I saw a post that was like “mutuals =/= friends” like whoa okay I always thought of mutuals as low key friends but that’s fine let’s make people more insecure of their relationships than they already are
Bruhs, if we are mutuals you are 100% at least low-key level friend to me.
“Do you have that book?” a patron asks. You reply, “I’m sorry, could you be more specific?” “The book,” is the only answer you get. This happens with three more patrons today. “I’m sorry,” you say to them all, “I don’t know what book you’re talking about.” The book. The book. The Book. Should you know The Book? Should you have The Book?
An elderly couple comes in every morning for the newspaper. Nobody remembers a time that they didn’t. They have always been elderly. There’s a faint foul smell in the library when they’re in.
There is a branch on the system map that you’ve never heard anyone talk about. You’ve never seen books with their branch sticker come in and you’ve never sent books to them. You asked a co-worker about it once, but they just smiled and asked how much shelf reading you got done that day. You tried to find it once, but kept finding yourself in the same grocery store parking lot over and over.
You weed for hours. There are no fewer books on the shelves. You weed for days. There is still no room for the new books that have come in. You weed for months. You feel like you’ve withdrawn a lot of these books already. You know you threw this stained, tattered, moldy copy of Bleak House in recycling a while ago. You weed for years. You weed forever.
(You never weed books on witchcraft. In fact, you put ten brand new ones on the shelf yesterday. They have already disappeared.)
One day the elderly couple doesn’t come in. The library has a much fouler smell that usual during the time they’re regularly in.
You go through a box of donations and at the very bottom you find a copy of Ramona Quimby, Age 8. You loved that book as a child, and it looks like the same edition. You open it to check the publishing date and there is your name and childhood phone number written in purple crayola marker in your 8-year-old self’s handwriting. You did not grow up around here. Your family is not close.
You go through a box of donations and at the very bottom you find a book with a photo used as a bookmark. You take it out to let the patron know they left it in there next time they come in. The photo is of a child at the beach and you would swear that it was a picture of you, but you have no memory of that swimsuit and no memory of that beach. The patron does not return.
You go through a box of donations and at the very bottom you find a book written in a language you can’t identify. You pass it around to your coworkers, and none of them know either. You upload a picture of the cover to reverse google image search and there are no matches. You open the book to double check for copyright information and you don’t know how you missed it until now but there is your your name and childhood phone number written in purple crayola marker in your 8-year-old self’s handwriting.
“Do you have that book?” a patron asks. You reply, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what book you’re talking about,” even though this time you get the nagging feeling that you do.
When the Ninth Doctor first asked Rose to travel through time with him and refused, the Doctor accepted that and moved on. He traveled through space and time, saving the universe, all lonely for years thinking “I wish Rose could have been here.” Eventually, he goes back to a few seconds after he left Rose and says “By the way, did I mention it also travels in time?”
Rose never knew how long the Doctor waited for her.
I think this makes sense. In the episode Rose you see all those photos of Nine at the assassination of Kennedy and at the Titanic (on his own). But also in that episode he’s checking his reflection in the mirror like he’s seeing it for the first time, so he can’t have been long regenerated. So maybe he does all that stuff in the time before he comes back and says “Did I mention, it also travels in time?”
which makes that line even more powerful because this time he would really want her to say yes, because he knows what it’s like without her.
What’s interesting are the events the Doctor (theoretically) chose to visit during that time between when Rose (theoretically) first said no, and when he returned to extend the invitation a second time. Nine was photographed/drawn near the Titanic, Krakatoa, and the Kennedy assassination. All horrible catastrophes with tragic loss of life, all catastrophes that caused profound change in human history, catastrophes that (if Pompeii and Bowie Base One are anything to go by), would likely qualify as fixed points in time.
This leads me to believe that the Doctor was nearly in the throes a Time Lord Victorious breakdown as a result of the Time War and Rose’s rejection. He was dancing around the edges of these fixed points, likely looking for a way to save lives and prove to himself that he wasn’t a vile person. To prove to himself he could make a difference.
