So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather?
What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving.
To paraphrase one of my favorite bits of a ‘humans are awesome’ fiction megapost: “you don’t know you’re from a Death World until you leave it.” For a ton of reasons, I really like the idea of Earth being Space Australia.
Earth being Space Australia
Words cannot express how much I love these posts
Alien: “I’m sorry, what did you just say your comfortable temperature range is?”
Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”
Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”
Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.”
Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”
Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”
Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”
Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.”
Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”
“You’re telling me that you have… settlements. On islands with active volcanism?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not about to tell Iceland and Hawaii how to live their lives. Actually, it’s kind of a tourist attraction.”
“What, the molten rock?”
“Well, yeah! It’s not every day you see a mountain spew out liquid rocks! The best one is Yellowstone, though. All these hot springs and geysers from the supervolcano–”
“You ACTIVELY SEEK OUT ACTIVE SUPERVOLCANOES?”
“Shit, man, we swim in the groundwater near them.”
Sounds like the “Damned” trilogy by Alan Dean Foster.
“And you say the poles of your world would get as low as negative one hundred with wind chill?”
“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”
“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”
“… well, actually…”
“… what?”
“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”
“…”
“…”
“…what?”
“we sent-”
“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”
“y-yeah”
“and they didn’t… die?”
“Well the first few did”
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE???!?!?!?”
My new favorite Humans are Weird quote
“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”
aka The History of Russia
aka Arctic Exploration
aka The History of Alaska
Being from Alaska, this was sort of how I felt going to college in the lower 48′s and learned that no one else had been put through a literal survival camp as a regular part of their school curriculum, including but not limited to:
1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.
2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)
3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.
4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)
5. How to carve out a small igloo-like space to sleep in the snow to preserve body heat and reduce the windchill so you won’t freeze to death in the arctic.
“I’m telling you, I don’t think we need to worry about territory conflicts with the humans. You know all those deathtrap hell-worlds in the Argoth Cluster?” “Those worthless rocks? Yeah.” “80% of them are considered ‘resort destinations’ by those freaky little primates.”
“I’m telling you, they terraform for fun!” “Don’t be ridiculous” “No, seriously. Some of their most celebrated cultural loci are built on swamps. They have an entire city that is literally in a body of water. Not, like, an artificial pontoon city, they literally sunk the foundations into water. For Grilp’s sake, they build elaborate structures out of frozen water AND THEN SLEEP IN THEM.” “Dear Thilak. Think we could get them to terraform our moons?” “Psh, they’d probably pay for the privilege.”
Eventually, it occurs to someone that humans are the perfect terraforming shock troops, as it were. They think it’s fun to be sent to horrible planets! They’re really good at surviving and then taming them! All you have to do is sit back and wait until the planet is habitable, and then move there yourself! It’s genius.
It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.
“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.
“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”
Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.
“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”
“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”
Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”
“They’re so cute!” the human says, brightening. “Have you met mine? Her name is Spot!”
Humans are told of some planet or region of space that is considered “completely and utterly inhospitable - it would be folly to try and settle there.”
Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible.
“This moon is still forming as such it is primarily soft - by that I mean most of the magma is close to the surface and-”
‘OH BADASS you mean its like Mustafar right!?!?!?! I’m totally going to build a castle there.’
“What. I mean. There is NO fertile ground there whatsoever. No ecosystem. It is molten rock and minerals only.”
‘Which will make my castle there look METAL AS FUCK am I RIGHT!?!??! Come on. COME ON. I TAUGHT YOU HOW TO FISTBUMP COME ON.’
“….you….you are going to die, you know this right?”
‘I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to come to Lava Castle for some reason?’
“what if i just straight up break down in class and scare the shit out of ms neo so that she’ll postpone the test?”
“is it too early if i have a breakdown in january?” “its the second week, man.” “i know.”
“let’s all just collectively skip the national exams, fuck the system!” *aggressive cheering*
in a really choked up voice, “i have rights.”
“what if i become a monk? do monks have to take exams?”
“in this context, what does ‘rapid’ mean?” “FAST AND FURIOUS”
“did y’all do the chem homework?” *collective ‘no’s* “alright, good. nobody be a wimp and do their homework, alright? if we’re fucked, we’re all fucked together.”
“wait, you mean to say that this school still teach fun stuff like music??”
*scandalised gasp* “you stole my circle template’s virginity!” “all i did was hook a finger through one of the holes!” “exactly!”
“i bought this $2 knee guard just because i want to pretend that i’m injured so that i can sit out of PE.” [slides knee guard on] “i have three consecutive tests after this and lord knows i need all the extra study time that i can get.”
in an increasingly panicked voice, “i can’t just do my lit homework in 30mins!” “well, i did.” “what did you put for characterisation and further analysis?” “i said the protagonist was a fuckboy, and then proceeded to write 3 paragraphs and a conclusion consisting of utter bullshit on why he’s a fuckboy.”
“don’t they call people from Germany, germanese?” said by a top student.
“i think i’m a hermaphrodite.”
“fuck, i hate this. can i just be an escort? or have like 67 sugar daddies?”
in the middle of physics class: “i’m leaving, i’m fucking leaving. i’m going down to the canteen to buy takeouts of 3 fishball noodles. y’all want anything?”
“i want the saddest pepe the frog meme you can find as our class logo.”
“i found a salsa dip in my bag, anyone have some chips?” [a girl sighs, puts down her calculator and reaches into her sports bag] “i do.”
What happens once you kill yourself? Because I'm ready to go.
You wanna know what happens once you kill yourself? Your mother comes home from work and finds her baby dead and she screams and runs over to you and tries to get you to wake up but you won’t and she keeps screaming and shaking you and her tears are dripping onto your face and your dad hears all the screaming and runs into the room and he can’t even speak because the child that he loved and the child that he watched grow up is gone forever and finally your little sister runs into the room to see what all the fuss is about and she sees you dead. The person she looked up to and loved. The person she bragged about to her friends, the person she wanted to be just like when she grew up, the person that made her feel safe. But she’s never really going to get to grow up and smile and laugh and love because she’ll always be consumed with this feeling of missing you. And now there’s something missing from your family and they can barely look at each other anymore because everything reminds them of you but you’re gone and hurts more than anything. and you think that your mom never cared because she was always busy and yelling at you to finish your homework and clean your room and forgot to say I love you sometimes but really, she loved you more than anything and she doesn’t leave the house anymore, she can’t even get out of bed and she’s getting thinner and thinner because it’s too hard to eat. Your father had to quit his job and he doesn’t sleep anymore, every time he closes his eyes he sees his baby dead, and the image never goes away no matter how much alcohol he drinks. And at school your best friend sees that your seat is empty and she gets this sick feeling in her stomach and that’s when she hears the announcement. You killed yourself. And suddenly she’s screaming and crying in the middle of class and no one even bothers comforting because they’re all busy sitting there staring at your empty seat with tears dripping down their cheeks and all she wants is for you to hug her and tell her it’s gonna be okay like you always did, but this time, you’re not there to do it, everything is dark now that you’re gone and her grades are slipping, she barely goes to school anymore and she ended up in hospital after taking too many pills because she wanted to see you again. the girls who used to make fun of the way you dressed feel their throats get tight, they don’t talk to each other anymore, they don’t talk to anyone, they’re all in therapy trying so hard not to blame themselves but nothing works. and your teacher who always gave you a hard time stares blankly at the wall, she quits her job a few days later. And then your boyfriend hears the news and he can’t breathe, he still calls you a lot just to hear your voice and he talks to you on facebook but you never message him back, he can’t fall in love again because every girl he meets reminds him of you, he’s never going to get over you, he loved you and he cries himself to sleep every night, hating himself and slicing his skin because he couldn’t save you and he’s never going to hold you in his arms or hear you laugh again. Now everyone who knew you, whether they were a big part of your life or someone you passed in the hallway a few times a week, they carry this aching feeling around inside them because you’re gone, and they miss you, and they don’t know why you left but it must’ve been their fault and they should’ve stopped you and they should’ve told you they loved you more and that feeling is never going to go away. And so you killed yourself
Dragon Age: Oh You Want to Romance a Dwarf? Well, Uh, Maybe Later
Dragon Age: If You’re Tired of Fancypants Tolkienian Elves That Have Everything Handed to Them on a Silver Leafy Platter, Have We Got a Story For You
Dragon Age: Sing-Along With Mother Giselle!
