This little fox

I use full fat Greek yoghurt and self-rising flour

Ratio by weight

Add a pinch of salt

Knead until no longer sticky, adding more flour if necessary

Roll them with olive oil instead of flour and fry in an otherwise unoiled, preheated pan (medium heat) (trust in the lord; it will seem like it's going to stick to the pan at first but they'll unstick in about 15 seconds)

Roll them thin but not too thin; mine take about 45 seconds on either side

are you a teenager? do you wish you had the space & resources & organization to do a thing, whether that's an anime club or a movie night or a big craft workshop or creative writing group or literally whatever? would you like to do your thing totally for free? yes?

okay, then bring it up to a librarian

seriously, teenagers are the absolute hardest group to engage at most libraries & we'll often organize programs that absolutely no one will show up to & it sucks. if you go up to a public librarian & say "hey, some friends & i want to do this thing. does that sound like a feasible teen program for the library?" most people will move heaven & earth to pull it off for you because we know there's an interest in our community. we will go balls to the freaking wall to make it happen

Don’t teach your kids that being different is bad because other kids will make fun of them.

Teach your kids to be themselves fully despite others trying to bring them down.

“I mean, credit to Doctor Doom, FOOLS is a gender neutral way to address an entire room.”

inside front flap copy:

we booksellers of harvard book store think that the original cover for Young Miles (an otherwise fine production) is unspeakably ugly and may deter you from purchasing this hugo award-winning book which would otherwise provide you with hours of entertainment.

with that in mind, we are providing this alternate, less embarrassing cover for your reading pleasure. feel free to discard it and use the original cover if you enjoy flaunting its luridness. or, make it into a spaceship airplane, or what you wish. this has been a free service from

HARVARD BOOK STORE

since 1932

I mean they’re not wrong really

I HAVE FOUND MY FAVOURITE POST ON THE INTERNET

A lot of the “tumblr is anti-recovery” panic and moralizing is based around the idea that it’s “dangerous” to younger people with MIs/chronic illness to see all us Bitter Old Crazies making jokes about NT Advice™ and acting like we’re never gonna get better. And tbh it strikes me as similar to the recent moral panic about adult or triggering content in fandom spaces. Think of The Children! they cry. You’re Being a Bad Influence!

But here’s the thing. Nobody is entitled to someone else’s success story. Kids with MIs do not have some kind of right to see adults with MIs successfully coping, and in the inverse, it’s not our responsibility to hide our unsuccessful coping away from where impressionable kiddos might see it and be discouraged by it.

First of all, not everyone has a success story. Not everyone gets better. People might be able to improve, or they might not. And by classifying people who acknowledge their circumstances as being the best they’re likely to get as “anti-recovery”, you’re literally trying to silence mentally ill people from talking about their own lives and experiences, just because you don’t like to hear about it.

But even for those of us who do have success stories - like, I’m one of those. I dropped out of college and spent the first 10 years of my adult life living with partners and family, relying on others, driving a 20-year-old clunker of a car which I literally had to duct-tape pieces back onto sometimes, trying to work retail and temp jobs to get by when I could, but I never could hold anything down very long. About 5 years ago, I finally got treatment - meds, specifically, bc I’d had on and off therapy that only helped a little bit - for my depression. As of this year, I have graduated college with a 4-year degree, bought a newish car (10 yrs old sports car in good condition), held down a single job in my desired career field for almost 4 years, and I bought a house with my partner earlier this year. You couldn’t ask for a more solid recovery story than that.

But, and this is key: I don’t owe anyone the inspiration of my story. Existing in public as an adult who’s turned my life around despite severe chronic mental illness doesn’t obligate me to serve as a good example or role model to others with MIs. I often choose to take on that role, but it’s a choice, and if I chose instead to keep it to myself, or to publicly vent my bitterness over the decade of life I’ve lost because of my illness, or vent my frustration with the useless NT advice I tried to follow and use to “fix” myself (to no avail) before finally getting proper treatment, then that’s my right. This is my blog, my space, I’ll tag things appropriately but I refuse to censor myself from talking about the reality of my mental illness, and if you don’t wanna hear my negativity you know where to find the unfollow button.