To prove to himself that he’s worthy of having someone brave and clever like Rose as a companion.
And Nine (obviously) doesn’t save Kennedy’s life or stop the eruption of Krakatoa, but in the episode “Rose” we find out he DOES save one family originally scheduled to travel on the Titanic by convincing them to delay their trip. A small measure of redemption.
Enough so that the Doctor summons the courage to return to that dark London sidewalk and casually lean out the door of his TARDIS like no time had passed at all, like he hadn’t been scrabbling in the wake of Rose’s rejection. And then he said the words he’d practiced alone in his console room dozens of times, with the exact amount of calculated swagger he’d rehearsed: “By the way, did I mention it also travels in time?”
You could get yourself cloned and use the clone if you ever needed any organ transplants, limbs, etc. You’d technically be allowing yourself to be ‘recycled’ and would probably live for much longer than the average life span. Since highschool, I’ve been obsessed with cloning and the whole idea of it - I remember the sheep that got cloned (Dolly) and ever since, I’ve been intrigued. But then creationists would come along. “CLONES DON’T HAVE SOULS”.
I think the ethical issue is that cloning creates a sentient being. Yes, creationists are typically a pain in the ass, but the more important argument against using a clone of yourself to enhance your lifespan regards the ethics of creating a sentient being and then killing/maiming that being for your own well-being.
There’s a novel to this effect. It’s called The House of the Scorpion, I read it when I was like eight, and it really fucked me up. But it was memorable (obviously) and well-executed.
With some characters I’m like:Hell, yeah, I’ll multiship the hell out of you with anyone who’s good enough for you and love all these ships like babies and be overwhelmed by so many feels!
but with some characters I’m totally like:You have ONE soulmate and ONE ONLY and ONLY THEY ARE GOOD FOR YOU and no one else is ever going to deserve you and make you happy and any other ship is a big big NOTP, because JUST NO.
what kind of relationship do you think finn and leia would have
look
Let’s say you are a General. You were a great number of things before, but you are a General now and it suits you better than all the rest put together, it fits you like a second skin and fills the hollows where people/planet/father/mother/husband/son/brother/republic should be. And let’s add that you are a good General; decisive, even-handed, capable of managing the day-to-day operational work as much as engineering strokes of tactical genius. Some of your advisers wish you would cry more public, show a softer, more maternal side, but you are fresh out of softness. It’s scar tissue now.
More importantly, your soldiers love you. (Well, not you, very few of them know you, you have lost most of the people who knew you—but they love the princess or the senator or the general, and that’s close enough.) They love you even though you use them, use them like starfighter parts, like numbers on a datapad, and smash them against the bulwark of the Darkness. They love you for it. This is called loyalty. You wish you did not elicit so very much of it.
But still, you are a General, and you recognize your like when he walks onto a Resistance base.
He is young, and his world is narrow, still—a jedi, a flyboy, a ship, a whole mess of intangible loss and an inviolable sense of what is Right. But Generals have come from less. (You would know.) The first week he is out of the medbay, you stick him in Intelligence, just to see what he can do without a blaster in his hand. Generals generally only carry one at their hip. (You do not carry a blaster at all.)
It only takes him fourteen months to work his way up to a seat at the leadership briefing. The only other person to climb the chain of command that quickly was Luke Skywalker, and that was largely honorary; between the Death Star and the lightsaber, Luke had been the recipient of a lot of honor.
You make a mental note to have your moofmilker brother check Finn for Force sensitivity if—when—he returns.
“Lieutenant Finn,” you greet the other general on his first day in the command center. He salutes like a wet dream, all grace and pinpoint precision. You wonder if he had to readjust his automatic responses with the biotech spine; you can’t tell. “Tell me, what on earth took you so long?”
“Sorry, ma’am,” he says, falling back into ‘at ease’ with that same terrible grace. His smile is like a blaster-shot. “Had to prove myself first.”
Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”
I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.
I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”
Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.
Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.
It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.
It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.
Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that’s pretty cool! Having experienced similar violations of trust in my youth, this is an important issue to me, so I want to add my personal story:
Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.
Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.
Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.
Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”
TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:
You do not respect their rights as an individual.
You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.
You probably haven’t been listening to them.
Information about almost every issue that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and listening to your child.
Part of me is really excited to see that the original post got 200 notes because holy crap 200 notes, and part of me is really saddened that something so negative has resonated with so many people.
ExR for the ship And the AU is from a post you previously reblogged: "Everybody in the world has a superpower that compliments their soulmates superpower. When together, both their powers increase in strength exponentially. You have the most useless power ever, when one day……" Go forth and write me more ExR
Everyone look at how awesome my platonic soul mate is, she sends me fun prompts when I’m bored. My concept of ‘complementary’ powers might be a little weird but whatever! We’re going with it. To the shock of no one, this got out of hand.
Grantaire
has the most useless power ever. Ever.
He’s confirmed this with everyone he knows.
It’s not nifty as
hell, like Eponine’s talent for making tiny storms between her palms—if she
ever meets her soulmate, that’s going to be awesome. It’s not even one of those powers that seems
useless or trivial in the moment but will obviously turn into something amazing
when the person meets their soulmate.
Like Joly, for example. The
ability to cure headaches and hangovers?
Not very impressive, although eminently useful. Flash forward, enter Bousset and Musichetta
and one skin-to-skin touch, and boom, one fully-fledged healer, on a silver
platter.
And then there’s
Grantaire. Who can make pictures
move. As long as he’s the one holding
the pen. What the hell is that?
I wasn’t even surprised to find out that the old ladies in Fury Road did their own wildly dangerous stunts because honestly most of the old men I know are like “I just want to wear high-waisted trousers and take a nap" but most of the old ladies I know are like “I’M NINETY THREE YEARS OLD HERE COMES THE HURRICANE”
It’s been a long goddamn week but I spent my whole day writing fanfic and I can see a fireworks show FROM MY BED IN MY DORM ROOM. They’re close enough that I can see the whole thing and just far enough away that I’m not going deaf. Like, I’m comfy, I’m warm, I have my computer and my writing and my Tumblr, and I have fireworks, this is an okay day.
if Broadway doesn’t want bootlegs floating around then they need to get their act together and make legal recordings. you can say all you want that theater is meant to be enjoyed live, but the fact of the matter is not everybody can get to NYC to go to a Broadway show. not everybody can afford to take the time off of work and buy a plane ticket to NYC and buy a night in a hotel AND get the ticket to the show. people want to see the shows, that’s why there’s a bootleg market in the first place, but it’s unreasonable to expect that everyone has the time, money, and ability to make it out to the one place in the world to see something on Broadway, especially if it’s a limited engagement. so record that shit, slap some subtitles on it, and sell it so we can buy it legally.
Reblogging this every time I see it. Copyright is important for creators but it should not support cultural elitism. Affordability and accessibility of cultural content is key unless we want to live in a very divided society.
One of my favorite phrases my Creative Writing professor had for when you’re writing fantasy is ‘giving your story a Flux Capacitor’.
Because it’s not real, it doesn’t exist. But the way it’s thrown into Back to the Future, at no point does it throw the audience off or suspend any more disbelief than time travel would. You believe Doc when he says he created the Flux Capacitor - the thing that makes time travel possible, because the universe never questions him.
So it essentially means like, there are going to be elements to your universe that are just not gonna make any sense, even if you set up a whole system based on it. And the only way to make it work is completely own it. You cannot second-guess your system or else the reader will too. You can give it the strangest explanation, but write it like you own it.
Either you’ve got to follow the rules of reality and physics and shit TO THE LETTER, or you have to say “naaaaaah” and fuck off with your magic/sci-fi/whatever to have a marvelous garden party where reality isn’t invited.
