Art by Sapphire!

So if I encounter any ICE agents in my neighborhood, I will smile and waive and as soon as they make eye contact I will engage in the most aggressively friendly chitchat ever witnessed on my block.

I will ramble on and on about whatever pops into my head. I will ask them about their day, their hobbies, their home life, and their personal backstory until I find a common area of interest, and then I will crank my smalltalk game UP TO ELEVEN.

I will force them to look awkwardly at their wristwatch DOZENS of times without taking the hint. I will ask seemingly simple questions that do not have ANY simple answers. I will pretend to wrap up the conversation with, “Anyway…” and then segue DIRECTLY into another topic.

Because every minute an ICE agent wastes chatting with me is a minute that they’re not targeting my neighbors and disrupting their lives.

Get a copy of the song, Cotton Eye Joe. Carry around a big, loud speaker. If you ever see ICE show up in your neighborhood, start playing it at full blast. 

Best case scenario? You can motion for them to come over your way and challenge them to a dance off. (Probably not likely, but it never hurts to dream.) 

Worst case scenario? They think you’re weird and like Cotton Eye Joe. 

Likely scenario? If you’ve let your neighbors know ahead of time that hearing Cotton Eye Joe means ICE is in the neighborhood, it may give them the head start they need to avoid harassment. 

Now you might be thinking that picking Cotton Eye Joe is a really random choice, but consider the following reasoning: 

The song has a very loud, clear, and distinctive opening, so it gets the message across right away without spending time on any kind of intro 

The song was once popular enough that people can easily recognize it 

While the song is catchy, it’s not very likely to be anyone’s favorite, so you don’t have to worry about ruining it for them 

The opening line ‘Fit’adn’t is nonsensical enough to be used as a secret tipoff if you’re unsure who’s listening 

It’s upbeat enough that it likely won’t get on your nerves too fast 

When played really loud, it becomes nearly impossible to talk over 

Would this actually work? Honestly, I have no idea. I’m no expert in active resistance. But I figure it’s worth putting out there. And who knows, maybe it could catch on. 

Stay safe everybody. 

zelda: first sidon, now this? link, the guy wants to steal your triforce

link: he can have it. it’s up my ass though, but i’m sure with those hands he’ll find it real quick- 

ganon: the girls back home never treated me like this

Ways to say ‘I love you’

Batman

Never

Bothered

Attacking

The

Roots

Of

Social

Problems

WHAT THE HELL KIND OF BATMAN HAVE YOU BEEN WATCHING?

Fake geeks, I swear to god…

The best part is that most of the lore, especially Batman: The Animated Series, gets to a point in Batman’s career when everyone asks the question of why someone would rob a bank in Gotham when they know that if they approached Batman, and coincidentally Bruce Wayne, they could get the help they needed.

and I start the consultation already miserable as fuck and I give the kid some pen and paper so I can maybe communicate and see what's on his mind

and then I go WAIT A GODDAMN SECOND I KNOW THOSE MONSTERS

the mom looked at me as if her son and I belonged at the same satanic cult and that's why I knew the names of the demons in his head

so they decided to highkey just appoint all of them to my day and it took me almost a month to realize that the fact that I kept arriving and finding that all of today’s appointments were autistic children was Not A Coincidence 

anyway this one time there was a kid who was really into christianity but it was like, specifically angels 

so I’m trying to start up a conversation with him and I ask what he’s reading and he goes “do you know what a nephilim is”

and like for one hellish second my soul is suckerpunched out of my body and thrown straight into supernatural-fanfic-on-wattpad hell, and then I reassume control of my flesh prison, ignoring the mental edits of Dean and Castiel making out, and go “Aren’t those the guys who are half human and half angel?”

and the kid was so fucking happy but the mom was staring at me like ‘why are you privy to this bit of occult jesus lore’

and my heathen lesbian of a self just looks at her and goes 

In this cycle, Ganondorf wakes up/reincarnates/is freed early, and as he’s finally gotten sick of the cycles, he finds the infant Hero of Courage and either kidnaps him or orphans him so that he can raise him for himself, with the goal of corrupting him towards darkness and evil

