI too. And if you are not practicing skills such as. Writing. You are not only going to be at the mercy of AI companies in the digital world, but you are going to be extremely easy to take advantage of in real life too.

I am begging you to let go of learned helplessness. I am begging you to stop letting these companies TEACH you helplessness. Do something like learn to pirate. It is way more inconvenient at the beginning, but once you know how, it is one less way companies can take advantage of you. Garden. Go to the thrift store (older clothes hold up better anyway). These things take more time and effort, yes, but using time and effort are muscles you need to stretch to keep yourself from being flattened under the weight of our capitalist hellscape.

Inconvenience yourself. Please. Start with only the ways you are able. Do a little bit at a time. But do something.

excuse me, Dragon is his WIFE

Support group

"I know how these arms have held me, and will again. These things are you, my love, and I know them."

Sobbing, screaming, writhing on the floor and throwing up I love this I hate it it broke my heart it solved all my problems it defines me I want it on my obituary

If people keep having amazing ideas I'm never going to get any of my WIPs done. Here's a oneshot of @bigidiotenergytm 's Vasileios (transmasc Penelope) reuniting with Odysseus

-----

Through twenty years of solitude Vasileios had suffered since Odysseus' reluctant call to war. Ten years of uncertainty since the news of Troy's fall. Four years of tension with the arrival of the suitors, and three years of bitter mockery of what should have been a wonderous gift from the goddess Aphrodite. And yet, Vasileios had never been more terrified than in the hundred seconds since Telemachus had announced the arrival of Odysseus.

It wasn't that he didn't trust his husband. They'd made vows to one another. Even after twenty years, he was home. Odysseus had built their wedding bed as a monument to their immovable love, built him a palace around that wedding vow. If, after twenty years, he was still the man who'd loved so fiercely, he could surely accept this.

But, said a treacherous voice in his mind, those vows had been made to Penelope, not to Vasileios.

The door creaked open. And there he was.

Odysseus.

The first thing Vasileios noticed, to his shame, was how frighteningly small his husband was. He looked as though he'd been hungry for a very long time. His beard, though roughened by sea salt and a few days longer than usual, was neatly trimmed. Where had he found himself, Vasileios wondered, that he would care for his appearance but not for his health?

His eyes were hard, framed by dark circles, and angry in a way that had never been aimed towards his love.

"Who are you," Odysseus demanded, a hand clenching the bow at his hip as the other hovered over the quiver at his other side. "What have you done with her? Where is my wife?"

A lump formed in Vasileios' throat.

"I remember once," he said softly in lieu of an answer, "beneath a certain olive tree, that you made me a promise. Do you recall what it was?"

Odysseus' hand lowered slowly from the bow, confusion furrowing his brow.

"We promised to love one another, then and always, no matter... no matter..." Vasileios blinked rapidly.

"No matter how life changed us," Odysseus finished. His body slackened as the tension left him in a rush. "Penelope? Is that... are you...?"

"Vasileios, now," the king's consort explained with a watery smile. "I know it's... rather a bit more literal than we meant it then, but I hope you can still see that I am me."

Odysseus dropped the bow. It clattered to the floor, echoing his footsteps as he crossed the room. He raised a hand, slowly, gently, as though afraid to frighten him.

"...there is a lightness in your eyes I can't recall ever seeing," he said, brushing a hand over Vasileios' clean-shaven cheek and down the well-groomed beard at his chin, "although I dreamt of them every night."

Those gentle fingers brushed a tear from Vasileios' cheekbone.

"You look different," Vasileios noted, before chuckling in embarrassment. "Though, I suppose I'm not one to talk, am I?"

Odysseus smiled, soft and small, as if the expression were afraid to show itself. "I am not the man you fell in love with," he admitted quietly. "It would be remiss of me as a husband to renounce my love simply because you are no longer the woman I married. But I ask, Vasileios, could you fall in love with me a second time, if you knew what terrible things I've done to return to you?"