“I think in the world today we’ve had plenty enough of male-driven everything and it’s finally time to see how wonderful the world can be with beautiful, strong intelligent women kicking some major ass.”—
let’s tell young boys that they are brimming with kindness and imagination and nobility. point out their gentleness, their fierce joy and limitless capacity to love everyone and everything. tell them they are princes in a kingdom of wonders and beauty and thoughtfulness and the warmth of their own hearts. take them to museums and symphonies and forests to make tree forts in. raise them to empathize, innovate and do good things. with confidence and humility.
so if in the soulmate au the very first words your soulmate ever says to you are tattooed somewhere on your body since the day you are born imagine having something like ‘man I cant believe dumbledore died’ tattooed on you. imagine being spoiled for a book series that doesnt even exist yet. imagine worrying about this dumbledore guy your whole childhood while not knowing who he is. imagine knowing dumbledore dies before jk rowling even thinks about it.
Okay but let’s be real, that person’s soulmate would have the words FUCK YOU in all caps somewhere on their body for that spoiler.
Me:
Because when I was growing up, we were forcefed the idea that if we didn't want to be 'flipping burgers at McDonalds,' then we'd better go to college.
Therapist:
And?
Me:
And now we've all gone to college, have degrees, can't get a damn job, and the same people that told us to go to college call us entitled assholes because we refuse to flip burgers
Okay, y’all, some questions. I’m a broke college student, I don’t have the couple hundred bucks to drop on a video game console, BUT I really want to try Dragon Age (this will entail me learning how to use a controller, because I’m a failure at that right now, and it’s very stressful to have someone try to ‘teach me’ rather than figuring it out on my own). Now, I know DA is on Steam, but I also don’t have the money to drop on a computer designed for gaming. Which brings me to my questions.
Is Steam going to crash my computer and/or force me to get a new graphics card or whatever?
Is Steam playable with computer controls, or is a controller mandatory?
Is Steam going to make me significantly broker?
Does Steam demand a high level of technological capability?
Does anyone have other suggestions for a game an ADHD newbie with a fantasy obsession might enjoy?
if you are going to do historical inaccuracy, then go big. Just take it to a whole ‘nother level.
I mean like Knight’s Tale “chanting Queen at the jousting tournament ‘foxy lady’” levels of anachronism. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters with Hansel injecting himself with insulin and Gretel wielding a multiple-shot crossbow levels of anachronism. Go for Blazing Saddles, Blackadder, Jack of All Trades, Connecticut Yankee levels of anachronism
you either have to play by the rules or throw out the book.
Go full on Xena. All of history happened at the same time. Get your legs broken by Caesar and find out Lao Tzu didn’t write that book, his wife did, and she hitting on you…all 10 years before you go meet up with Helen at Troy. Fight with Beowulf and commission Sappho within a few months of each other. Abraham and Issac? Only like 2 years before Jesus. Invent CPR and the kite during the bronze age. Watch your gal pal teach Homer how to be a better bard. Have a fucking battle of the bands in Ancient Greece. TIME IS MEANINGLESS.
Go Full On Xena
EXCELLENT. Either admit that you’re basically not following any rules ever, that you’re going Full Xena and inventing the tracheotomy the year before the Trojan War, which is also just a few years before Caesar and at the same time as Homer, or DO YOUR GODDAMN RESEARCH. Also, if your only ‘historically accurate’ thing is sexism/rape, I will sideeye the fuck out of you.
gather round tumblr it’s time for a story about why you shouldn’t solicit conversation with a stranger with a put down about their generation
i sat down about 30 minutes ago in the lobby of a very nice hotel, intending to do some writing. i have my laptop and my cellphone. as i settled, i checked some stuff on my phone, then turned to my laptop. because there aren’t many plugs, i’m sitting in a cluster of couches and instead of being by myself there’s an he’s an older gentleman across from me, polo shirt, salt and pepper hair. was very polite when i asked if he minded if i tucked myself in the corner of the couch
but apparently
apparently
he thinks computers are full of satan or something
because no sooner have i opened up goddamn word when he goes, “you kids and your electronics.”
