Existential Crisis Personified

My flesh is paper mache

And what am I

But a kindergarteners art project

Left to decay

Thrifting (i purchased a $10 ball gown and they purchased a glass teapot)

Taco Bell (they tried baja blast for the first time)

Rita’s (it’s hot and water ice is delightful)

Picnic (to consume aforementioned sustenance)

in their words: “Baja blast Tastes. Kind of like a watered down monster. Would not choose it, but finished my cup. 7/10”

"We'll fire you if you tell others how much you're making" The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 specifically protects employees who discuss their own wages with each other (you can't reveal someone else's wages if you were given that information in the course of work, but you can always discuss your own or any that were revealed to you outside of work duties)

"If we can't fire you for [discussing wages/seeking reasonable accommodation/filing a discrimination complaint/etc], we'll just fire you for something else the next day." This is called pretextual termination, and it offers your employer almost no protection; if you are terminated shortly after taking a protected action such as wage discussion, complaints to regulatory agencies, or seeking a reasonable accommodation, you can force the burden onto your employer to prove that the termination wasn't retaliatory.

"Disparaging the company on social media is grounds for termination" Your right to discuss workplace conditions, compensation, and collective action carries over to online spaces, even public ones. If your employer says you aren't allowed to disparage the company online or discuss it at all, their social media policy is illegal. However, they can forbid releasing information that they're obligated to keep confidential such as personnel records, business plans, and customer information, so exercise care.

"If you unionize, we'll just shut this branch down and lay everyone off" Threatening to take action against a group that unionizes is illegal, full stop. If a company were to actually shut down a branch for unionizing, they would be fined very heavily by the NLRB and be opening themselves up to a class-action lawsuit by the former employees.

"We can have any rule we want, it's only illegal if we actually enforce it" Any workplace policy or rule that has a "chilling effect" on employees' willingness to exercise their rights is illegal, even if the employer never follows through on any of their threats.

"If you [protected action], we'll make sure you never work in this industry/city/etc again." Blacklisting of any kind is illegal in half the states in the US, and deliberately sabotaging someone's job search in retaliation for a protected action is illegal everywhere in the US.

"Step out of line and you can kiss your retirement fund/last paycheck goodbye." Your employer can never refuse to give you your paycheck, even if you've been fired. Nor can they keep money that you invested in a retirement savings account, and they can only claw back the money they invested in the retirement account under very specific circumstances.

some ominous signs from my recent trip to Svalbard. First one says “applies to all of Svalbard.” The second one is in the airport, reminding you that you need a high powered rifle to leave city limits because of polar bears.

if she chooses Edward, she gets the terrifying Breaking Dawn ending: a girl who rejected her call to grow up has hung her love & her eternity on an emotionally stunted partner who hates himself marginally less than he loves her. she's a teen mom with a kid she never wanted who perpetuates the generational trauma passed down from her parents. by keeping this child, the Cullens have set the stage for an uprising/cold war against the Volturi who are likely to take revenge in order to maintain power. Bella is living in a tenuous "dream come true" wrapped in a nightmare & doesn't realize it.

choosing Jacob is the true coming-of-age ending that rips the stitches out of a wound that never fully healed. even if we ignore the fact that she ends up with a man who sexually assaulted her (we must bear in mind Jacob's character is influenced by smeyer's racism, but it did happen), they can't have a secure romantic relationship. based on the high imprinting rate of the pack, Jacob will likely find his imprint in his lifetime & will lose himself to the imprintee. he will no longer be her Jacob. he will inevitably abandon her (whether he wants to or not), & she must reconcile with the reality that she will always be inadequate to Jacob's imprint. & say he never manages to escape the vampires? he will presumably not age for a long time, meaning the relationship Bella always feared with Edward (her being an old grandmother while he stays forever young) remains a possibility. this is the story of a girl who slaps a Band Aid on an open wound & calls herself healed while flinching every time she sees the shadow of the knife that cut her.

if she chooses neither (team therapy), her healing requires her to lose or be at least partially disconnected from everyone she cares about. Bella must spend the rest of her life shut out from one world while never fully existing in her human world ever again. she must always keep secrets. she can never go back home. even in the unlikely event that she manages to escape the Volturi, the threat of being hunted by vampires will never leave her. in addition, she must face her worst fears (aging, losing Edward) while always keeping in mind the immortal life that could have been hers, if only.

even the "healthiest" option produces scars that will never quite heal.

sexual activity

how you dress

things i’ll call you a whore for:

stealing my food 

stealing my lemons

here's the list so far:

the yellow wallpaper

all in a summer day

fever dream

the lottery

hey come on out

by the waters of Babylon

the most dangerous game

flowers for Algernon

a good man is hard to find

skin

to build a fire

silent snow secret snow

bartleby the scrivener

i have no mouth and I must scream

harrison bergeron

lamb to the slaughter

the cask of amontillado

the telltale heart

the vampyre

where did you come from, where did you go

the monkey's paw

I'll add a poll in case it helps haha

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury ends on August 5th 2026. Set your calendars.

But Bradbury wrote a fair number of stories that messed me up.

A Sound of Thunder (I think this was actually the first Ray Bradbury story I ever read)

The Fall of the House of Usher II

Pillar of Fire

Marionette, Inc. (Read this and then stream the 70's movie, The Stepford Wives, you'll have enough nightmares to last you a life time)

The Veldt

The Long Rain

Gotcha!

The Toynbee Convector (This is a pretty safe one, I don't think it was a reasonable story to be messed up by. I just have trust issues. See, Gotcha!)

The Aqueduct

The Small Assassin

Probably a fair few others, too. Bradbury definitely had a little thread of the macabre running through his stuff. Put everything together in The Martian Chronicles and it is not a happy picture it is painting. Even Night Meeting, one of my all time favorite short stories, and actually pretty sweet and beautiful, can be existentially dreadful if you think too hard about it.

Some more stories that F'd me up as a young'un (or which you could have read as a kid that could have MESSED YOU UP but I did actually read after being young):

All You Zombies by Robert Heinlein

Equinotical by John Varley

Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge by Mike Resnick

Kirinyaga by Mike Resnick

Think Like a Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by by Ursula K LeGuin

The Store of Worlds By Robert Sheckley

All the Last Wars at Once by George Alec Effinger

I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

Grail by Harlan Ellison

The Time of the Eye by Harlan Ellison

Jeffty is Fife by Harlan Ellison

The Lingering Scent of Woodsmoke by Harlan Ellison

Shatterday by Harlan Ellison

Let's Go to Golgotha by Garry Kilworth

Mars Attacks by Jim Sheppard

Only a Mother by Judith Merrill (another all time favorite story)

The Dead by Michael Swanwick

The Last Homosexual by Paul Park

Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death by James Tiptree, Jr.

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov (second place in the messed me up awards)

Runaround by Isaac Asimov (not actually messed up in-text but I FELT this one as an emotional metaphor)

Spell My Name with an S by Isaac Asimov

Twilight by John W. Campbell