But over time, Link corrupts Ganondorf, and by the time he’s old enough for him becoming the Hero of Courage to begin reasonably getting set in motion, Ganondorf has legitimately become a caring father to him

And then this cycle’s Zelda begins a hunt for the Hero of Courage and the Bearer of Power, because Ganondorf’s awakening all those years ago did not go unnoticed, and this Zelda only believes in the roles Fate has laid out for the three; as such she’s lost perspective on her own rule and has become something of a tyrant.  When she and her entourage reach Link and Ganondorf’s village, she meets them both (by accident; Ganondorf didn’t know she was there) and she takes Ganondorf prisoner with the intent of executing him

And Link has to begin his journey in a way nobody ever intended: to free the land from the tyrannical Princess Zelda, and to rescue Ganondorf from her diabolical clutches

Bonus points for Ganondorf reveling in the quiet love of the parental bond and genuinely being remorseful for his actions in past cycles

“It was not like the Hero of Courage to be so…afraid.“  Zelda leaned in, her nose almost brushing the bars of Ganondorf’s cage.  She was tantalizingly close, but this cell had been designed to hold him.  Him, specifically; the magic woven into the cell meant he could no more reach through the bars than he could lift himself up by his own bootstraps.  “What did you do to his spirit, while he was in your…care?  How did you break the unbreakable?“

Ganondorf chuckled.  “Do you really believe that courage is the absence of fear?”

A tilt of her head, a narrowing of her eyes.  “What is it, then?  Tell me, ancient one.  You have faced us in countless cycles past.  What is his courage, if not that?”

He shook his head, then leaned back against the wall of his cell.  “I thought that too, at first.  I thought, yes, this is the one foe that fate had chosen to bar my way!  He must be a paragon of courage, of fearlessness, for what am I if not the paragon of power?  But, then…we fought.  We fought, and I looked into his eyes, and I saw terror.  I saw desperation.  And as I lay bleeding in the dust, I saw that the absence of fear–my absence of fear–was naught but foolishness, and that true courage came from accepting fear, from allowing it into your heart as a friend, and from there it would help you stand tall when others turned and fled.  I thought myself unstoppable, until I faced a boy who’d defeated me in his heart before we ever met face-to-face.”  Ganondorf smirked.  “And from then on, I knew fear.”

The Queen straightened, her face cast in shadow; Ganondorf couldn’t tell if she was pondering his words, or had discarded them as the rambling justifications of…well, of Ganondorf, the Ancient Evil.  After a moment’s silence, she spoke again, but this time she sounded troubled.

“Why did he not cry out?  If he was so afraid of me, why did he not object?  He merely tried to pull away, to run.  He did not call for help.  He did not ask for mercy.”  Another pause.  “Did it simply not occur to him?”

Ganondorf’s smile disappeared.  “…He can’t.”

“He what?”

He sighed.  “He can’t talk.  I’ve been trying to teach him for his entire life.  It’s as if the words just get…caught in his throat.  I’d never thought anything of it before; in all those cycles, I counted fewer words from him than duels we fought.  He understands everyone around him perfectly, but…”  Ganondorf gestured helplessly.  ”All he can get out are mangled grunts and half-noises.  It hurts him to even try.“

“That’s ludicrous,” Zelda scoffed.  “None of the tales mention that.  You’re playing games with me, and I’ll not suffer it gladly.”  She turned to leave, and called over her shoulder, “We’ll speak again once your hunger makes you willing to tell me the truth, Gerudo.”

Before she could leave the dungeon, Ganondorf barked a laugh.  “You’re trapped.”

Zelda stopped, seemed to wrestle with herself for a moment, and then turned to meet the challenge.  “I’m not the one in a cage, ancient one.”

Ganondorf rose from where he sat, drawing himself up to his full height and moving to the bars to meet her as she returned.  “You’re trapped, Zelda.”