Dragon Age: We Put the Eyyyyyyy in Morally Grey
Dragon Age: Every Ancient Order of Honorable Warriors Is Probably Corrupt and/or Keeping More Secrets Than Your Entire Party Put Together
Dragon Age: Those Barriers Can Totally Be Broken Without Magic of the Opposing Type, We Lied (Oops)
Dragon Age:How the FUCK Are You Swinging That 8-Foot Sword
Dragon Age: There’s Either a Billion Dragons That Are a Mild Nuisance Or Ten That Will Violently Destroy You, There Is No Middle Ground
Dragon Age: Chances Are Flemeth Will Never Die, Ever
Dragon Age: If Joan of Arc Got a Little Out of Hand
Dragon Age: Every Time We Tell You Somewhere Is Terrible It Probably Isn’t That Bad (Except Maybe Kirkwall)
Dragon Age: Being an Elf Means You’ll Never Ever Be Happy and Literally No One Cares (Except Possibly Someone Who’d Just as Soon Destroy All of the World, So, Good Luck with That)
Dragon Age: The Myths Are Mostly True and The History Mostly Isn’t
Dragon Age: Magic Is Evil and Terrible and Will Make You a Monster Unless You’re the One Doing It (Or You’re Friends With the One With the Fancy Title)
Dragon Age: Generally Speaking, Everything You Thought Was True Is Probably a Huge Lie Spread By People In Power So They Could Stay That Way
Dragon Age: If You Thought the Real Church Was Fucked Up…
and last but not least
Dragon Age: If You Think You’re in Control, There is Probably a Mage Among Your Friends Who’s Scheming Something That Will Make You an Accessory to Murder and/or World-Destruction But Hasn’t Told You Yet (Sorry)
Our Spitzer Space
Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets
around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in an area
called the habitable zone, where liquid water is most likely to exist on a
rocky planet.
Assisted
by several ground-based telescopes, Spitzer confirmed the existence of two of
these planets and discovered five additional ones, increasing the number of
known planets in the system to seven.
This is
the FIRST time three terrestrial
planets have been found in the habitable zone of a star, and this is the FIRST time we have been able to measure
both the masses and the radius for habitable zone Earth-sized planets.
All of
these seven planets could have liquid water, key to life as we know it, under
the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in
the habitable zone.
At about
40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, the system of planets is
relatively close to us, in the constellation Aquarius. Because they are located
outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as
exoplanets. To clarify, exoplanets are
planets outside our solar system that orbit a sun-like star.
In this
animation, you can see the planets orbiting the star, with the green area
representing the famous habitable zone, defined as the range of distance to the
star for which an Earth-like planet is the most likely to harbor abundant
liquid water on its surface. Planets e, f and g fall in the habitable zone of
the star.
Using
Spitzer data, the team precisely measured the sizes of the seven planets and
developed first estimates of the masses of six of them. The mass of the seventh
and farthest exoplanet has not yet been estimated.
For
comparison…if our sun was the size of a basketball, the TRAPPIST-1 star would
be the size of a golf ball.
Based on
their densities, all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky. Further
observations will not only help determine whether they are rich in water, but
also possibly reveal whether any could have liquid water on their surfaces.
The sun at
the center of this system is classified as an ultra-cool dwarf and is so cool
that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer
than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1
planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun.
The
planets also are very close to each other. How close? Well, if a person was
standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see
geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes
appear larger than the moon in Earth’s sky.
The
planets may also be tidally-locked to their star, which means the same side of
the planet is always facing the star, therefore each side is either perpetual
day or night. This could mean they have weather patterns totally unlike those
on Earth, such as strong wind blowing from the day side to the night side, and
extreme temperature changes.
Because most
TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky, and they are very close to one
another, scientists view the Galilean moons of Jupiter – lo, Europa, Callisto,
Ganymede – as good comparisons in our solar system. All of these moons are also
tidally locked to Jupiter. The TRAPPIST-1 star is only slightly wider than
Jupiter, yet much warmer.
How Did the Spitzer Space Telescope Detect this System?
Spitzer,
an infrared telescope that trails Earth as it orbits the sun, was well-suited
for studying TRAPPIST-1 because the star glows brightest in infrared light,
whose wavelengths are longer than the eye can see. Spitzer is uniquely
positioned in its orbit to observe enough crossing (aka transits) of the
planets in front of the host star to reveal the complex architecture of the
system.
Every time a planet passes by, or transits, a star, it blocks out some
light. Spitzer measured the dips in light and based on how big the dip, you can
determine the size of the planet. The timing of the transits tells you how long
it takes for the planet to orbit the star.
The
TRAPPIST-1 system provides one of the best opportunities in the next decade to
study the atmospheres around Earth-size planets. Spitzer, Hubble and Kepler will
help astronomers plan for follow-up studies using our upcoming James Webb Space
Telescope, launching in 2018. With much greater sensitivity, Webb will be
able to detect the chemical fingerprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone and
other components of a planet’s atmosphere.
At 40 light-years away, humans won’t be visiting this system in person anytime soon…that said…this poster can help us imagine what it would be like:
Some of them are so chill that you can ditch most of class so long as you can handle the final.
It’s all about playing it by ear.
YOU DON’T ASK TO GO TO THE BATHROOM PLEASE SAVE YOURSELF THE EMBARRASSMENT.
It is NOT harder than high school. You’re more or less ready for it if you do ok in high school, ok?
Seriously. I got A’s in AP classes yet was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to handle college.
Surprise surprise?
AP classes are harder than college classes.
No joke.
College professors are a lot more liberal on what counts as a “right” answer.
Plus they give you points for caring.
Some classes give you points just for showing up.
There’s an atmosphere of controlled panic, and you are not the only one.
You can pretty much go up to anyone and say god life is a nightmare and finals are gonna kick my ass, and they’ll go saaaaame, regardless of how genius they’re supposed to be.
Seriously.
College student here.
High school teachers are the WORST of liars.
They’ll tell you college is a “whole nother level” but that’s such horse shit.
High school is a standardized sheep counting facility.
College is a research lab full of cats that may or may not do what you expect.
Honestly my parents have been talking to me about college for years, and I’m legitimately drowning in anxiety. This is the single most helpful, relieving, beneficial thing I have ever fucking heard, and it’s off a shady website where we go to rant about our fandoms and political views. And I am 100% okay with that.
Some Belated Valentines 2k17 Highlights from Flower Land
- The giant Russian man who stormed through the door while we were quite busy and shouted “Whoooo is helping me? I need BEST FLOWERS in the WORLD because I have BEST WIFE!!”
- The old man who picked up his roses at 8 AM and when I said “I hope she likes them!” giggled and said “These oughta keep me outta the dog house for at least a week!”
- At 3 PM: “I need a delivery of tulips to the south side today.” “We aren’t doing any more deliveries to the south side today.” “I should tell you that this is on behalf of my client {Redacted Football Player} of The Bears and he is willing to pay literally anything.”
- “Hey, boss, I have an order from FootballPlayer of The Bears and he is willing to pay literally anything.” “Don’t you mean FootballPlayer of The Bears FOR NOW?”
-“Okay tell him we’ll do it but he has to buy all our remaining tulips.”
- One guy wanted to buy a teddy bear holding a real rose so I made a teeny tiny rose bouquet for the bear to hold and it is easily the cutest thing I have ever made.
