🐾 A Catmint Haze ☥

I was never interested in having children but this movie made me actively avoid getting pregnant at all costs. I think it legit traumatized me in some way and I’ve never been able to rewatch it. The way it showed her whole life centering around her children and her having to give up her own life and wellbeing for them was horrific to me. It showed the good too and I can understand why someone might find parenthood appealing but the way it showed the bad has cemented itself in my brain like only the most uncomfortable horror movies have been able to and all I could think was “I have to avoid this at all costs”

It stopped me in my tracks. I was 6. I had heard from adults my whole life that shots were important, but I didn't really understand the consequences of not getting them. I asked him to tell me why his parents didn't believe in doctors. He said he grew up out in the midwest on a farm, and his parents were "a type of christian" that believed people got sick because god wanted them to get sick, and going to the doctor was going against what god wanted. His parents were terrified of making god angry, which was something I could understand considering I was raised evangelical. But I was confused because he HADN'T died. I asked him how he'd made it this far if he had never been allowed to go to the doctor and he'd been so sick.

And he told me that when he turned 15 he'd run away from home, hopped on a train that took him all the way up to New York, and started asking door to door where he could get these new vaccines he'd heard about. Everyone told him the air force base was the place to go. He went in, asked around, and got his vaccines. At 16, he had his very first annual physical. Shortly after he met my gram, who was the telephone operator for the doctors office he went to every year for his checkups. And he told me as we sat there in the doctor's office that he was the ONLY person on both sides of his family to live past the age of 60.

An opinion piece I photographed from an 1860s small press periodical from Hartford Connecticut.

This is The Adjuster (Robin Hoodie, Guy That Shot the CEO, etc.):

And this is Luigi Mangione:

And yes, they are both super cool and hot as fuck but remember, they are two different people. The Adjuster has not been found and Luigi was never involved in the shooting.

Hello y'all! You know me now as Story, but some of you might remember me better as Vampireapologist or Mallaidh-Anne.

I am thrilled to have accepted an offer to attend University College Dublin’s School of Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore this autumn (2025).

Although I graduated at the top of my class in my undergraduate degree, and I happily earned a small scholarship through community service work in 2022, I cannot afford the cost of attendance on my own. I am therefore turning to my community for support.

I do not ask lightly, and it is only after many months of encouragement and insistence of friends and family that I am taking this step.

I have dedicated the last eight years of my life to the study, preservation, interpretation, and presentation of natural resources and cultural heritage.

It's my ambition to continue and expand my work, in service to ecological conservation and community involvement, focused on the intrinsic link between cultural and natural heritage.

In 2023, I was thrilled to accept an unconditional offer to UCD for 2024. Unfortunately, health complications exacerbated by a Covid-19 infection interrupted my path, and I had to defer my offer for one year. I pivoted to a work-from-home job with less physical demands, to focus on intensive, weekly medical treatments and to save money for school. In my free time, I continued my conservation work with my former colleagues, as a volunteer for the marine mammal rescue team. I also co-founded a grassroots nonprofit which serves Queer people in rural, island communities.

Read More about my education and service goals below, or go directly to the GoFundMe page for more information!

Donations can be made to the GoFundMe OR for as little as $1.00 via PayPal to my Ko-Fi (click this link)! All donations will go directly to a savings account for this fund.

Story has been a long time fixture of this community and is genuinely one of the kindest and best humans I know, who makes the world a better place for being in it. He's been a friend of mine for decades and improved my life immeasurably, and now, finally, I , and all of us, have a chance to repay that kindness.

I want to see how FAST we can fulfill his grad school funding and get his life back on track.

We've done this before - one of the greatest things about the community here on Tumblr is that we practice what we preach when it comes to community aid. I've watched us rally for life-saving surgeries, humanitarian crisies and all manner of need- many of these organized by Story himself. I know things are dark right now, but this right here is a highly achievable way to make a big difference in the life of someone who has been all our friend, and make the world a better place for it.

So thank you everyone, for whatever you can do, even just spare change or spreading the world, and

LETS

FUCKING

“Doritos locos taco… Colonel, what’s the procedure?”

“That’s a taco with a special shell, Snake – made not from an ordinary corn tortilla but designed to evoke the famous tortilla chip, packed with extreme flavor. Substitute the shell and prepare the rest of the taco normally.”