To her credit, Zelda didn’t flinch from his gaze.  He loomed, dwarfing her with his presence on the far side of the bars, and his eyes burned like coals.  “I heard you the first time.  Explain yourself.”

Ganondorf smiled, this time without humor or mirth.  “Fate has plans for us, O Wise One,” and the way he spat the words made his mockery clear.  “It always does and it always has.  It conspires against us, does everything in its power to force us to dance to its tune.  Every Zelda I’ve ever known might as well have been locked in a tower, for how much freedom she had to live her life.  Ten years old, twenty for the lucky ones, and then you face a murderous madman obsessed with conquest, only able to trust in a young man you’ve never met but whose face is burned into your soul.  Every Zelda I’ve ever known has been forced to use her mind for Fate’s design, unable to allow my madness to consume her world.  You aren’t allowed to be anything else.”  His eyes softened.  “And neither are we.  I, locked into conquest; I, locked into failure.  Fate ensured that I was born with nothing, that the envy and hunger might consume me and draw you both out.  And he…”  Ganondorf looked away.  “Perhaps it was a cruel jest on the part of the gods.  He cannot speak, so he must act.”  His eyes locked on to hers again.  “I was tired of all this.  I changed fate, I went off the course that had been set for us, and now I am free.”

Zelda held his gaze through the bars for a moment, then glanced around his cell.  “You’re right, Ganondorf.  You are mad.”

The Master Sword.

It seemed too easy.

Link hesitated, then moved towards it.  As he came closer, he saw that there was a plaque on the front of the pedestal, faded gold worn away to reveal the bronze plate underneath.  Rather, there had been a plaque; whatever words it once bore had faded away, worn down by age if nothing else.

Half of the traps and tests in this citadel had been rubble, the masonry had been falling apart from neglect, and those devices that remained had only moved reluctantly, as though they’d had to shed a dozen layers of rust before they could function.  Nobody had been in this room for centuries.  How had nobody been worthy in all this time?

Was he really the reincarnation of this…ancient warrior?  He didn’t want to believe it.  He was Link–just Link, Link of Aveil Village, Link, who wanted nothing more than to go home, to Nabooru, and the Sages, and Karena the blacksmith, so he could complete his apprenticeship and make his father proud–

–His father, who would never return home if Zelda had her way…

Link reached for the sword.

As his hand entered the shaft of light, he felt a warmth spread up his arm, and he couldn’t help but remember the most perfect sunbeam he’d ever dozed off in.  He’d seen enough strange things on his journey that when the back of his hand started to glow he felt only resignation, not surprise, but then he began to pull the blade from the pedestal–

–and there was no friction, no resistance, except time seemed to slow, and though he could see that he was pulling it out inch by inch, he felt as if he was pulling for hours, and the sword went on and on until the blade had extended for miles, until he could swear that he was pulling on something that reached to the very core of the world, and–

And then the tip of the blade pulled free, and it was, once again, just a sword.

Hesitantly, Link raised the blade before him, letting the shaft of light illuminate it again.

Nothing.

There was no holy glow.  There was no invigorating rush of power.  There was no explosion of golden light, no manifestation of the Goddess, nothing.

It was just a sword.

Link’s heart crashed into his stomach.  Was this it?  Was the power gone from the Master Sword?  Had he simply failed to prove his worth?  What had he done wrong?

Nothing, whispered a voice in the back of his mind.  I was never the important part of the Hero’s quest.

“Most films made for children are flashy adventure-comedies. Structurally and tonally, they feel almost exactly like blockbusters made for adults, scrubbed of any potentially offensive material. They aren’t so much made for children as they’re made to be not not for children. It’s perhaps telling that the genre is generally called “Family,” rather than “Children’s.” The films are designed to be pleasing to a broad, age-diverse audience, but they’re not necessarily specially made for young minds.”