- This same guy grabbed a 55 dollar arrangement from my table and brought it to me and said “Add flowers to this until it is 200 dollars.”
- Valentine’s Day makes some men crazy.
- When the last man came in to pick up his arrangement twenty minutes after we were supposed to close everyone who was working shouted his name in unison and it was Hilarious.
- All the parents sending flowers to their single professional daughters. Almost all of them made me teary. People from all over the country have daughters who live in Chicago and are single and they all wanted to send their single Chicago daughters flowers.
- “A man is calling and he says you are his best friend?” “What?” “He has an Eastern European accent?” “OH! It’s the man who has the best wife!”
- “I would like 100 roses.” “That will be 600 dollars.” “I would like 12 roses.”
Due to the well of my friends’ “def not an axe murderer” date recommendations drying up, I have turned to that most sacred of modern relationship institutions: online dating. As a very busy person trying to get it in with other very busy people, I prize honestly and directness above all else when it comes to profile creation. I include full body shots in my photos, try to minimize the use of MySpace angles in selfies, and write at the very top of the summary/caption/profile that I am fat. Not “curvy,” not “thick,” not “lots to love”–I’m f*cking fat. I’m not ashamed of it, but I also known that weight is a dealbreaker for lots of people. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.
About a year ago I met “Evan” via Tinder. We exchanged friendly messages for a few hours one night and agreed to meet up for drinks the following evening. I waited for a full hour past the designated time, and just as I was getting up to leave, the texts started rolling in.
“I can see you sweating from here.” “How long does it take you to roll out of bed every morning?” “Is there an earthquake or are you just getting up for more pretzels?”
Really idiotic, juvenile shit. Four separate numbers, commenting on things like my clothes, which clued me in that the senders were nearby. This went on for 15 minutes before I finally saw Evan, trying to hide in at a corner table and giggling with a group of buddies. I made eye contact, saw that he saw me, and then walked out. The texts kept up until I blocked the numbers a few hours later.
I ran into Evan about 3 weeks later. We got on the same elevator, and he tried really hard at being super interested in the emergency phone instructions. I just confronted him, and he admitted it was just some “game” that him and his friends play. He knew I was fat before agreeing to meet up; they all did, because that’s what they do. Match up with fat women, then either ghost them or “troll” them at the meet-up. It was also kinda obvious he’d never seen any consequences from this bullshit, as he was sweating pretty hard and looked more humiliated than I felt. I just said whatever and walked out, expecting to never see him again.
About a month ago, some local foodie wrote a great review of the restaurant I own, and we’ve been slammed ever since. In the past, I stayed mostly in the kitchen, but I’ve been doing more and more front-of-house stuff lately, and Valentine’s Day I was working a bit of a split between the two.
I saw Evan just as he was pushing in his date’s chair. My name isn’t on the restaurant, and he didn’t see me. I checked the section up at the hostess stand and saw that one of my favorite old-timers, Nan, was going to be his waitress. I went to the bar till, took out $400, put it in her hands, and said, “This is going to be your only table for the rest of the night. You are going to make this the worst date he has ever been on.”
She spilled every single thing she brought out to the table, all over him. I was waiting for him to blow up on Nan, but he bottled it up, obviously trying to make a good impression on his date. She seemed like a perfectly lovely lady; I told Nan to make sure everything was good for her and terrible for Evan.
She poured ice water on his d*ck. She smacked the back of his head with the edge of a tray. Spilled soup on his shirt. Dropped every fork he asked for. I personally oversalted his food, used the shit liquor for his drinks, used flour instead of sugar on his dessert. To be honest, I don’t know why he didn’t just walk out. He must have really wanted to f*ck this woman.
Finally, he cracked. Demanded Nan find the manager and bring her out. I was only too happy to emerge from the kitchen with my chef’s coat and say what, I’m not ashamed to admit, I’d been planning out all night.
“I would have said hi earlier, but I didn’t want the earthquake to disturb your dinner.”
I will savor the look on Evan’s face for the rest of my life.
He was a little too flummoxed to explain, so I pulled a chair up to the table and introduced myself to his date, Amanda. Told her how I met Evan. Showed her some fun old messages. Then I told gave her a voucher for a free meal on her next visit and told Evan to get the f*ck out and never come back.
why does so much post apocalypse media have people wearing straight up bdsm/fetish gear like. do the kinksters watch the world ending and think “oh boy i can wear my bondage gear in public now”
thats actually exactly what happens
What I wanna know is why the spiky kink warriors are always the bad evil marauders. They might be into some weird shit and unafraid to show it but that doesn’t mean they want to go around killing dudes. They’re a tight-knit bunch. A lot of them are queer. They understand the importance of community.
If the government collapses and all laws come to an end, the people rampaging around killing and looting are gonna be like, frat boys and 4chan rejects. You can mistrust the bondage raiders all you like but they’re definitely the ones you’re going to run to for help when the neoliberal blood cultists and Nazi meme demons lay siege to your survivor enclave. There’s gonna be gayboy berserkers busting up slaver gangs and burning down warboy frat houses. The assless-chaps leather daddies and weird petplay people are gonna be the accidental peacekeepers of the post-apocalyptic world just because they’re the only motherfuckers who understand the importance of consent anymore.
Listen. Don’t come to me asking how to get the secret cadre of bisexual death commandoes to protect your wretched tent village if you’re scared that we might call in the kinksters for backup. I don’t give a shit if they dress up like dogs and spend all day writing poems about butt plugs. There’s assholes out there acting like Vlad the Impaler on a meth bender and you’re afraid of seeing a nipple. Fuck you. If you really want to get rid of the MRA death gangs you’re going to have to accept that a lesbian chainsaw dominatrix or two might be involved. It’s the fucking post-apocalypse my guy we gotta weigh our priorities here
Per the IRC fundraiser: I would LOVE to read a blurb about Steve Cap eviscerating David Duke (or any other white supremacist) a la Chris Evans on Twitter :) (Hi. Thanks for using your powers for good!)
This didn’t go quite in the direction I hoped when I started, but I hope you like it anyway, Anon!
Steve got a Twitter – really, Steve was assigned a Twitter – when he joined the Avengers, but he didn’t use it very often. He didn’t care for it, and forgot about it for long periods of time. People followed him, but didn’t expect much in the way of content.
Then, one day, a tweet popped up from his account.
You shouldn’t punch Nazis in the face. You will incapacitate a Nazi for longer if you punch in the side of the head or the genital area.
What followed was an eyebrow-raising, thirty-tweet essay in which Captain America laid out the basics of hand-to-hand combat and offered advice for most effective techniques. Every time he could have used the phrase “your opponent” or “the other person”, instead he used “a nazi”.
When someone pointed this out to him on twitter, he tweeted back, ‘A nazi’ is fewer characters.
It was an amazing afternoon, but the news coverage of Captain America’s brutal new twitter branding didn’t really hit a frenzied pitch until the following day, when someone tweeted, So you think I should be punched in the face for my opinions?
Are you a nazi? Steve tweeted back.
I voted for Trump.
There was a gap of about half an hour, and then Steve replied, #trump wants people I love to die; at least to be unprotected from violence. Why wouldn’t I strike someone threatening my loved ones?
At which point the President of the United States tweeted, Pathetic Captain America wants to punch the landslide who elected me. Captain: you’re fired!
And Steve tweeted, Donald Trump is scared of me. Watching a sad old man try to fire someone he doesn’t employ is hilarious.
After which it appeared the President may have lost his mind; his tweets, growing increasingly erratic, eventually threatened a nuclear strike against New York unless Steve resigned.
Bring it on, I’ll punch that too, or didn’t you hear about what happened the last time someone tried? Steve tweeted.
At which point the President’s twitter went dangerously silent.
The following day, the White House announced that the President had been admitted to the hospital with ‘cardiac issues’, and was expected to sign resignation papers at noon.
“I’m hearing that the rest of the GOP finally pushed him out. I hope you’re proud of yourself,” Tony said.
