ppl who dont even like shakespeare: WOW how DARE you alter the original text these are CLASSICS have you no RESPECT, going around DESECRATING these sacred texts in the name of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!!!!!!!!!
people who love shakespeare: im going to stage a production of hamlet where all the actors are dogs
My wife, Zoe, is transgender. She came out to us — the kids and me — last summer and then slowly spread her beautiful feminine wings with extended family, friends, and neighbors.
A little coming out here, a little coming out there — you know how it is.
It’s been a slow, often challenging process of telling people something so personal and scary, but pretty much everyone has been amazing.
However, she dreaded coming out at the office.
She works at a large technology company, managing a team of software developers in a predominantly male office environment. She’s known many of her co-workers and employees for 15 or so years. They have called her “he” and “him” and “Mr.” for a very long time. How would they handle the change?
While we have laws in place in Ontario, Canada, to protect the rights of transgender employees, it does not shield them from awkwardness, quiet judgment, or loss of workplace friendships. Your workplace may not become outright hostile, but it can sometimes become a difficult place to go to every day because people only tolerate you rather than fully accept you.
But this transition needed to happen, and so Zoe carefully crafted a coming out email and sent it to everyone she works with.
The support was immediately apparent; she received about 75 incredibly kind responses from coworkers, both local and international.
She then took one week off, followed by a week where she worked solely from home. It was only last Monday when she finally went back to the office.
Despite knowing how nice her colleagues are and having read so many positive responses to her email, she was understandably still nervous.
Hell, I was nervous. I made her promise to text me 80 billion times with updates and was more than prepared to go down there with my advocacy pants on if I needed to (I might be a tad overprotective).
And that’s when her office pals decided to show the rest of us how to do it right.
She got in and found that a couple of them had decorated her cubicle to surprise her:
And made sure her new name was prominently displayed in a few locations:
They got her a beautiful lily with a “Welcome, Zoe!” card:
And this tearjerker quote was waiting for her on her desk:
To top it all off, a 10 a.m. “meeting” she was scheduled to attend was actually a coming out party to welcome her back to work as her true self — complete with coffee and cupcakes and handshakes and hugs.
NO, I’M NOT CRYING. YOU’RE CRYING.
I did go to my wife’s office that day. But instead of having my advocacy pants on, I had my hugging arms ready and some mascara in my purse in case I cried it off while thanking everyone.
I wish we lived in a world where it was no big deal to come out.
Sadly, that is not the case for many LGBTQ people. We live in a world of bathroom bills and “religious freedom” laws that directly target the members of our community. We live in a world where my family gets threats for daring to speak out for trans rights. We live in a world where we can’t travel to certain locations for fear of discrimination — or worse.
So when I see good stuff happening — especially when it takes place right on our doorstep — I’m going to share it far and wide. Let’s normalize this stuff. Let’s make celebrating diversity our everyday thing rather than hating or fearing it.
Chill out, haters. Take a load off with us.
It’s a lot of energy to judge people, you know. It’s way more fun to celebrate and support them for who they are.
whenever i’m talking to someone and they tell me about something that happened to them i always tell them about something that happened to me that’s similar to what happened to them. i do it as kind of a “oh hey yeah this happened to me so i can relate to what you’re going through” but i’m always afraid it comes out as “oh yeah well this happened to me so clearly i have it tougher than you” or “i’m done talking about you let’s talk about me”
i swear i don’t mean it like that……..
I run into this a lot with my job - so instead of telling the whole story I say something like, “Oh my gosh, I had something REALLY similar happen. What did you do after that??” And I’ve found that works. Usually they explain and then ask, “So what happened to you?” And then you’re invited to share, and the formula for conversing continues on. :)
of all the tumblr posts i’ve read, this one is going to change my life the fastest lol.
Thanks to both the OP for posting a thing that so many of us do, and the responder who gave us a better way to do it. You’re doing the lord’s work, my friend!
Fun fact: there isn’t anything wrong with you if you do what OP is describing.
Deborah Tannen’s work focuses on different conversational styles — the sets of behavioral norms and expectations that we bring with us to conversations. In one of her earlier articles, she describes two conflicting conversational styles that exist in the US.