“My Neighbor Totoro, on the other hand, is a genuine children’s film, attuned to child psychology. Satsuki and Mei move and speak like children: they run and romp, giggle and yell. The sibling dynamic is sensitively rendered: Satsuki is eager to impress her parents but sometimes succumbs to silliness, while Mei is Satsuki’s shadow and echo (with an independent streak). But perhaps most uniquely, My Neighbor Totoro follows children’s goals and concerns. Its protagonists aren’t given a mission or a call to adventure - in the absence of a larger drama, they create their own, as children in stable environments do. They play.”

“Consider the sequence just before Mei first encounters Totoro. Satsuki has left for school, and Dad is working from home, so Mei dons a hat and a shoulder bag and tells her father that she’s “off to run some errands” - The film is hers for the next ten minutes, with very little dialogue. She’s seized by ideas, and then abandons them; her goals switch from moment to moment. First she wants to play “flower shop” with her dad, but then she becomes distracted by a pool full of tadpoles. Then, of course, she needs a bucket to catch tadpoles in - but the bucket has a hole in it. And on it goes, but we’re never bored, because Mei is never bored.”

“[…] You can only ride a ride so many times before the thrill wears off. But a child can never exhaust the possibilities of a park or a neighborhood or a forest, and Totoro exists in this mode. The film is made up of travel and transit and exploration, set against lush, evocative landscapes that seem to extend far beyond the frame. We enter the film driving along a dirt road past houses and rice paddies; we follow Mei as she clambers through a thicket and into the forest; we walk home from school with the girls, ducking into a shrine to take shelter from the rain; we run past endless green fields with Satsuki as she searches for Mei. The psychic center of Totoro’s world is an impossibly giant camphor tree covered in moss. The girls climb over it, bow to it as a forest-guardian, and at one point fly high above it, with the help of Totoro. Much like Totoro himself, the tree is enormous and initially intimidating, but ultimately a source of shelter and inspiration.”

“My Neighbor Totoro has a story, but it’s the kind of story that a child might make up, or that a parent might tell as a bedtime story, prodded along by the refrain, “And then what happened?” This kind of whimsicality is actually baked into Miyazaki’s process: he begins animating his films before they’re fully written. Totoro has chase scenes and fantastical creatures, but these are flights of fancy rooted in a familiar world. A big part of being a kid is watching and waiting, and Miyazaki understands this. When Mei catches a glimpse of a small Totoro running under her house, she crouches down and stares into the gap, waiting. Miyazaki holds on this image: we wait with her. Magical things happen, but most of life happens in between those things—and there is a kind of gentle magic, for a child, in seeing those in-betweens brought to life truthfully on screen.”

I befriended a feral cat once who had spent her life in the forest without human interaction. I was worried about her because she had a paw damaged from an old injury and was emaciated but obviously nursing kittens that were hidden away somewhere. It took me weeks of putting out food and sitting across the yard every evening for her to trust me even a little and when she decided we were friends and she expected dinner every night she started coming to my door and trying to call for me in the evening, but she didn’t meow. Why would she? Cats only meow naturally as kittens when their vocal chords/ears aren’t fully developed, adult cats communicate with vocalizations that aren’t audible to humans. She probably tried making noises I couldn’t hear to call me but ended up sticking to the one I always responded to- a horrible yowling growl that she had made at me when we first encountered each other in the forest. Except once we were friends she would make this noise while purring and rubbing affectionately against a nearby tree or the porch railing (because she didn’t want to touch me yet). This understandably freaked my family members out but I was touched that she had taken the time to find a way to basically yell FUCK OFF in an affectionate way.