“Jarvis was the one who advised me on how best to bait him,” Steve replied, stretching smugly.
“Pence isn’t exactly a cake walk.”
“No, but he’s never going to try to nuke New York, and he’s not so irrational he’d announce the attempt on social media,” Steve said. “My job is to make sure dangerous psychopaths don’t threaten the United States. One down,” he added, grinning.
Your Spouse goes into the bathroom only to come running out 15 seconds later. Clutching you close they tell you they fell into another dimension and what felt like seconds to you was a 1,000 years to them. They now want you to follow them back because they have built a life for you there.
which means that when he was choosing his super scary Dark Lord name, he just mashed up the surnames of the most positive figures in his life. poor sod can’t even evil right
literally a ‘what is your star wars name’ meme
2nd two letters of your mother’s last name Last two letters of your father’s last name
ok but have you considered iron bull rounding a corner and throwing a snowball thinkin it’s like dorian or the inquisitor or krem he’s gonna hit but he hits vivienne in the face instead
his high pitched scream can be heard for miles
“Why’s the Iron Bull running?”
“I don’t know, your worship. But if you ever see Bull running away from something, it’s best to just fall in beside him and run in the same direction.”
if you ever feel like you’re doing badly at dragon age the first time I ever played I gave morrigan two swords and alistair just had a shield
Currently doing my very first playthrough (my roommate @lathori just got Inquisition on her new PS4) and the Inquisition hasn’t even moved to Skyhold yet, and somehow I have been attacked by an inordinate number of bears.
I’m not kidding, these bears did a better job of annihilating my party than any demon we’ve faced, I got down to a sole survivor twice in two minutes of the same attack. Almost every time I leave Haven this happens. Not one bear, not two bears, but SEVEN BEARS all told, I swear to god I’m more paranoid about these fucking bears than anything else, it’s a goddamn relief when I see a rift instead.
So, Shakespeare’s impact on modern culture is felt by basically everyone.
Even if you’ve never seen ‘Romeo And Juliet’ performed, you’ve probably seen a tv episode using it’s general plot.
Or seen West Side Story.
So, how does that work for Thedas, where, as far as we know, Shakespeare doesn’t exist?
Does he exist and we’ve just not heard of him?
Or are his works just…not there?
Maybe he has a Thedosian equivalent? I wouldn’t really think that Shakespeare himself would be included in Thedas, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that there’s probably a really popular playwright somewhere around. Or maybe even…a popular author…who publishes several books…that are well known in many countries…oh my god.
HOLY SHIT.
Nah, because Shakespeare was a bit if a hack who wrote for money, his works were basically just dick jokes…that even royalty loved…whose works were given too much importance…After the fact….oh no
1000 years later: “There is no way the Viscount of Kirkwall could have written the Tale of The Champion andThe Tale of The Inquisition and everything else that’s been attributed to him as well as fought alongside all those people! One person is not that talented! Not to mention, where would he find the time? And that crossbow? Such technology was clearly not possible in 9:30 to 9:50 Dragon. Simply preposterous!”
An excerpt from The Tethras Cipher, by Valmont Sinthorpe (Lowis & Blackmont, Year 35 Empire Age):
… which brings us at last to the body of evidence which is often overlooked by critics of this theory. I speak, of course, of the works themselves.
Consider the Tethras heroes. A ragged, worn-out guardsman. A romantic, valiant lady knight. A humorous, unsuitable rogue raised to Champion. And, perhaps most notorious of all, the Herald of Andraste–depicted by Tethras not as a religious reformer or a controversial political figure, but as a confused elf who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and once put a dead body in a box on trial.
What do these characters have in common? Little to nothing. If they were indeed the product of one author, as the Tethras purists insist, then Tethras himself would have evidenced a precocity and life-experience far removed from the biography we have already examined. It strains credulity to believe that the filthy, hard-bitten world of Donnan Brenkovic could have come from the imagination of a Merchant’s Guild princeling, or that the undying passion of Swords and Shields (recently voted the Dragon Age’s most influential work of literature by the prestigious Chanter University staff) was produced by a man who, according to contemporary accounts, considered phallic objects the height of humor.
However, the texts themselves do betray one unifying principle: the fallibility of authority. It is here that the true nature of the so-called “Tethras canon” becomes apparent.
Tethras was, no doubt, an author. As his best-authenticated work, The Tale of the Champion was very likely a product of his pen, and his presence in Kirkwall from 9:31-9:37 Dragon is attested by Merchant’s Guilt records. But his other works betray the stamp of different personalities, all united under the Tethras name by a single goal: to subvert the prevailing social order and undermine the existing political structure via exquisitely-calculated metaphorical deconstruction.
It is a fact that there was, indeed, at least one other rising author in Kirkwall during the crucial period. Someone whose works must have been immensely popular, judging by the number of fragments which have been found (see J. Lowry Hammertong, Cri de Coeur: A Philological Examination of Kirkwall Manuscript B, University of Orzammar Press, 27 Empire), and who abruptly vanishes from the historical record after 9:37 Dragon. Is the so-called “Mage for Justice” truly the voice of Varric Tethras? Or was he one of many? These are questions the academic establishment refuses to answer …
This is beautiful.
I am so glad that I have seen with my own eyes, a parody of anti-stratfordians with Varric Tethras as Shakespeare.
When my godsister and I were kids, her parents got this wolf-shaped cookie jar that howled whenever the lid was opened to prevent her sneaking her hand in and stealing cookies.
I couldn’t wrap my head around why they got that cookie jar in the first place. Sneaking just wasn’t her style. It was my style - I’d wait for the perfect opportunity to strike, create a diversion, plot three excuses in case I got caught, and attempt to calculate the maximum number of cookies I could steal at one time without rousing suspicion and where I could store them safely until I was ready to eat them.
My godsister, on the other hand, was the sort to walk up to the cookie jar, shove her hand in, and stuff her face while staring at you defiantly, as if challenging you to stop her. What are you going to do? The cookies are already in her mouth. They’re hers now. She’s won.
I guess it’s no surprise that she became a pro kickboxer and Muay Thai champion.
Holy shit
how do you know the jar wasn’t meant to stop you instead of her?
Oh hey bc I’m sick and I don’t see this around a lot, let’s talk boarding school AUs! Because yeah, college AUs are good start, but there’s a few fun details that make boarding schools stand out:
First of all, everything you read in fanfic about situational gayness is true. I’m serious. When you’re set up to live, work, and play at school (and usually with strict controls preventing you from leaving campus) you start to seek affection wherever you can find it. One of the reasons I didn’t realize I was bi for years was how completely normal it was for people to cuddle regardless of gender or sexual preference. Packs of completely straight-identified dudes and even dating het couples would curl up and do homework on the regular. Imagine how confusing it would be for your OTP if they first met bc they were cuddling in a puppy pile along with tons of other potential partners.
Not all boarding schools are for the rich. Some are reform schools. Some are organized around a specific topic, like science or the arts. Some exist simply because students are spread out too far to commute back and forth. My school was sponsored by the government, so the most I had to do was pay for supplies and a train ticket up there once a quarter. (Yes, just like Hogwarts.)
The true enemy is the staff. Not that bullying doesn’t still exist, but when you live together 24/7, a funny thing happens. You might not always like each other, but you quickly start to realize you have a common enemy - the adults in charge of this zoo. And when you have a common enemy, it’s easier to get along. 99% of our teenage spite was redirected from each other to the security guards who prevented us from innocently taking each other’s clothes off in the bushes, which meant we didn’t beat the shit out of each other so much.
Related, everyone becomes an exhibitionist. Similar to the confusing lines around being gay/straight/whatever, when you’re trapped at school you have no place to go to get it on. So when people do become involved, they either have to find a super secret hiding place (like a jammed elevator) or get used to banging next to three or four other couples at the one makeout spot with low visibility. (Which may change weekly, given the aforementioned staff. I remember one time watching a lazy security guard mount a giant headlight assembly on a pole, stand back, and sweep the high beam back and forth over a hillside. Half-naked couples scattered like rabbits.)