“Got it. Excuse me, customer. There’s both Cool Ranch and Nacho Cheese shells here. Which would you prefer?”

“Cool ranch, please.”

Guess who has a Sticker Club?

It me!

For the month of January we have Sekhmet, Star Lioness.

This sticker will not be printed or sold again outside of the sticker club, so if you want one, now is the month to get in.

Capybara? Capybara!

Yeah, that is a good question - why do some scifi twist endings fail?

As a teenager obsessed with Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, I bought every single one of Rod Serling’s guides to writing. I wanted to know what he knew.

The reason that Rod Serling’s twist endings work is because they “answer the question” that the story raised in the first place. They are connected to the very clear reason to even tell the story at all. Rod’s story structures were all about starting off with a question, the way he did in his script for Planet of the Apes (yes, Rod Serling wrote the script for Planet of the Apes, which makes sense, since it feels like a Twilight Zone episode): “is mankind inherently violent and self-destructive?” The plot of Planet of the Apes argues the point back and forth, and finally, we get an answer to the question: the Planet of the Apes was earth, after we destroyed ourselves. The reason the ending has “oomph” is because it answers the question that the story asked. 

My friend and fellow Rod Serling fan Brian McDonald wrote an article about this where he explains everything beautifully. Check it out. His articles are all worth reading and he’s one of the most intelligent guys I’ve run into if you want to know how to be a better writer.

According to Rod Serling, every story has three parts: proposal, argument, and conclusion. Proposal is where you express the idea the story will go over, like, “are humans violent and self destructive?” Argument is where the characters go back and forth on this, and conclusion is where you answer the question the story raised in a definitive and clear fashion. 

The reason that a lot of twist endings like those of M. Night Shyamalan’s and a lot of the 1950s horror comics fail is that they’re just a thing that happens instead of being connected to the theme of the story. 

One of the most effective and memorable “final panels” in old scifi comics is EC Comics’ “Judgment Day,” where an astronaut from an enlightened earth visits a backward planet divided between orange and blue robots, where one group has more rights than the other. The point of the story is “is prejudice permanent, and will things ever get better?” And in the final panel, the astronaut from earth takes his helmet off and reveals he is a black man, answering the question the story raised. 

She says HELLO. HELLO AGAIN.

She says THAT WAS QUITE A RIDE THIS TIME, HUH?

She says YOUR EYES ARE SO BEAUTIFUL.

She says WELL? DID YOU DO IT? DID YOU FIGURE IT OUT?

She looks at you with her Aspen eyes. Her thousand cutting, edged eyes.

You don’t reply. You are trying to figure out why you are falling and falling and staying still. You are trying to remember how long you have been falling here. You are trying to remember where Here is.

You say who are you?

You say what happened, where is here?

You say my eyes, my eyes are beautiful?

You say figure out what?

She sighs.

She looks again at you with her red and orange and yellow and green flaming mountain Aspen eyes.

She turns ThunderBird. Wings a trillion volts of lightning.

You are turned without from within, cells shattering with the pulse of storms. You gasp soundless.

ThunderBird says electric YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW YOU GOT HERE?

ThunderBird says galvanic CALL IT THE SPIDER EFFECT.

ThunderBird says voltaic YOU HURT A SPIDER WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG. THEY BLESSED YOUR DEATH. NOW YOU ARE HERE. AT THE END OF YOUR LIFE.

You spin and spin apart. There is only this static in your mouth. You think this is what terror really tastes like. This thought is soothing to you somehow. You are completely still in this empty void. You are surrounded, cramped in this filled-to- the-brim space.

You scream

but I was so young.

how could I have known.

I lived a full life.

I lived.

Your breathing leaves you. You wonder if you were truly breathing this whole time at all. You wonder if you miss it. You cannot remember.

ThunderBird shifts Coyote, yellowed grin all flashing teeth and writhing tongue.

Coyote says laughing IT'S ALL JUST CHAOS ANYWAY.

Coyote says cackling IT'S ALL JUST LIGHT AND DARK AND THE IN BETWEEN.

Coyote says shrieking IT'S WHAT HAPPENS TO EVERYONE. WE LIVE. WE DIE. POOF. NO MORE.

You say yes of course, but I am -

HERE TALKING TO ME? WELL, ISN'T THAT SOMETHING THEN.

Coyote winks into stars. Stars surrounding, spiraling into heads of The Feral Divine.