Fast forward to when she finally trusts me enough to bring her hidden kittens out of the forest to me, long story short I gained their trust and put them in this big pen, that I had previously used to keep chickens in, so they’d be safe and to keep her from having another litter. Except she was already secretly pregnant again! (Fix your pets, guys, they make SO many babies) and ended up having her new babies in this pen. I kept my distance, sitting on the outside once they were born until she seemed comfortable enough to let me come inside. The kittens were a bit wild, hissing viscously at me as soon as they opened their eyes, but they warmed up to me. There were four of them and soon they all wanted to be the center of attention during the twice daily play sessions. I’d be playing with one and another would meow insistently behind me and I’d immediately answer them and give them love, teaching them that humans could be friends that answer their needs- making them adoptable once they were weaned. Mama cat (Artie) would just watch me play with them, and I guess she was doing some thinking because one day when they were about a month old I was playing with them and one meowed behind me. I was confused because I hadn’t realized there was a kitten behind me and when I turned, there wasn’t. The only cat there was Artie looking at me really intensely. I turned back around to the kittens and I heard the meow again, I turned back to Artie and responded in the way I always did with the kittens “yes baby?” And she meowed again in an exact imitation of her kittens! After that she would.not.shut.up. It was like she had cracked some kind of code, meowing for attention and snacks and just to say hi. Her two older kittens, the ones she’d had in the forest, had never meowed at me either but started to once they saw how I responded to their mom. and I find it endlessly fascinating because before that it had never occurred to me that cats only meow at humans because they were taught by other cats to keep meowing past kittenhood because that’s the best way to get a human’s attention.

Me: but distractions

Partner: I have removed them

Me: but have you considered this?

Communism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and gives you some milk.

Fascism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and sells you some milk.

Nazism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both and shoots you.

Bureaucratism: You have 2 cows; the Government takes both, shoots one, milks the other and throws the milk away..

Traditional Capitalism: You have 2 cows. You sell one and buy a bull. You herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

An American Corporation: You have 2 cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow dropped dead.

A French Corporation: You have 2 cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

Japanese Corporation: You have 2 cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called Cowkimon and market them Worldwide.

An Italian Corporation: You have 2 cows, but you don’t know where they are. You break for lunch.

A Swiss Corporation: You have 5000 cows. None of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

Chinese Corporation: You have 2 cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

An Iraqi Corporation: Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No one believes you and they bomb your arse. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy…….

Counter Culture: ‘Wow, dig it, like there’s these 2 cows, man, grazing in the hemp field. You gotta have some of this milk!’

Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Apathyologism: You have 2 cows. You do not care.

Fatalist: You have 2 doomed cows…

Atheism: You have 2 cows. There is no God.

A West-Country Corporation: You have 2 cows. That one on the left is kinda cute.

A Brazilian Corporation: You have 2 cows. You pay taxes for 6 cows. You have to sell one cow in order to pay the taxes. Your remaining cow gets sick and dies while waiting for availability in the public vet hospital.

Russia: You have two cows. Since they are both female, if you happen to keep them in the same stable you will pay a 5,000 rouble fine for homosexual propaganda.

PETA: You have two cows. You kill them both. You then use naked women to convince other people that killing cows is wrong.

Moffat: You have two cows. Both of them are your daughters time traveling from the past where they had a brief love affair with Da Vinci making you the rightful Queen of England. As you assume the throne, you throw them off a building.

Hussie: You have 2 cows. You ask for another one. Instead of getting just 1 cow, you get 2,485,506 cows.

Romney: You have 2 cows. You are not the president of the united states.

Once-ler: You have 1 cow. Everyone decides to make 5 different versions of that cow.

Old Spice: You have 2 cows. The cows are now diamonds. I’m on a horse.

An Irish Corporation: You have a million cows because they’re everywhere

Tumblr: You have 2 cows. You ship them together and make GIF posts screaming about how much you love your cows, but they should stop existing because they are so perfect.

Also Tumblr: I give you a hamburger.

Night Vale: You do NOT have two cows. Cows do not exist. What’s a cow? Show me a cow! That’s not a cow! Who let you in here?

Tom Hiddleston: You have two cows. You are very sorry for them.

Thranduil: You do not have two cows, you have an elk. Riding on two cows is not majestic. Also the dwarves are on fire.

Dwarves: You had two cows but now they’re on fire.

Bilbo Baggins: You did not invite those two cows for dinner.

Cows: The shit you go through.