You will probably almost kill yourselves once a semester, but it will be okay as long as no one notices. Unless you’re at one of the mythical rich kid schools where idk, everyone has their own helicopter, you pretty much have to invent your own fun. My school had restrictions around tvs and video games because blah blah “being healthy”, so we also spent a lot of time outside trying to figure out what the fuck to do. Protip to staff: this is actually way less healthy than video games and computers, because bored teens can and will fucking destroy themselves by accident. Example: one trend we came up with was human versions of all board games, not just chess. This sounds kind of adorable and innocent, until the incident where we attempted Human Jenga. Protip to everyone else: DO NOT PLAY HUMAN JENGA. Even if you’re being very careful about stacking people, eventually the sheer weight of the stack will start to smother the people down below even if you thought their chest was clear. And if they can’t breathe, they can’t let you know they are dying. We almost lost the bottom row over that. (No staff ever found out.)
Prank wars are real, and they get out of hand. Again, when well-meaning adults force you to make your own fun: fun is prone to escalate. Food fights become whole dorm events; nerds get revenge by fucking with goddamn everyone. One time some friends and I got access to a guy’s computer, put a back door in it, took control of his machine remotely and convinced him he’d created an emergent AI. Another time I got line of sight to a window in a rival dorm and took down their computer every time someone started a paper. In retrospect these are all extremely dick moves but uh I was not always aligned good in high school.
That’s all I can think of for now - go forward and sin with pride!
You learn how to sneak around really well….
Shit yeah that is also true
My roommate had a boyfriend who learned how to climb gutter pipes for illicit visits at night
Also we played Assassins a lot on campus which required both stealth and intense paranoid
You were assigned a target name and snuck around school with a plastic knife at all times ready to stab them
Jeez! I learned how to be invisible and literally hide in front of the dorm counselors faces. It was so wild. One evening after lights-out I snuck down to a friends room and was literally 3 feet away from the door when the dorm counselor came in. All they needed to do was glance to the right.
Another time I was sneaking to my girlfriend’s room after lights-out. My dorm counselor (different one from previous story) was still awake and her office was still wide open. She was sitting in a chair watching TV. Did I mention the chair was facing the door? So, I recalled all the stories about no sudden movements blend into the background etc. I creeped by pretty as you please without her even noticing that I was there.
A friend of mine became the equivalent of a mob boss. She had people who owed/did favors for her and she monopolized the ramen and soda industry within the dorms.
Also, one never stops jumping at the sound of jingling keys…..
Every now and then, the Marauders fandom gets upset that James was chosen to be a Head Boy when he wasn’t a Prefect.
But of course he was.
It started in the autumn of his fifth year. The fifteen-year-old marched through the corridors, feeling rather important, a badge pinned to his robes.
Filch caught him within the first five minutes. To be fair, James hadn’t tried to run. (If he had, he would have gotten away). He had no reason to. Still, the caretaker grumbled threats of torture as he dragged the Chaser to Professor McGonagall’s office.
“Pretending to be a Prefect,” Filch snarled.
“I’m not pretending you old—” James eventually broke off as he realized that there was no use shouting at the lump of clay that was the caretaker. And so, he turned to Professor McGonagall and said, “I’m a temporary Prefect for the night.”
“Are you?” she asked, with a flicker of amusement. “I don’t seem to recall appointing you as such.”
“You know, Sirius’ brother told me something interesting the other day,” James said. “Did you know that if you looked at the night sky, you could see a star that represents them both? Isn’t that strange. Look for yourself, Professor.”
And she glanced out the window and saw the stars in question. Right next to the nearly full moon. Her face gave away nothing, but she curtly dismissed the caretaker, who seemed surprised if not furious.
“Surely you want me to stay to deliver the punishment?” Filch asked.
“There will be no punishment,” Professor McGonagall said curtly. “You caught a Prefect out of bed. That’s not exactly against the rules, is it?”
James could have hugged her.
As soon as the caretaker was gone, she pushed the tin of biscuits towards James. It didn’t even need saying at this point. He grinned and took his favorite kind. She always had them.
“I didn’t even think…” she whispered. “It’s not full for another three days.”
“I know,” said James. “But he’s really sick this time.”
“He should have told me,” she said. “I would have given him the time off.”
“Yeah, well,” James shrugged. “You know Remus.”
She smiled; she did indeed.
“Did he brief you on your responsibilities?” the professor asked.
“If by ‘briefed’ you mean ‘went into a three-hour lecture on what I should or should not do’ then yeah.”
“You know that I can’t make this official,” Professor McGonagall said. “People would talk.”
“Nah, I know,” James said.
“You can’t brag about this.”
“I know.”
“You can’t abuse your privileges.”
“I know.”
“Take another biscuit.”
He grinned and did so.
“I believe you have work to do,” she said.
James gave her a mock salute and marched away. He performed Remus’ duties all night, never once abusing the power, knowing that doing so would tarnish Remus’ reputation. He performed them the next two nights as well and told a very skeptical Professor McGonagall that he was sick on the night of the full moon. (”Oh dear,” she said. “I hope your illness stagnates.”)
Truth be told, James was a Prefect almost as much as Remus was.
They were some of the only times in his term at Hogwarts that he solemnly swore that he wasn’t up to no good.
IM MAKING THIS CANON! I declare it canon!!! So be it!!!
@asktheboywholived
Quick question. How does one actually make a resume? I need to get another job and no one in my family is being helpful about it even though it will be our main source of income and I havent technically had to build a resume since 2015 and I am freaking out a little bit.
Okay…not gonna lie my dude, my resume is pretty thin on the ground (I’m in college), but LET’S SEE WHAT WE’VE GOT. (Also I am procrastinating my thesis which is VERY MUCH DUE IN TWO MONTHS, so take my life advice with, like, a fistful of salt.)
First, take a couple deep breaths. Everyone has to learn how to do the resume thing. You’re not alone in feeling out of your depth, I’m on a campus of 400 right now and every single person agrees with you.
So, okay, the main point of a resume is to sell yourself. The most important thing here is that you probably have to balance truth with…generous exaggeration. Obviously don’t claim you can do something you don’t know how to do, because that’ll bite you in the ass. But hey, do you make photosets or gifsets for Tumblr? You are a Photo Editor, slap that shit on your Skills section. This post talks some more about how millennials and people who’ve grown up in the Internet Age have the edge on that. Make sure to lean on your ability to learn new skills–I am an Excel expert not so much because I took a class on Excel, but because over the summer I attended a research fellowship where everyone sucked at Excel. So I Googled a motherfucker and now I’m real good at Excel and teaching my biochem teacher how to do a double-reciprocal plot. If you don’t know how to do something now, you can definitely learn–pitch that. This post has some more stuff about learning to sell yourself. Master the elevator pitch for why you yourself are great for the job. If you’re like me, you’ll probably have to tell your anxiety and self-esteem issues to suck a dick every five minutes, BUT DO IT ANYWAY. You are great. Your resume is intended to inform the rest of the world of this incontrovertible truth.
NOW. The resume itself. Some basics of the resume structure include:
Cover letter (this is your opening pitch–make it good, especially since an employer might have hundreds of resumes on their desk) (this is the WikiHow page, which has some good examples for format)
Resume body (this can be chronological, meaning listed by date, which is more traditional and will appeal more to older readers, functional, meaning listed by task, which is more practical for someone who’s either been out of work or who’s changing careers, or combination, which is pretty much what it says on the tin)
Experience/Skills (THIS IS YOUR TIME TO SHINE, USE THOSE TWO POSTS UP THERE AND ALSO THIS ONE, INCLUDE PROFESSIONAL SKILLS AND ALSO INTERPERSONAL SKILLS) (YOU’RE GREAT–REMIND THEM)
Education (include the where and when, also your GPA might help if you did really well)
Awards, if applicable (I myself do not have anything whatsoever to put here, but if you do, props, do it)
Personal Interests (look dude, if they’ve gotten this far, they want to know if they could tolerate working with you–this is your opportunity to convince them)
I would like some Socialist!Steve Rogers making fox news/drumpf’s head explode by calling them on their shit on a national stage.