Vasileios couldn't suppress a sob of mixed relief and empathy. "W-what sort of things did you do?" he asked, fighting to regain his composure. The hand retreated from his cheek.

"Reddened the sea across every island I landed upon," Odysseus declared in a dead voice, his eyes betraying the depths of pain he truly felt. "Sacrificed men I loved with all my heart, because the love I held for them could never compare to that which I hold for you."

Vasileios' hand was lifted softly, clasped between two worn with unfamiliar scars.

"The atrocities I've committed cannot be undone," Odysseus whispered. "Could you still love me as the man I've become, even if I am not your kind and gentle husband?"

Ah, this foolish man. Vasileios stood, pulling away from his touch and pretending it didn't burn behind his eyes to do so.

"If it's true that you have changed so irrevocably," he said, "can you do something for me? A simple task, just to bring me peace of mind?"

Odysseus looked at him quizzically, but with naked hope in his eyes.

"Will you move our wedding bed from this room, so that we might enjoy each others' company in greater comfort?"

The change was stark as the question visibly settled in Odysseus' mind. His gaze darkened with hurt, then with anger. His fists clenched at his sides.

"How could you ask this of me," he asked, the devastation in his voice nearly shaking Vasileios' resolve. "I built this wedding bed with my own hands, a monument to my love for you. I built a home around my love for you!" He was shouting now, anger boiling from the sea of sorrow. "A symbol of our love, our vows, to be as steadfast and everlasting as its very roots in the soil. And you ask me to cut it from those roots?"

Vasileios crossed the distance between them fearlessly, cradling the face of a man who still wore the blood of a hundred others as he stared into his fury with an anger to match.

"Only my husband would know this, or care for its preservation," he shouted in return, tears streaming down his face, "and you dare to try and convince me that you are no longer that man?"

The anger drained from Odysseus so quickly that Vasileios worried for a moment that he may faint. He tucked his king's face into his neck, burying his nose into curls crusted in blood and sea salt.

"I would fall in love with you a thousand times," Vasileios declared, anger at the loss of time turning to wetness on his face and in his husband's hair. "I will fall in love with the man you have become, and every man you've been for twenty years, and every man you will be until we both embrace the shroud of death."

Odysseus' shoulders shook.

"And I ask, husband," Vasileios continued, pulling himself away to meet the king's red-rimmed eyes, "can I ask the same of you? I am not the woman you loved. I am not your sweet and soft Penelope. I have changed much to keep this household safe, to bring myself some happiness in the face of my grief. I will never be her again, and I do not wish to be. Can you love me as I am, and for every man I will be?"

Odysseus pulled Vasileios' hands into his own once again.

"Vasileios," he said seriously, "if I am still the man you love, you cannot tell me you are not the person I married." He turned their hands over, tracing his partner's fingers. "These callouses from your weaving, I know them. I had memorized them a thousand times, so well I could follow a map of them more closely than any of Ithaca." His hand slid up Vasileios' arm to a spot on his wrist. "This scar from the knife you learned to wield in secret as a child, I know it too. This strength," he caressed his upper arms, "from decades of working the loom, I know how these arms have held me, and will again. These things are you, my love, and I know them."

Hands cradled Vasileios' face. Two thumbs traced the dark circles beneath his eyes, wiping away fresh tears. "I do not know this tiredness to your face, nor the wrinkles that adorn it. I do not know this grayness to your hair." Odysseus drew a tentative hand through the softness of his lover's mane. "But I want nothing more in the world than to know them as I know all the rest of you, my love."

Vasileios sobbed, finally caving to his desire to cling to Odysseus like a child. His husband's arms wrapped around him just as tightly, as though afraid he would disappear the moment he let go.

"I love you." It didn't matter who said it first. There would be plenty more to fill their lifetime.

It wasn't supposed to happen to me

I wasn't supposed to hit a wall

I'm not supposed to burn out

I'm not supposed to back down

I'm not supposed to settle for less than perfect

Yet here I am

A failure

@poppytheaxolotl

Source: cowboymeni on ig