Things and stuff.

"This show is problematic because the hero didn't kill the villain at the end": When does he steal the bread?

"These two characters who were close friends throughout the series don't kiss at the end! What the fuck?": When does he steal the bread?

More fishing lure pipe wips 🎣 can't wait to fire these! Grabbed a couple pics before they get dunked in clear glaze 🔥

This is a man who is VIOLENTLY aware that when it comes to conservatives, he is a Muslim first, a Brown Man second, an Immigrant third, a Socialist fourth, and a human a very distant fifth, if considered at all. He was also a young adult during the Obama Years and will have seen Republicans rip Obama to shreds for wearing a tan suit instead of a dark one and use literally ANY excuse they could to try and degrade his image.

like .. there is something over the river . there is something unspeakable over the river . when you recount it , you have to make it seem so small . it's just a body. the state the body is in can't be made out like this . you hide the details from yourself to forget how bad it really looked . you hide it in general - so insignificant you could miss it entirely ! it was just a body and The Something that killed it looming , and birds flying away .

and the world could be full of colour , but you can't see it that way any more . the grass is just grass . the trees are just trees . the fish in the river that's just a river are just fish , and that's just a body .

Also SPOILERS for anyone who wants the solution to the eye-spy:

TW blood and car accidents, minimal detail for everyone's sanity.

When I was young, I saw and was part of a lot of violence. The details and the vividness of some parts haunted me, and the rest of it felt just like this photo.

Later, I would experience less traumatic but still horrible things. This story is about a car accident. We heard, but didn't see, the crash. A medical professional was there instantly to help, and everyone was okay and walked away (went to the hospital to be checked on, but nobody was dying or panicked by the end of it). Obviously it was a bad situation, but it ended about as well as it could have for what it was.

The person who helped (I was not physically able to get to the accident) came back to us, and I met him partway - everyone else was hanging back and afraid to get too close. When I turned the corner and saw him, I smiled and thanked him. He sort-of-smiled back, looking oddly worn down, stressed, and disturbed (when I thought, shouldn't he feel proud of himself for helping, pleased that everyone is okay, and relieved to be done?).

I could tell my visual tracking was odd - I saw my surroundings, and I saw him, mostly, but pieces were missing in a way I understood but could not, in that moment, explain. Of course there are times when I'm not fully taking in what I'm seeing - that's very normal. But this felt different. I knew I wasn't seeing something, I was trying to see what I was missing... and I couldn't do it. I had never been so aware of my brain knowing something I didn't, in the moment, and keeping the rest of me from knowing it too.

He passed me. When the others saw him, they all gasped and looked away from him, which was my third clue that something was very wrong. I didn't know what they were looking away from. He left, and went home without saying anything to anyone else. So, I went up to the people who gasped and looked away from him, and asked them what was up.

Apparently, he was covered in blood.

I still remember the whole scene - his face, one of his legs, one of his hands, some of his bright blue scrubs that he had changed into thr second he heard the commotion. All completely free of blood. His surroundings - the grey pavement, the bright green bushes, the brick wall on one side, the saturated wood on the other, in full color. I remember the way he walked, the way his face twisted when he thought nobody was looking. I remember when he saw me, when he reacted to my smile. I remember watching him walk away. But, some parts of his body - nothing. Empty blobs. Surely he was there; of course the rest of him was there. And yet, nothing.

When I learned about the various forms of "complete" blindness, I learned that there are many ways to "see nothing." Some people see black, color, white, grey. Some people see "true nothing" - often people who were born without any sight, who never gain any. I had wondered for a long time what it meant to experience a "true" lack of sight that was so complete that color nor its absence could not describe your experience, because nothing is there to describe. I thought it wasn't possible for me to experience - and to be fair, I'd still say that. But, looking back, I'm surprised at how close I had gotten that day. What I saw was not grey, or white, or black, or filled in colors. What I saw was not my brain filling in gaps. What I saw between his hand and his collarbone, between the floor and his left knee, on the ground after he walked by, were big spots of nothing in the middle of everything.

When you’re happy, when you’re feeling generous, when you’re pleased with your gift or your service or your outcome, it’s easy to be nice. It’s easy to tip the waiter well when you’ve had a good day. It’s easy to thank the teller or the clerk when you got what you wanted out of the transaction. It’s easy to smile and chit-chat with strangers on the road when you’re in a good mood.

It’s hard to tip the waiter when you didn’t enjoy your food. It’s hard to thank the clerk for their time when you’ve just been told there’s a problem with their account and they weren’t able to fix it for you. It’s hard to think of something nice to say when your aunt gave you a crappy sweater you neither need nor want. It’s hard to be nice to people when you’ve had a shitty day. It’s HARD.

That’s what manners are for. Scripts and phrases that you learn by rote to say when you can’t think of a single nice or good thing to say from your own volition. Yes, they’re scripted. Yes, the sentiment is empty. But the scripts work in every situation, and the emptiness provides a buffer between your own unhappiness and the rest of society. The fact that they are empty means that they are not heavy to carry.

People killed: around three quarters of a million.

This friendly little slug often comes out on a wet evening for a walk, and this time it was dry enough that my knitted slug could go out and see them! They seemed quite curious about the strange new object on their path

This has been a delightful end to my week, happy Slug Sunday everyone!

Iron Lung Fanart

Ballpoint pen on paper

Twice in my youth (once in high school and once in college) I was in situations where I was asking someone out and I could tell they were calculating in their heads the risks of rejecting me, and both times I said, out loud, "you can say no, I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't prepared for either answer." And then they said no. This wasn't some spark of special wisdom I had - I knew to do it because feminist conversations among my age group brought it up regularly. This isn't happening nearly enough anymore.

More recently, I was really glad when we got to "rejection sensitive dysphoria" in my IOP program and it was one of those symptoms where the therapists really emphasized how it affects others. Because it does.