“Now, you all know, Captain America kept out of the presidential race – great guy, tremendous guy, how can you not love Captain America? – but I feel sure if he allowed himself to be political, he’d be for making America great again. The values of the forties, when we worked hard and fought for what we believed in, when people knew where they belonged – I think if he could speak publicly he’d say, good job, President Trump. Because he represents the people, too, and the people elected me – by a giant landslide, an enormous record-breaking – “
***
Steve had thought, long and hard, considering the talk shows, the various social media platforms, and the other methods of publicity available to him. He finally decided on YouTube, though he did let them film him on something slightly better than a phone video camera.
He talked to the organizers; he asked them if they were sure; and when the time came, during the protest rally, he walked up to the podium in jeans and a #RESIST t-shirt, and he could tell for a minute nobody knew who he was.
“Good morning,” he said, using the smile and the voice he’d practiced selling bonds, seventy years ago. “My name is Steve Rogers. I came to march with you today.”
A ripple went through the crowd.
“My mother and father were immigrants. My mother was a single working mother. As a child I saw Pinkertons trying to break the unions, breaking strikes with bats and brass knuckles. I heard my friends’ parents tell stories about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire where people died because there was no federal safety regulation, because they were disposable – women, immigrants, Jews. I was born in the last Gilded Age, and I lived through every hungry year of the Depression that it led to,” he said, voice gaining momentum. “My ma died because she couldn’t afford treatment. Because it was a doctor for her or a doctor for me but not both.”
There was a roar from the crowd.
“And I saw Americans thrown into camps, and I saw “colored” drinking fountains, and I saw Americans who had to join separate regiments to defend freedom because of the color of their skin, so I know what the values of the 1940s were!” he yelled. “Don’t you tell me people knew their place! Don’t you tell me they weren’t shoved into place by Pinkertons and cops because I saw it happen! I didn’t survive 1940 to see it come round again!”
He glanced to the side, wondering if he’d gone too far, but the woman who’d told him it was okay to speak was grinning and gesturing for him to continue.
“So the President can be very clear about where Captain America stands,” Steve continued, “I’d like him to know that I am a lefty socialist anti-racist son of immigrants and I’m here today for open borders, socialized healthcare, equality in justice, and the death of fascism. You’re right about one thing – I am a tremendous man, and I am allowing myself to be political.”
***
Yet another leak out of the White House today concerning the behavior of the president. Sources say last night President Trump was treated in the Residence for a broken hand, which the White House official statement says is a stress fracture from signing paperwork. Our source states that the President overturned furniture, threatened Secret Service agents, and broke his hand punching a wall. All this after witnessing the mega-viral BE POLITICAL youtube video recorded by Steve Rogers, Manhattan’s own Captain America, at a protest rally yesterday afternoon…
Heyo--I saw your tags on that political thing and YOU ARE NOT A TRAINWRECK FOR NOT REMEMBERING YOUR SENATORS' NAMES. It is totally fine if your brain doesn't cooperate with that shit; you're not doing anything wrong. But! If you have a cellphone, what I'd recommend is putting down your reps' name/numbers under like, "POLITICIAN: SENATOR" for their last name and then their full name under the "first name" line--that way if you can't remember their names, you can just look up "Senator/Congressman"
and you don’t have to worry about remembering their specific names. But thank you SO MUCH for deciding to call today; it means a lot and you are a mensch.
GOOD SOLID ADVICE. I’ve done this since you sent this message and now that I’m procrastinating my thesis by going through my inbox, I AM SHARING THIS GOOD ADVICE WITH THE WORLD.
FIC REC FOR YOU: hood and glove by fahye on ao3 is a Yuri on ice Fae AU. Faerie politics, canny humans, tam Lin elements, and romance. More Otabek/Yuri than Y/V, but that's definitely there and it is very good.
I've been doing a lot of reading on the Borgias but I don't actually know how to pronounce "Borgia- would you know?
So…I pronounce it the way they say it in the show, which is BOHR-jya (or something like -zhya if you like your IPA pronunciations I guess). It’s with a soft G, kind of slurred. Like the last G in ‘garage.’
Quick question. How does one actually make a resume? I need to get another job and no one in my family is being helpful about it even though it will be our main source of income and I havent technically had to build a resume since 2015 and I am freaking out a little bit.
Okay…not gonna lie my dude, my resume is pretty thin on the ground (I’m in college), but LET’S SEE WHAT WE’VE GOT. (Also I am procrastinating my thesis which is VERY MUCH DUE IN TWO MONTHS, so take my life advice with, like, a fistful of salt.)
First, take a couple deep breaths. Everyone has to learn how to do the resume thing. You’re not alone in feeling out of your depth, I’m on a campus of 400 right now and every single person agrees with you.
So, okay, the main point of a resume is to sell yourself. The most important thing here is that you probably have to balance truth with…generous exaggeration. Obviously don’t claim you can do something you don’t know how to do, because that’ll bite you in the ass. But hey, do you make photosets or gifsets for Tumblr? You are a Photo Editor, slap that shit on your Skills section. This post talks some more about how millennials and people who’ve grown up in the Internet Age have the edge on that. Make sure to lean on your ability to learn new skills–I am an Excel expert not so much because I took a class on Excel, but because over the summer I attended a research fellowship where everyone sucked at Excel. So I Googled a motherfucker and now I’m real good at Excel and teaching my biochem teacher how to do a double-reciprocal plot. If you don’t know how to do something now, you can definitely learn–pitch that. This post has some more stuff about learning to sell yourself. Master the elevator pitch for why you yourself are great for the job. If you’re like me, you’ll probably have to tell your anxiety and self-esteem issues to suck a dick every five minutes, BUT DO IT ANYWAY. You are great. Your resume is intended to inform the rest of the world of this incontrovertible truth.
NOW. The resume itself. Some basics of the resume structure include:
Cover letter (this is your opening pitch–make it good, especially since an employer might have hundreds of resumes on their desk) (this is the WikiHow page, which has some good examples for format)
Resume body (this can be chronological, meaning listed by date, which is more traditional and will appeal more to older readers, functional, meaning listed by task, which is more practical for someone who’s either been out of work or who’s changing careers, or combination, which is pretty much what it says on the tin)
Experience/Skills (THIS IS YOUR TIME TO SHINE, USE THOSE TWO POSTS UP THERE AND ALSO THIS ONE, INCLUDE PROFESSIONAL SKILLS AND ALSO INTERPERSONAL SKILLS) (YOU’RE GREAT–REMIND THEM)
Education (include the where and when, also your GPA might help if you did really well)
Awards, if applicable (I myself do not have anything whatsoever to put here, but if you do, props, do it)
Personal Interests (look dude, if they’ve gotten this far, they want to know if they could tolerate working with you–this is your opportunity to convince them)
The real irony of the people who make jokes about being triggered is that they tend to idolize the military/veterans as if combat related PTSD isn’t a real thing that also has triggers. Y’all make fun of the people you call hero’s when you’re making fun of the teenagers with PTSD from non-combat related issues, you can’t separate the two.
Most of the people making fun of triggers are making fun of all the bullshit “”“triggers”“”, as in the people calling a mild uncomfortable feelings triggers.
The problem with making fun of a trigger is you genuinely do not know whether they are ‘mildly uncomfortable’ or if that is a thing that is genuinely causing severe anxiety, depressive episodes, or stress responses. Most of the “““““bullshit”““““ triggers I’ve seen being made fun of are actual trauma survivors who have their trauma associated with something unusual or strange. Because the thing that triggers their PTSD or panic is odd, people, not unlike yourself, are writing them off as “whiny babies” or “triggered sjws” or call their trigger bullshit because they cannot understand the association.