One, which she (perhaps inaccurately) dubs “New York Jewish conversational style,” is based on the principle of building camaraderie with one’s interlocutor. The other, which she doesn’t really name but which we could call “mainstream American conversational style,” is based on the principle of not imposing on one’s interlocutor.
Each conversational style has its own behavioral norms. Mainstream American conversational style involves things like asking your interlocutor questions about him/herself and waiting until your interlocutor is clearly finished speaking until you say something. These demonstrate a focus on one’s interlocutor and a clear resistance to imposing. NYJ conversational style involves things like conversational overlaps — speaking at the same time as one’s interlocutor — and “swapping stories.” These demonstrate a high level of engagement with one’s interlocutor. Conversationalists using the mainstream American style make space for each other; conversationalists using the New York Jewish style carve out their own space.
Each of these conversational styles works well when the two people conversing have the same style. Imagine two friends meeting for drinks after work:
“Oh, hello! How was your trip here?” “Oh, it was awful. There was so much traffic on the turnpike.” “That’s terrible.” “I know. How was your trip?” “Well, there was an accident on the bridge.” “Oh no! Was there a big backup?” “Yeah, pretty big.”
“Oh, hi!” “Hey! Ugh, sorry I’m late, there was so much traffic on the turnpike—” “Oh my god, I know, there was an accident on the bridge and the cars were backed up a MILE—” “That is the worst, I remember one time I sat in traffic for an HOUR waiting to get through that toll, they really should—” “Add more EZ-pass lanes, right?” “Add more lanes, yeah, exactly.”
Both of these conversations worked: the participants feel that they’ve had their say and that they’ve been understood. They feel connected to their interlocutor.
But when people with conflicting conversational styles converse, that’s where things go wrong. Because we interpret other people’s contributions according to our own conversational style. So the person with mainstream American conversational style comes away thinking “Why did they keep interrupting me? Why didn’t they ask me any questions about me? Why were they so loud and emotional?” And the person with the New York Jewish conversational style comes away thinking “Why were they so disengaged? They didn’t seem involved in the conversation at all. They didn’t even offer any personal information.”
Rather, they would come away thinking that, except that we’re taught growing up that the first example conversation up there is what conversations should look like. So the person with the New York Jewish conversational style actually comes away from the conversation thinking “oh my god, what was I doing? I kept talking about myself. I think I kept interrupting them. I am so rude, god, I’m the worst.” When in fact: a) it’s about cultural difference, not individual moral qualities; and b) one conversational style isn’t inherently “better” than another.
Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t attempt to bridge the gap between conversational styles, as suggested above. But we should be aware that:
TL;DR: Cultural difference is often mistaken for individual moral failings.
*memorizes “Oh my gosh, I had something REALLY similar happen. What did you do after that??” for next time this happens to me*
god i HATE the way crime shows aggressively push the idea that only guilty people (or occasionally innocent but morally repugnant people) want lawyers when talking to the police.
it’s one of the most harmful lies on tv honestly because it encourages real people to waive their right to counsel making it vastly easier for cops to take advantage of them, lie to them, railroad them etc. regardless of your guilt or innocence, if you’re suspected of a crime, you need a lawyer.
this is literally how thousands of innocent people end up in jail/prison because cops have a strong as hell confirmation bias and will use tricky language and leading questions to either get you to confess or admit enough fault to convict. people have been sent to death row over this shit. ALWAYS get a lawyer.
Omg if I had a real keyboard and not my phone right now, the tales I would tell. The fact that police have tried to argue silence shows guilt or the fifth amendment doesn’t cover body language, make me speechless with rage. Also if you invoke fifth amendment rights it doesn’t mean they have to stop talking/questioning you. You have to invoke fifth amendment and Miranda rights (right to council). Once you say you want a lawyer they can’t continue. But you must invoke with each officer. Officers don’t have to share that you invoke with the other officers. The national layers guild and there know your rights trainings are indispensable.
my dad works for the white house and he just told me that apparently the government banned kissanime on the white house wifi cause officials were watching it like, a noticeable amount
wait, I just mentioned this to him again and he said “no, they didn’t block kissanime from the White House, they banned it from the entire Department of Defense”
Shmi Skywalker and Padme Amidala, the Force ghosts that never were.
