bertie

eventually one has to come to terms with the fact that "conceive of myself as a person capable of tackling difficult things" is an achievable goal toward which one can take concrete steps whereas "have things be easy" is Not

"We're living through the ongoing fascist collapse of the United States but I still gotta clean the kitchen and go to work tomorrow" sure is the mood right now, huh.

I knew Rome was burning, but I had just enough water to scrub the floor, so that’s what I did. (Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible)

Ok but pls actually do this people. There is no such thing as a good person. Stop trying to be one and starting trying to do good instead

#the ophans dont care why you built the orphanage

okay i know the point of contrasting glinda walking down the aisle to elphaba walking through the cages of Animals was probably a "lies in the light truth in the darkness" thing but there's a read of that choice that implies that, deep down, glinda finds heterosexual marriage as horrifying as elphaba finds Animals in cages, and that's just very, very funny

I see the point here, not discrediting anything but I had a thought: her marriage to Fiyero was at the end of that aisle. I think that, just as with Elphaba, the horrors were what lied on either side of the aisle. for Elphaba, the captive animals, and for Glinda, the captivated audience she feels she must perform for, who happily eat up the lies she has a hand in feeding them. that's pretty horrifying, when you know none of it is real, that it's all just a walk for the audience, not a marriage at all, and that it's for every wrong reason.

bring back tumblr ask culture let me. bother you with questions and statements

reblog to let people know it's ok to bother you with questions and statements

I honestly can't even imagine what must happen inside the kind of person that would do that. "Hello I have an urgent problem, you see, I visited your campus recently and there was a flower." "yes?" "I didn't like the flower." "Uh huh..."

What a sad way to live, honestly, that the sight of a little flower could ruin your day so much you have to call someone to complain.

no actually i don't think antivaxxers' kids should die from a disease. i don't think gun advocates' kids should die in school shooting. children dying is bad actually, even if they're children of people you don't like.

Part of "Children are not the property of their parents" is "Children should not suffer for their parents' decisions."

the scariest thing about the generative AI thing is how quickly people have accepted it as an indefinite, irrevocable part of their reality. people have genuinely convinced themselves that ChatGPT is the only solution to most tasks - tasks they did with their own brain without any large effort two years ago. like you know damn well all of us used to write emails ourselves why are we pretending like this is an impossible task to do with your own two hands. what's with the fucking. AI revisionism. i feel like i am going insane.

hate when someone asks how are you and you say good how are you and they say "oh not so great" or something. it's always like ohh okay i see we're being honest i thought we were playing pretend. can i have a do-over

I should be able to both read for 8hrs a night and sleep for 8hrs a night. That I cannot is very rude and, frankly, poor design.

thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.

This is why I push back on people who make fun of "I need to be the hottest person in the bank queue or I'll die" quips. A lot of us grew up being forced to make ourselves small, and it takes a lot of hard work to get to a point where you are not ashamed to take up space, even if it's just to deposit a check.