Call Me Squid

Almost July 4th, time for all of the ridiculous Freedom posts to begin…

Ah yes, 11:59pm…only one more minut-

…what the fuck?

wHAT DA FUCK??

HOLY SHI-

I…wha…well maybe I can work with this. Hey, you wanna have a rousing discussion about truth? Honor? Patriotism? God bless-

June will be filled with love.

June will be filled with trust.

June will be filled with peace.

June will be filled with clarity.

June will be filled with miracles.

June will be filled with blessings.

This is not how she would have reacted when I was younger. She would have sobbed and wailed about how I was just confused and that that I was perfect the way I am. She would have downplayed my feelings and swept it under the rug and I would have buried my feelings like I was taught my whole childhood. And probably wouldn’t have survived as long as I have.

Instead she took me to lunch two days later and just hugged me. She doesn’t fully understand, but she actually wants to try. And my father agrees and has said the same.

-directed towards children/schools because of the control it allows teachers over what children can do

It started with someone listing "places with uncanny energy," like gas stations on a road trip, empty movie theaters, etc.

Then someone reblogged it and said those are called "liminal spaces," defining liminal as in-between, neither one thing nor another.

Tomorrow (July 4th, 2026) is the 10 year anniversary of the-crepes-of-wrath's comment, which:

Predates the 2020 spike in interest by four years

Predates the original backrooms post, and the the creation of r/liminalspaces by three years

Predates the earliest mention that KnowYourMeme attributes to Twitter by two years

I'm pretty sure this is the moment the term "liminal spaces" was attached to this sort of imagery, and it's TEN YEARS OLD TOMORROW!

rest stops on highways

trails by the highway just out of earshot of traffic

schools during breaks

those little beaches right next to ferry docks

your friends living room once everybody but you is asleep

the lighting section of home depot

A lot of these places are called liminal spaces - which means they are throughways from one space to the next. Places like rest stops, stairwells, trains, parking lots, waiting rooms, airports feel weird when you’re in them because their existence is not about themselves, but the things before and after them. They have no definitive place outside of their relationship to the spaces you are coming from and going to. Reality feels altered here because we’re not really supposed to be in them for a long time for think about them as their own entities, and when we do they seem odd and out of place.

The other spaces feel weird because our brains are hard-wired for context - we like things to belong to a certain place and time and when we experience those things outside of the context our brains have developed for them, our brains are like NOPE SHIT THIS ISN’T RIGHT GET OUT ABORT ABORT. Schools not in session, empty museums, being awake when other people are asleep - all these things and spaces feel weird because our brain is like “I already have a context for this space and this is not it so it must be dangerous.” Our rational understanding can sometimes override that immediate “danger” impulse but we’re still left with a feeling of wariness and unease. 

Little fish eats his foods