And in fact, the responsibility in this situation lies not with the people talking, but with the people listening.

When I was in college and for a bit thereafter, I was part of a depression and mental illness forum. I don’t remember the name of it anymore, but I spent time on it then like I spend time on Tumblr now. Talking with people, posting and replying. And a lot of it, as one might expect for a gathering of people with depression of varying degrees of severity and treatment resistance, was really negative.

And that was a space that helped and supported me for a good number of years. I could open up about my suicidal thoughts and urges to self-harm. I could receive caring and understanding from people who were like me, who never made me roll my eyes with Pollyanna-ish platitudes or offered empty sentiment to inspire “hope”. If I felt hopeless, I could just fucking say that, could act like it. I didn’t have to perform positivity for anyone or hide my struggles.

But there came a time, eventually, when I began to find the level of negativity to be harmful for me rather than helpful. I had changed, and I needed something different.

So you know what I did?

I didn’t go around the forum and start telling people they were being too negative.

I didn’t try to force people to perform hopefulness and positivity because it would be more beneficial for me personally.

I didn’t scold people or accuse them of hindering my recovery.

I

Fucking

Left.

I left that forum. I said goodbye to my friends, gave people my offsite contact information, and I stopped visiting that forum altogether. Because I had reached a point in my recovery where that environment had gone from helpful to harmful, for me personally. So I took responsibility for my own recovery and my own progress, and I made the decision to move on and find the kind of environment that would be good for me at that point.

It’s not quite so neat and discrete here on Tumblr, since so many people have personal blogs and reblog a variety of types of content, sometimes adding their contribution, sometimes not. Unless you strictly and only follow topic-specific blogs, you’ll be exposed sometimes to things you didn’t quite sign up for.

But even here, you’re still responsible for you user experience. You have tools you can use. Blacklist certain tags or phrases or topics. Unfollow or block specific individuals. Do what you need to do, in order to create an environment on your dash that is healthy for you and meets your needs.

And that is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. Yours. Not mine, not anyone else’s. We are not responsible for creating an environment that meets your mental health needs. We are individuals who are allowed to talk shit and piss and moan about our lives on our own goddamn blogs if we want to. Which includes making morbid jokes, mocking shitty advice that we’ve received from NT people that was anywhere from useless to actively harmful, talking openly about our limitations, being honest about our hopes for recovery or lack thereof, and complaining about the relentless positivity that demands we continue to aspire to a NT model of Recovery™ even when we know damn well that’s not a possibility for us.

See a dagger coming and it won’t stop coming Home to my wife and we murder King Duncan Didn’t make sense not to live for the crown Your cred goes up but your mind goes down.

So much to plot, so much to scheme So what’s wrong with taking the king’s seat? You’ll never know if you don’t go You’ll never shine till you kill Banquo.

It all depends on the context and how it’s utilized.

Religion can turn violent and uncaring people into more docile and merciful folk, but it can also turn healthy people to self-loathing and guilt complexes.

It can be used for positive social change, but also for violence and terrorism.

It can condone and support research and science, or suppress them.

It can build strong communities and familial ties, but it can also isolate people from their communities and families.

unifying system. any combination of emotional commitment plus group activity has the potential to make people behave in extreme and uncharacteristic ways.

you see this with political movements, with sports, with music, even with fiction fandoms. anything that unites a group of people and gives them a mental treasure to protect. it reaches past the skeptical cognitive level and digs right into the tribal monkey brain.

then an unscrupulous charismatic person, leader or not, can turn the group into a mob with very little effort. quite often without even intending to do so.

think about it. you’ve seen it in your fandoms. one fairly popular person with a pet peeve makes a deliciously nasty post about it, and within a week it’s torches and pitchforks all up ins.

a personal plea from a religious person who doesn’t mob up: please resist the viewpoint that it’s religion, and in particular christianity and islam, that causes this phenomenon. it’s inherent to apes with tribal social structures, and that’s what humans are. chimpanzees have wars. we didn’t invent this.

when you blame religion for human nature, you simultaneously demonize a lot of people who’ve done no harm, create a divide where there doesn’t need to be one, and excuse non-religious group violence.