For examples: Sirens are one of my triggers. When I hear sirens I get an immediate panic response. This was due to being in an active war zone as a child (The response is significantly worse if it is an air raid siren or sounds too similar to an air raid siren.). If you didn’t know I was in an active war zone though, it might seem silly to see an adult panic and attempt to get to a safe place because an ambulance, fire truck, or police car went past them.
I have a manager who is triggered by the presence of police. Specifically police, other uniforms are fine (i.e. security in the mall does not set off her panic response). Her trigger is severe, if a police officer talks to her, she starts panicking and sobbing and cannot control it. This is because when she was young, two police officers threatened her repeatedly and psychologically abused her for 6 hours while they tried to find out where her brother was (yes, this was illegal. Her parents were not home at the time, and were unaware she was alone as the brother in question was meant to be watching her). If you didn’t know that story though, it might seem silly to see an adult woman burst into tears and have a panic attack because a cop said ‘hi’ to her.
I have seen posts by an abuse survivor talking about how the sound of a garage door triggered them, due to abuse by a parent. They associated that sound with the abuser returning home and the abuse beginning. The sound became a trigger because their mind associated it to that. I saw another post by a rape survivor talking about how she was triggered by the sight of eggs because she made eggs for her rapist after he’d raped her. Her mind associated eggs with the trauma due to the two being connected at least in her mind.
Brains are weird. Trauma doesn’t make sense. The point is, YOU do not know if someone is ““““bullshitting”“““ or not. You do not know how someones trauma associated itself with something odd, which is something trauma really does all the time and making fun of trauma survivors because you don’tunderstand the association between their trauma and the item that triggers their ptsd or anxiety is absolutely wrong and absolutely hypocritical if you think any other form of trigger is acceptable or okay. You don’t get to decide other peoples trauma triggers. They didn’t even get to decide them, and to tell someone that you’re okay to make fun of them because what upsets them doesn’t make sense to you is absolutely not okay.
I should note too: Phobia’s are real triggers too. People have panic attacks when exposed to their phobia’s in the wrong way. I need certain pictures tagged because I am absolutely terrified of heights, which is a pretty common phobia. People can have serious phobia’s to everything and anything though, and there are things I am not afraid of that others are that may seem strange to me, but to them are very real and very frightening. Just because it seems odd to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t still real to the person experiencing it.
This post needs a zillion more notes. As a Complex PTSD sufferer I truly hope that people will someday stop policing others’ triggers and health problems as if they have a single clue.
Just BACK OFF and let people LIVE.
And PTSD has ALWAYS had odd triggers, this isn’t just a modern thing. My grandmother couldn’t do anything with the reservoir on the back of a toilet because when she was nine, she was gangraped. When her attackers were in their stupor, she took all of their guns and put them in the reservoir of their toilet, and ran through the street naked until someone helped her. Having to put the weapons she KNEW they were going to use on her behind the toilet stuck in her mind, that was what became a trigger for her brain- along with being unable to go outside in her bare feet ever again.
One of my closest friends is triggered by someone touching his hair, because one of his stepfathers swung him around by his hair and smashed him into things. Now any time someone touches his hair, he gets so badly panicked he just vomits on the spot.
And then you have people with conventional ptsd triggers like me- it’s hard for me to see blood and violence in certain contexts. Oddly, it’s fine in video games, but in movies or TV shows- ESPECIALLY if it’s suicide- it triggers me. Because through my suicide prevention work, I’ve WITNESSED suicides, so as a result it triggers my ptsd.
Brains are strange and unpredictable in what they associate a situation to, and what becomes a symbol of trauma. But it’s not anyone’s job to gatekeep the subject, because it does absolutely no one any good. When someone says something triggers them, you need to respect it. And you also need to respect that triggers can generate different responses. My grandmother would get quiet and skittish when triggers. My friend vomits when triggered. I get enraged and frustrated when triggered- an unconventional response to a conventional trigger.
Some people cope so well that they only get ‘uncomfortable’. I’ve even seen one person who would get a ‘high’ because their body would try to release a shitload of dopamine in response to it, and then they’d crash. Shit’s weird, and all you can do is respect what someone says about their own boundaries.
Also, there’s a common misconception that trigger warnings are always about avoiding the trigger. That’s just not the case. A lot of times, a person is able to view a trigger and be perfectly fine if they were warned beforehand and allowed to mentally prepare. I’ve heard it compared to the fact that people can get used to and tune out a noise like a smoke detector beeping if it happens in a regular and predictable way. But random, unpredictable beeps cause immense psychological distress to almost anyone if you are forced to listen to them long enough. Letting people know a trigger is coming often helps mitigate the reaction.
I was once asked to please tag cats. And I was like “Oookay, bud, I’ll try, but like, ¾ of my life IS cats, so I can’t promise anything…?” Because that just seemed really weird to me.
And then, even though they didn’t have to, they actually wrote back and said, basically, “Hey, the reason I’m asking is because I had to witness people torturing cats in a situation I couldn’t escape, and now I just … can’t.”
Oh shit.
So I said “Hey, holy fuck, I’m sorry. Do you need me to tag all cats, or just housecats? What about cartoon cats? I just want to help you out, friend.”
And again, even though they didn’t have to, they came back and said “Cartoon cats aren’t too bad, but what I really can’t handle is seeing kittens.”
Fucking … fuck.
And I’m not gonna lie, that fucking hurt and chilled me to read. Just … the story there. I don’t want to know it. It makes me sick just imagining it. So I now tag for cats.
It’d be easy to say “It’s stupid to be triggered by kittens.”
But, uhh, I really don’t think that situation is “stupid” at all. I think it’s fucking tragic. And that person had the guts to ask, knowing that they might get made fun of for it, and then they were even kind enough to explain, and I’m grateful to them because it taught me something I intellectually but did not yet viscerally understand.
A healthy person, or even just someone with different triggers, can’t understand the significance behind triggers. And triggers can be really fucking weird or even seemingly inappropriate.
So I got to make a choice. I could say “If you can’t handle cats, seriously, I’m not the blog for you.” Understandable, I suppose. Or I could say “JFC that sucks, and the rest of the goddamn internet is flooded with untagged cats. Maybe … maybe I can do this one thing so that they will feel safe reading my blog? Maybe I have the power to actually … help a little?”
And obviously, I made the latter choice.
Here’s another thing.
Recovery is a process, and eventually a lot of people move away from needing trigger warnings. They are a helpful tool to protect yourself during a certain stage of healing. That healing might take a really long time, and it might never be complete … or … it might only be necessary for a few months or years.
So you aren’t “coddling” people by tagging for [x thing you think shouldn’t be a trigger], you’re enabling them to engage on their terms. Engaging on your own terms is literally the only way to make progress, therapeutically, so asserting that trigger warnings hinder progress is just not factually a correct statement at all.
You personally may choose not to tag for anything, and that’s fine. You are absolutely allowed to run your personal space however you want, and people shouldn’t bug you about it.
But what you don’t get to do is decide what a “stupid” trigger is (hint: there isn’t one, there’s only fucked up situations that leave fucked up scars) and whether or not someone is experiencing severe or mild discomfort. You can’t know that. Their reaction isn’t even a good guide to how they are feeling inside. They may seem only mildly uncomfortable. You don’t see them losing their shit later because something hit them way worse than they thought it would, and they thought they were okay at the time but … hahaha, nope.
I guess … a lot of people seem to think that there’s this whole category of “special snowflake” people wandering around saying “I know how to get sympathy and validation: I’ll ask a total stranger to tag for cookware because I’m ‘triggered’ by spatulas!” Just as if that’s liable to elicit the kind of validation truly lonely and desperate people need.