ah, excellent, unsolicited conversation with a perfect stranger that comes with a critique of modern communication. fight me, bro, you got no idea who you’re tangling with. so naturally i push up my metaphorical sleeves (metaphorical because i’m in a goddamn resort and pavement is melting; i’m wearing a very nice goddamn dress and i’d look like a fucking soccer mom named helen if i had blonde hair) and very politely, i smash his face into the floor with “i’m sorry?” in an utterly flabbergasted tone because dude wtf and no one delivers slick put downs when they’re caught off guard
“i’m here reading my newspaper and after this my wife and i are going on a hike” (lol good luck with that dude the pavement is melting and you want to hike in the mountains) “and we’re going to interact with each other.” he gives my computer a v pointed look
naturally, i have the perfect response to this. it is pithy and eloquent and will surely put him in his place: “i… like to write, and it’s easier on a laptop?”
“it seems to me” (HERE WE GO) “that your generation” (OH GOOD) “is losing the ability to interact with other people.” (O OK) “my grandchildren never take their eyes off their cellphones anymore!”
and here he pauses and looks at me. as if he expects me to agree.
so i say “you were born in the 50s, right?” he says he was born in 59. “well, it seems to me that your generation is really fond of adultery, embezzlement, and corporate fraud, among other things, and i’m really enjoying paying for your retirement.”
i admit: i had this line canned after a little snarl i had with my mom the other night.
he stares at me. i stare back.
“you also realize,” i say, quickly typing socrates kids these days quote into google, “that people have been saying kids these days since socrates said, and i quote, children now love luxury. they have bad manners. contempt for authority. they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” i look up at him. he’s staring at me still.
i’m shaking because man fuck confrontation but also how hilarious is this because i literally had a fight with my mom about this twelve hours ago. i literally have a cranky tweet about it. “so it seems to me that making sweeping generalizations about people based on pretty arbitrary age groupings is kind of ridiculous since i’m pretty sure you’re not cheating on your wife or stealing from your company.”
he goes beat red because now i’m embarrassed him, and i feel really fucking bad because i didn’t mean to embarrass him, but also hey dude fuck you
SO OF COURSE he says “did your parents teach you any manners?”
and there goes the last of my embarrassment because hey fuck you dude the only person who can insult my parents is fucking me. and i say, without even thinking because this is when you have the snappiest rejoinders, “well they did teach me not to open unsolicited conversation with a stranger by insulting them so.”
at this point the dude’s wife shows up and they leave, and the waiter asks me if i want anything to drink and i’m like “yes please give me all your vodka” but instead i say “ice water” because the pavement is melting and if i puke from nerves after that, i don’t want to snort alcohol out my nose
Xena is Greek you fucking half-wit, so unless you are planning on a total rewrite for the character, at which point it isn't fucking Xena anymore, then all you're doing is making a token color character. You are literally focusing on their skin and not the development of their character. That's racist, it's puerile, and its completely daft. Shut the fuck up with your bigoted rhetoric. so you can take your regressive progressive bullshit back where it belong. The fucking garbage.
GUYS I HAVE LEARNED SO MANY NEW THINGS TODAY DID YOU KNOW THAT POC CAN’T PLAY TRADITIONALLY WHITE ROLES WITHOUT A ‘TOTAL RE-WRITE FOR THE CHARACTER, AT WHICH POINT IT ISN’T FUCKING [THE CHARACTER] ANYMORE’
DID YOU KNOW THAT WANTING POC TO PLAY TRADITIONALLY WHITE CHARACTERS IS RACIST
DID YOU KNOW THAT EVERYONE IN GREECE ON XENA WAS SOOOOO WHITE. LIKE HELEN OF TROY
NO NON-WHITE PPL IN GREECE
NONE OF THEM
NO ONE OF POLYNESIAN HERITAGE PLAYING GREEK FUCKING GODS
people are allowed to leave you.
people are allowed to break up with you.
people are allowed to love you but not want to be with you.
people are allowed to not want to talk to you.
people are allowed to put their happiness before yours and do what makes them happy even if it does not include you.
people are allowed to move on from you.
people are allowed to fall in love with someone else.
people are allowed to not want you in their life.
people are allowed to do whatever they want to better themselves and become the version of themselves they are trying so hard to love.
don’t be bitter towards someone who is only trying to be happy.
