The Wily Touchstone

if you see a guy online with his girlfriend and he has a pride flag in his bio and your first reaction is to question whether hes even allowed to put that there, log off. the guy could be bi, could be trans, could be nb, could be literally any queer identity at all and it doesnt matter. its none of your fucking business. he could also just be an ally showing support, its none. of your. business.

you are not the queer police and it is not your job to make sure everyone in the queer community has the properly documented justification for being part of it. touch grass. you need to be normal about not knowing everyones labels and identities and about people keeping those private.

To not have people demanding that I justify who I am or who I fuck.

How I will get it:

I will constantly demand that people justify who they are or who they fuck.

It’s the Fezziwig Christmas party.

I’m not insane; obviously, the Fozziwig Fezziwig party is in ALL the adaptations, but there’s one tiny, gorgeous, heartbreaking little detail that always seems to be cut. 

Two, actually–the first is that it’s made explicit that, even for the time period, Fezziwig’s party is a budget production; it’s not a massive, expensive, fancy get-together with all the stops pulled out. Christmas Past actually cites this in one of their pointed attempts to shake Scrooge into realizing what an asshole he’s become. Christmas Past mocks the young boy-Scrooge for loving his employer so much and being so grateful for the party; after all, he probably spent less than four pounds all told to throw it, hired a single fiddler, provided inexpensive refreshments and minimal or no decoration at all; what a foolish child, right, to think that made him such an incredible master? 

(And Scrooge cuts himself off halfway through a rant about how that’s not the point, it was the kindness that mattered, he made them happier with four pounds and kind treatment than any amount of money ever could–

Oh. Well fuck.)

But the other detail is the one that fucks me up every time, and it’s the guest list.

 Obviously, Fezziwig and his wife and daughters are there. All of his employees are there, and the fact that this list includes his young apprentices is a genuine above-and-beyond act of generosity for the time period! Personal friends of the family are there, and some of the employees brought guests…but that’s not all.

In the long list of everyone who’s entering the ballroom, we get this little interlude:

…In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after another…

It’s not just his friends, family, and employees. Not just the people he has a societal expectation of responsibility toward. Fezziwig has quietly, without fanfare, gone out of his way to find the people around him who are most desperately in need of compassion. Victims of neglect and abuse, with no one to defend them and nowhere to turn, being failed by those who are meant to care for them. The simple act of inviting them tells them, silently and without pressure, that their community knows they’re being mistreated. That there’s a place of safety, the promise that they’re not alone and that the people around them do care about the wrong that’s been done to them. 

YES. I need to know the answers to why things are the way they are. And why we don’t change/fix things.

I felt this…

Autism

ADHD

Non-player characters could contract the disease but were asymptomatic to it and could spread it to others.[2] At least three of the game’s servers were affected. The difficulty in killing Hakkar may have limited the spread of the disease. Discussion forum posters described seeing hundreds of bodies lying in the streets of the towns and cities. Deaths in World of Warcraft are not permanent, as characters are resurrected shortly afterward.[3] However, dying in such a way is disadvantageous to the player’s character and incurs inconvenience.[4]

During the epidemic, normal gameplay was disrupted. Player responses varied but resembled real-world behaviors. Some characters with healing abilities volunteered their services, some lower-level characters who could not help would direct people away from infected areas, some characters would flee to uninfected areas, and some characters attempted to spread the disease to others.[2] Players in the game reacted to the disease as if there was real risk to their well-being.[5] Blizzard Entertainment attempted to institute a voluntary quarantine to stem the disease, but it failed, as some players didn’t take it seriously, while others took advantage of the pandemonium.[2] Despite certain security measures, players overcame them by giving the disease to summonable pets.[6] Blizzard was forced to fix the problem by instituting hard resets of the servers and applying quick fixes.[3]

goodnight, sweet prince