Or maybe … maybe they think there’s all these people who are so unacquainted with “real” pain or fear that they think their mildly uncomfortable feelings about Furbys compare to, and this is so often the example used and I think that is so wrong, combat vets who can’t handle fireworks.
What it comes down to, it seems like, is trying to extrapolate a story from the trigger so that you can say “Stop crying, you don’t have it that bad!” Which is ridiculous. As someone above pointed out, triggers can seem nonsensical even within the context of the instigating trauma. I remember the eggs post. The things that stick with you about trauma are not always just the things you expect. You can’t actually guess anything about a trauma from a seemingly inexplicable trigger beyond “Wow, fear of paintbrushes, plastic cups, and raisins … I bet that’s a story.”
And if that story that they imagine doesn’t match what they think is a “valid” trauma narrative, then they feel justified in dismissing it. Completely missing the fact that there’s no such thing as a “valid” or “invalid” trauma narrative, because trauma is a really strange and subjective thing. Also completely missing the fact that it’s not okay to try to make that judgment to begin with.
A lot of people seem unwilling, for some reason totally alien to me, to make that empathetic leap and say “Okay. I don’t need to know more. I believe you.” They want to police other people’s experiences. And that’s just one of the worst impulses of humanity. It’s really nasty, and it gets applied in so many horrible ways to mental illness of all kinds. It needs to stop.
Ultimately, it costs you nothing to be cool about it. It costs you nothing to take what people say at face value, or to believe strangers and not comment on their mental health issues. It costs you nothing to say nothing, even if you don’t believe them. Because you are inevitably going to be wrong, and why risk making yourself look like a clueless, deliberately oafish asshole?
I’m really confused as to why this is an issue, except certain segments of the online community take great pleasure in being critical of other people’s attempts to cope, because they have invested a lot of their self-image in being “smart” and “discerning” and “no-nonsense” and “not gonna be fooled” … and they really enjoy tearing down people who are saying “these things are unfair” or “these things are hard for me.”
“You aren’t really hurt/traumatized/oppressed!” is a truly unpleasantly common thing to hear these people say. Often they will even say it outright. Other times, it comes across indirectly.
It’s not at all surprising for anti-feminists to also be anti-trigger-warning, and I think this is probably why. I know it was the case for me for a very long time. Then I kind of … grew up, I guess? Enough bad shit happened to me and to people I know that I acquired sympathy. And realized that, actually, my own traumas have left me with some pretty weird issues, things that make me uncomfortable but which other people are unlikely to consider inherently threatening. So I had no room to judge.
It’s sad, because it’s actually a whole lot less effort to believe people when they talk about their experiences than it is to sit there, smoldering with disdain and resentment over the person who really can’t abide milk, of all things, and asks that it be tagged for.
If you’re angry about trigger warnings and are lashing out about it, just … go ask a mutual friend for a hug or something. Go do something self-affirming. Because the trigger warning thing is not about you or for you. You might as well spend your energy doing something nice for yourself. You’re lucky not to have to wrestle with a fear you very well know is ridiculous. Enjoy that and move on. Don’t waste your time thinking about how many people are wrong to feel the way they feel. Just let it go.
I also want to emphasize something said above:
A lot of times, a person is able to view a trigger and be perfectly fine if they were warned beforehand and allowed to mentally prepare.
This is huge.
I can engage with my triggers.
I can do it voluntarily on my own terms, and the effects can, depending on circumstance, be pretty minimal.
I can do it with warning on someone else’s terms, and depending on circumstance I can be mostly okay to messed up but still mostly functional.
Or I can do it without warning at all, and depending on circumstance, fall apart a little, or a lot.
If given control of the situation, I can get away with a “yuck” feeling and then move on. If not, I may need medication to bring me down. It can fuck me up for a couple of days if I was not allowed to choose when/how/whether to engage. If I am, hey, wow, look at that, I’m mostly all right.
This is not evidence that it’s not that bad. Like with a lot of illness, disability, and mental health stuff, just because I can do it sometimes doesn’t mean it’s okay all the time.
This is how these things work. Period. This is actually what recovery from trauma looks like, this is how it works, this is what you have to accept if you want to accept that any trauma at all is valid.
It really is a useless endeavor to try to draw conclusions about someone’s trauma from whether or not they ask for, use, or need trigger warnings.
And tbh, even if they come right out and say “I don’t have PTSD, I just hate seeing pictures of dogs, I’m so triggered lol”, that’s them being horrendously disrespectful of mentally ill people. It’s not an excuse to then be even more disrespectful by using that to draw conclusions that allow you to dismiss the very concept of trigger warnings as stupid.
There are people who fake entire illnesses, okay? Who lie about having cancer or whatever. But we don’t take those people as evidence that people who have, you know, actual cancer must be lying and pretending to be special snowflakes.
And, just for the record, sometimes people can’t move past a trigger.
I have fairly bad PTSD about dentists. Nothing helps. I don’t look to get trigger warnings because it doesn’t help. I can barely walk into a dentist’s office–I’m 19 and my mom still has to hold my hand and probably always will. I never make my own appointments, someone else has to do it. I can barely speak in a dentist’s chair, and I get flashbacks from the lights.
I’ve been working on getting past this for 12 years, I’ve tried every technique in the book to get through an appointment without this stuff including all available forms of sedation, and I’ve literally reached the point where my therapist went “Yeah, you might want to just get drunk afterward” when I told her that’s what I was going to do.
So… barring a miracle, this is as good as it’s going to get. That’s a trigger I’m never going to get rid of. If trigger warnings helped, I’d need them for the rest of my life. And it’s not because I or anyone else in that position is weak. It’s just because some wounds heal, and others still leave you limping.
going to college/university in gotham city would be so wild???
a student who forgets to sort out their accommodation until the last minute and ends up moving into mr freeze’s hideout because everywhere else in town is full. still beats dorms i guess.
the welcome assembly is 6 hours long and most of it is what to do if you encounter the joker or batman or some other hero or villain and how the police are essentially useless.
non-gothamite students being freaked out over why the gothamite students aren’t panicking when their campus coffee shop gets held up by harley quinn and poison ivy.
city-wide catastrophes are not an excuse for getting out of finals week.
the black market is incredibly easy to access in gotham and ends up getting used by students wanting to make a quick buck by writing other people’s essays or stealing answers off tests. beware ex-psychology professors who do not take kindly to cheaters.
not being sure whether the sound you’re hearing is an explosion somewhere in town or just your neighbor’s music at 3AM.
did you just see nightwing pass by your window or are you hallucinating from lack of sleep?
riddler crashes the university’s servers, causing untold fear and panic to the students who had left their essays to the very last minute to turn in.
iceberg lounge is to be avoided, the drinks are so damn expensive and the nightlife is usually lousy unless batman’s doing a raid on the place.
any drunk student could easily be taken in as a new batman villain. one minute you’re at a fancy dress party having a good time, the next thing you know you’re waking up in a jail cell with a suspicious, batarang shaped scar and the tabloids calling you Donkey Girl.
every student thinks they can be robin within the first two weeks of moving to gotham. this usually does not end well.
seeing two-face chilling at mcdonald’s on your friend’s snapchat story and not even being surprised at this point.
no need to set an alarm for a 14 minute nap, batgirl will probably come crashing through your window anyway.
most people want to bang either someone from the batfam or the rogues gallery. some have even attempted it.
fear toxin is put in the vents one time but almost no one is affected. everybody is already terrified for exams.
most dorm rooms have an “adopt me batman” sign hanging from the windows, or variations of that (”adopt me catwoman” is a pretty popular one too)
• Getting a new professor or a class being canceled because the professor decided to put on a costume and rob a bank under a gimmicky name
How about instead of Montparnasse or Javert or whoever being the villain in your les mis fic, you just embrace the fact that nobody in les mis is meant to be a villain, but instead act the way they do because of the society that surrounds them.