When u work full time but it’s a minimum wage job so you can’t afford rent and food so you have to steal to eat.you have no way to save money to get out of the cycle. And you can’t enroll in school because you are broke , and even if you took out a loan you still have to work full time to pay rent. And your family is broke and then your dad gets demoted at work so they are even more broke now and you worry about them affording food and bills.
Get. Another. Job.
so much privilege, so little rationality
Lol. That’s the libertarian solution to poverty? “Just work TWO full time jobs”?
“Just spend the vast majority of your waking hours at work.”
“Just give up every waking moment of your life to wage slavery”
“What do you mean you need to sleep? That’s commie talk, you pinko.”
Let’s break it down. There’s 168 hours in a week, 24 hours a day, seven days. You typically spend 8 hours a day asleep, so you have about 168 - 56, for 112 waking hours a week, If you spent 80 hours a week working (which would be two full-time jobs, you’d have 32 waking hours a week leftover, which is about 4 and a half hours a day. 4.5 hours to drive to work, from work, oh and also between your two different jobs, let’s be generous and say that only takes an hour out of your day, you’re down to 3.5 waking hours a day for eating, bathing, taking care of your home and your family, doing chores and errands, recreation, etc, including on weekend days.
But if these jobs are normal full-time jobs, you only work Monday-Friday, which would just flat out not work, you’d have to spend 16 hours a day at work, meaning your commutes and getting ready in the morning would both cut into your eight hours a day of sleep. This would be a work regime more strenuous than almost any in history.
casual reminder: this isn’t a hypothetical either but reality for working class people all over the US.
What’d I say, y'all? People who don’t have to worry about money have the WORST advice when it comes to money AND they have NO IDEA what it takes to survive on nothing.
and all of this is even assuming a person is 1) fit and healthy enough to work two jobs and 2) has two job openings available for them.
presumably in this libertarian paradise, if either or both of these options are a problem, you’re screwed and they’re okay with that?
Back in early high school, I knew a girl - we were kinda friends by virtue of having multiple friends in common, but in hindsight, she never much liked me - who had this purebred dog. I’d met him at her place, and he wasn’t desexed, which was pretty unusual in my experience, so it stuck in the memory. And one day, as we were walking across the playground, this girl - I’ll call her Felice - said to me, “Hey, so we’re going to start using my dog as a stud.” And I’m like, Oh? And she’s like, “Yeah, we’ve been talking to breeders, we’re going to get to see his puppies and everything,” and I made interested noises because that actually sounded pretty interesting, and she went on a little bit more about how it would all work -
And then, out of nowhere, she swapped this sly look with another girl, burst out laughing and exclaimed, “God, you’re so gullible. I literally just made that up. You’ll believe anything!”
And I was just. Dumbfounded. Because I was standing there, staring at them, and they were laughing like I was an idiot, like they’d pulled this massive trick on me, and all I could think, apart from why the fuck they felt moved to do this in the first place, was that neither of them knew what gullible means. Like, literally nothing in that story was implausible! I knew she had an undesexed, male, purebred dog! It made total sense that he be used for a stud! And it wasn’t like I was getting this information from a second party - the person who actually owned the dog was telling me herself! And I felt so immensely frustrated, because they both walked off before I could figure out how to articulate that gullible means taking something unlikely or impossible at face value, whereas Felice had told me a very plausible lie, and while the end result in both cases is that the believer is tricked, the difference was that I wasn’t actually being stupid. Rather, Felice had manipulated the fact that she occupied a position of relative social trust - meaning, I didn’t have any reason to expect her to lie to me - to try and make me feel stupid.
