Disability benefits: "I mean, sure, there are probably some sad sacks who are gaming the system, there always are, but hell, with the amount of taxes we pay, the government can afford a few freeloaders, right? I'd rather pay for a couple people who don't really need it than not have the system at all for if I need it, or my kids do, or whatever. I mean shit happens. What if some asshole drunk driver puts me in the hospital and it takes me a year to get back on my feet? Or Heaven forbid something permanent happens. I'll sure be glad that I can get disability then, won't I?"

UBI: "I dunno, the kind of guy who'll just sit on the couch playing Call of Duty all day if he doesn't have to work, I kinda don't want him on my job site anyway. That type is just taking up a place that you could fill with someone who'll actually get the job done, you know? You end up short-handed even though you technically have enough people because everyone else has to pick up his slack. And it'd mean that if your boss is a dick you can tell him to shove it and not worry your kids are gonna go hungry while you find a better place. We can sure as hell afford it."

He calls himself "Jeff the Accountant." That's the alter ego he picks for himself.

You do have to wonder how anyone ever missed the fact that Ed is a ginormous nerd who wants to dress up. How any of his old shipmates or his own first mate could fail to understand that this is a dude who wants to play pretend so badly.

LOOK AT HIM WITH HIS TEENY TINY SHIP!

they first find him in the jungle, where an armadillo has no business being

they find the entrance to the city, while being followed by him

he is present when the volcano starts to erupt (previous concept art also showed him in the background actually stopping the eruption)

miguel and tulio sucked ass at the ball game, so they used Bibo as a ball. He ricocheted himself all over the place and defied physics to get into the hoop every time

Somehow, a lot of people just flat-out don't know about blue states having red pockets, about rural areas having a different culture and social norms from suburbs and cities, and how quietly and politely destructive those norms can be under the guise of community protection. Even folks who live in these areas don't always notice, especially if they're not personally affected. Sometimes they won't notice when they are personally affected, and they'll internalize it unconsciously as a sense of threat they can't identify, so they grab onto whatever handy scapegoat presents itself rather than reckon with their own vulnerability. (Emily Saliers' line about how "we kill just a little to save a lot more" in Philosphy of Loss rings true here, as well as pretty much the entirety of Become You. Go listen to Indigo Girls, it's how I'm coping.)

(My parents? Did not notice. They noticed I was "troubled", but it never occurred to them that the trouble was not teenage rednecks but grown-ass adults with college degrees.)

We're seeing my high school trauma on a national scale now. It's cool, I'm fine, I learned this stuff 20 years ago and then spent my entire adulthood adjusting to the idea that I might not need the anger and hypervigillance, finally started to set it aside and learn to live without it and then suddenly I DO need it again, but now I'm 20 years older, my body's not as durable, and yeah I'm mad about it.

Maybe things wouldn't have gotten so bad if I'd been louder in 2015 and 2016, and 2020, and 2024, made more people uncomfortable by showing my scars, put my white-passing, masculine face on the scary mysterious "other" to make it less scary and mysterious. We can't know for sure, but I can try to do it now and hope it's not too late.

You have compassion for people from the backwards place. You know how to bring them up to speed.

Op is one of my best friends. I consider him family. And we had a surprisingly similar experience of going to highschool in a place that was so goddamn backwards that sometimes when we talk we sound like fucking time travelers. Cause who'd believe that the shit we lived HAPPENED to people in our generation? It sounds like it belongs in the 1940s. The 1890s. But he never doubted me. And furthermore HE NEVER EXPECTED ME TO AUTOMATICALLY KNOW THINGS.

There's an expectation on the left today that "Google is free" and that people should already know the "right" (most forward thinking) things to say and ways to say it about any given topic. At the very least they should understand complex concepts like gender identity and racial identity already. That we're "past that" as a society. Oh boy let me tell you we are NOT. There are still rural areas , red pockets, places where being exactly the same as your neighbors is the right thing to do, and that kind of mental conditioning runs DEEP. And even now, even in a world where you CAN learn these words and concepts on the internet, people who haven't lived in the backwards world don't appreciate the SCARS it leaves on your brain and how hard it can be to deradicalize yourself. You need to have open-minded and compassionate people around you when you're working on it.

And that's where I was when we met. I was halfway through deradicalizing myself. I'd never even HEARD of gender identity as separate from biological sex. And then the smallest angryest trans man the world had ever met crashed into my life, basically moved into my apartment, and introduced me to the gender carousel that I'd one day get on. And he was KIND when I was dumb. And I was dumb. And I said all the wrong shit. And I just didn't get it, and he was a BLESSING for his patience with me and his explaining everything to me over and over and over till I finally GOT it. (Did anybody notice the weird egg shit I was saying?? No. We were all too busy sideyeing my partner and her propensity for cosplaying the kind of bishy anime men that tended to lead to gender issues to notice the deeply agender shit I was saying. Anyway what was I talking about?)

I genuinely think, at that point in my deradicalizing journey, while I was trying and struggling to LEARN I could have been pushed the wrong way if I'd been spoken to with the coldness and cruelty that I've seen directed towards people who don't quite get it yet. Part of right wing brainwashing is convincing people that you'll never be welcome outside their circles. That you'll be ridiculed and victimized. And that's one of the hardest things to bust through.

And that's one of the reasons perspectives like yours, op, my big brother in this big queer world, are so goddamn important.....people who understand how FUCKED brains get in regressive environments and approach with compassion. And I try to bring the spirit you blessed me with to my interactions and think we all should try to do the same.

Like yes, Agatha was born in colonial Salem and was probably an old hand at building shelters by the time she killed her coven. Maybe she dug one out of a tree hollow while Nicky napped against her chest, swaddled in layers of fur and wool. Maybe she built a crude lean-to (you can't tell me she didn't run across Native Americans at some point and took notes of their housing structures). But the shelter wouldn't have been permanent. Not something she could stay in for long periods. Maybe she got lucky and found an old hunting cabin and killed the witch (or human) who resided there and had an honest to god roof over her head for a season until the thaw came and people would discover the corpses (or maybe Rio decomposed them rapid-fire so there's no evidence, who knows?)

But maybe there were lean times, dangerous times, where Agatha /didn't/ have a shelter to run to when the weather turned violent and bitter. Maybe there were more close calls their either she and Rio would like to admit. Maybe there were moments where Agatha, hell-bent on keeping her son warm and alive, put his needs above her own and almost froze only for her to wake in the care of a familiar skeletal silhouette somewhere Agatha doesn't recognize.

Jeremy Brett (November 3, 1933 – September 12, 1995) Best-known role in the Classic era: Freddy Eynsford-Hill in My Fair Lady (1964)

Haymitch: I love you.

Effie: That’s sweet, but try again.

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know.