You screech and groan and roar and crawl and writhe and slither and claw and gnash and lash a thousand tails.

Ra says with the voice of the sun YOU'RE ALMOST DUE. ANY MORE QUESTIONS?

You struggle to remember anything besides this endless aching everywhere.

You gasp

My life! What was the point of my life?

Almost due? Due where?

When does this stop?

Bastet says with silken sleek drawl IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE TO ASK? IS IT ALL ABOUT YOU?

You don't remember your name.

Anubis says with obsidian teeth WHAT WAS THE POINT. WELL, I SUPPOSE YOU'LL HAVE TO FIGURE THAT OUT.

You scream a silent scream

I don't understand anything!

Set says with chimera song REGARDLESS, THIS IS YOUR STOP. SEE YOU SOON.

You blink one last time. Your vision Kaleidoscopes, bends into a thousand ways.

You become Mountain, Fertile Plains, Forest of Evergreen, Desert, The Sea, the beginning. You speak to yourself now. There is only yourself. There has only ever been you in all this soft darkness, all this blinding light.

The wheat chants GO

The water cries GO

The ice and snow wails, melting. GO

The birds call

THE POINT OF IT ALL IS TO CARE.

The wilderness whispers

CARE ABOUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN YOURSELF.

The Wolves howl

I WILL ASK YOU NEXT TIME

The playful dolphins and innocent dodo birds and gentle elephants and loyal passenger pigeons and Ivory billed woodpeckers and the graceful, forgiving thylacine moans

IF YOU WERE ABLE TO DO IT. IF YOU WERE ABLE TO FIGURE IT OUT.

You understand. There are uncountable tears. This is all you are. Water salted from the source. You close your eyes.

You awake, in a body small and gasping for breath, screaming a wordless sound.

like, she didn't miss a beat in the arraignment, calling out the police, the perp walk, the mayor...

I hope this trial is televised tbh. i will not miss a second of it if it is

ETA: ANNNNDDD calling out the mayor for not using the word "alleged".. YES!

I get SOO annoyed whenever people complain about the media using the word "alleged", especially when there is video footage of the crime happening... people complain that it's some sort of media bias, and not like... straight up a VIOLATION OF A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT if they don't say "alleged"

The presumption of innocence is a right. Luigi's rights have been violated repeatedly in this regard.

You're 100% right, and that's not even gaslighting. That's exactly the question everyone SHOULD be asking.

Do we know he did it? Absolutely not. And unless a jury reaches a guilty verdict, we are all supposed to assume he did not do it. That's exactly how the presumption of innocence works.

Everyone saying that we all know he did it is just doing the prosecution's job for them. We don't know that Luigi Mangione is the guy in the CCTV footage. The prosecution has to prove that he is, and if they can't, he gets acquitted.

And that's exactly why the media has to say "alleged". It wouldn't even matter if they had footage that clearly showed his face, because the media and the general public doesn't get to decide if someone is guilty or not.

And that's why it's so good that his lawyer has already called this out, because without the presumption of innocence, you can't have a fair trial.

In every court case, the burden of proof only falls on one side, and in criminal cases, it's always on the prosecution. So basically that means if you are on trial, you walk into a court where the assumption is that you are not guilty, and the prosecution has to convince the jury that you are guilty, while the defense just has to raise reasonable doubt.

Since the presumption is that you're innocent, if the defense can poke holes in the prosecution's case, enough that the jury isn't 100% convinced that you absolutely did it, they have to acquit.

But if you walk into a court where everyone already thinks you're guilty, it's going to be a lot harder for the defense to raise reasonable doubt, and the burden of proof is going to essentially be lifted from the prosecution, because they're just proving something that the jury already thinks is true.

So when the police and the Mayor of New York keep going out of their way to present Mangione as guilty in public (the perp walk, having 4 officers behind him at the arraignment, as though he's a danger to society, not saying "alleged"), they are convincing the public that he's guilty before a trial even starts, and it's going to be difficult to find an unbiased jury. If the jury is made up of people who think he's guilty before it starts, he doesn't get a fair trial.

So it's not gaslighting to ask if we actually know it's him... we don't know, and people very much need to keep remembering that.

None of us were eyewitnesses. The CCTV footage doesn't show his face. We didn't see the police find the alleged evidence on him. We haven't seen this evidence in person. We have not heard any sworn testimony. We have not heard a confession.