Which, thinking back, was kind of par for the course with Felice. On another occasion, as our group was walking from Point A to Point B, I felt a tugging jostle on my school bag. I didn’t turn around, because I knew my friends were behind me, and my bag was often half-zipped - I figured someone was just shoving something back in that had fallen out, or had grabbed it in passing as they horsed around. Instead, Felice steps up beside me, grinning, and hands me my wallet, which she’d just pulled out, and tells me how oblivious I was for not noticing that she’d been rifling my bag, and how I ought to pay more attention. This was not done playfully: the clear intent, again, was to make me feel stupid for trusting that my friends - which, in that context, included her - weren’t going to fuck with me. As before, I couldn’t explain this to her, and she walked on, pleased with herself, before I could try.
The worst time, though, was when I came back from the canteen at lunch one day, and Felice, again backed up by another girl, told me that my dad had showed up on campus looking for me. By this time, you’d think I’d have cottoned on to her particular way of fucking with me, but I hadn’t, and my dad worked close enough to the school that he really could’ve stopped in. So I believed her, a strange little lurch in my stomach that I couldn’t quite place, and asked where he was. She said he’d gone looking for me elsewhere, at another building where we sometimes sat, and so I hurried off to look for him, feeling more and more anxious as I wondered why he might be there.
I was halfway across campus before I let myself remember that my mother was in hospital.
I felt physically sick. My pulse went through the roof; I couldn’t think of a reason why my dad would be at school looking for me that didn’t mean something terrible had happened to my mother, that her surgery had gone wrong, that she was sick or hurt or dying. And when my dad wasn’t where she’d said he would be, I hurried back to Felice - who was now sitting with half our mutual group of friends - only to be met with laughter. She called me gullible again, and that time, I snapped. I chased her down and punched her, and the friends who’d only just arrived, who didn’t know what had happened or why I was reacting like that, instantly took her side. Noises were made about telling the rest of our friends what I’d done, and I didn’t want them to hear Felice’s version first, so I ran off to the library, where I knew they were, to tell them first.
I walked into the library. I found our other friends. I was shaky and red-faced, and they asked me what had happened. I told them what Felice had done, that I’d hit her for it, that my mother was in hospital for an operation - something I’d mentioned in passing over the previous week; multiple people nodded in recognition - and how I’d thought Felice’s lie meant that something bad had happened. And then I burst into tears, something I almost never did, because it wasn’t until I said it out loud that I realised how genuinely frightened I’d been. I sat down at the table and cried, and a girl - I’ll call her Laurel - who I’d never really been close to - who was, in fact, much better friends with Felice than with me - put her arm around my shoulders and hugged me, volubly furious on my behalf.
And then the other girls showed up, and Laurel said, with that particular vicious sincerity that only twelve-year-olds can really muster, “Prepare to die, Felice,” and I almost wanted to laugh, but didn’t. A girl who was a close friend, who’d come in with Felice, took her side, outraged that I’d punched someone, until Laurel spoke up about my mother being in hospital, and everyone went really quiet. Which was when I remembered, also belatedly, that Laurel’s own mother was dead; had died of cancer several years previously, which explained why she of all people was so angry. I have a vivid memory of the look on Felice’s face, how she tried to play it off - she said she hadn’t known about my mother, I pointed out that I’d mentioned it multiple times at lunch that week, and she lost all high ground with everyone.
Felice never played a trick on me again.
Eighteen years later, I still think about these incidents, not because I’m bearing some outdated grudge, but because they’re a good example of three important principles: one, that even with seemingly benign pranks, there’s a difference between acting with friendly or malicious intent; two, that ignorance of context can have a profound effect on the outcome regardless of what you meant; and three, that getting hurt by people who abuse your trust doesn’t make you gullible - it means you’re being betrayed.
And I feel like this is information worth sharing.
Oh, hello there, primary reason for deep-seated trust issues two decades later.
daaamn that made my blood boil
Wow, yeah. That’s not how a “prank” works, people.
And with the Felices of the world, they’re always eager to mock you for trusting them, but if you make it clear you don’t trust them anymore they get upset and paint themselves as the victims because you can’t take a joke.
Most people I know had that one movie as a kid; that one movie that they would watch it over and over and over to the resigned acceptance of their parents. I’ve always thought that movie says something about a person. What was your movie?