One day in
the future, a girl will ask of her maybe-father definitely-teacher
(one is likely; the other is a certainty; she calls him Master
because she wants no other family than that she has chosen): where
did Skywalker come from. And
the Master will say from my father he was a great man and
a terrible one and – and the
girl will shake her head, chew her lip, say, did he choose
it and the Master will frown (a
pucker between his brows; a corrugation of his lined, weatherbeaten
face) and say, no his mother chose it
and the girl will say who was she and
the man will say a slave on Tattooine; my uncle’s
brother’s second wife and no
more. He knows no more. Don’t blame him.
Do
not blame the teacher-before either. You knew him as an old man, old
and strong and lonely, but once he was a boy with a snake-tail of a
braid and an empty space under his heart where love once rested. He
watches his Master die and he tries to shoulder a burden that is
absurd in its immensity. Train
the boy who will save everything.
Imagine that. Imagine. And, yes, he says this
boy must come with us but
remember: the Force is endless hunger, an animal. It isn’t willfully
cruel – no more than the ocean. But if you do not learn to swim,
you die. If a boy strong with the Force is not trained, he will
surely perish.
(or worse. There are horror stories.)
Blame,
perhaps, the council, so anchored in their ways that they do not
permit the child to see his mother. Blame, perhaps, the Jedi so
ancient and so wise who take their Chosen One and tell him that he
can save the universe and all he loves, blame them who take a nine
year old from his mother and give him weapons to hold instead of
hands. Fight
fight fight but only when you are told to. Kill without mercy when
we say otherwise show limitless mercy. Do as you are bidden always
and forever. Save everything. Master your feelings. Have no
feelings.
From
my point of view the Jedi are evil! –
what are those but the words of a lost, stupid boy, trusting only
in the fierceness of his own heart and the iron surety of his
convictions.
Blame
the boy. Maybe. After all: this was his choice. He did not have to
listen to older and wiser heads that said go
to war and afterwards tend to your mother.
He did not have to cut down children. He did not have to.
Children. Definition: the youngsters of any race. Before the
younglings in the temple there were the Sand People, the tiny ones,
J'Wratha and Taraka and those are only two, sliced apart in front
of their mother. He was damned before the temple. Do you
understand?
If
you do not: we return to Shmi. And here she is:
force ghost!Anakin's adventures in being an asshole even while dead. go.
Here is how
it does not happen: Anakin Skywalker dies. Fluid mouldering in his
lungs, internal organs collapsing into puddles of useless rancid
slurry, blood thickening with toxins – but he dies at peace, he
dies with his eyes wide open, he dies with his son (his beloved and
only boy) crouched over him and he wakes on the other side with
softness and light gracing his unscarred brow, his wife at his side,
flowers twisted in the starlit curls of her hair.
This is how
it does not happen: the ghost of Anakin Skywalker is a thin, flimsy
thing, coming to life here and there, always bright blue, always
smiling, offering paternal advice to those who would listen.
This is
another thing that does not happen: Rey sees a strange man cresting
the red dunes and she never sees his face, only the brightness of
his eyes, and she is comforted – for she does not know his name,
only that he is a kindly force, only that even in the feral iron
heart of Jakku she is watched over.
Here is
something that does happen: “Listen to me, you bastard, you
bastard, you have to listen –” and Kylo Ren does not hear.
Rather: he chooses not to hear. He is meditating. Sunmatter dances
around him, catching on the flick-curl of his blackened cape. Well.
He thinks that it is sunmatter; this is what Snoke has told him it
is; and so this is what he believes; and of course it is not
sunmatter but the fire-bright venom of Anakin Skywalker’s ghost.
He’s not white-blue and delicate. He is burning.
Of
course he burns:
he’s full of fury and everything I died for you are
unmaking and if you
want I will tell you how it feels to die drowning in your blood I
will tell you and if
you lay a hand – a finger – on my
children, my darlings, then grandson or not I will show
you –
“You
tore down every I built!” Padme
screamed, when she saw him for the first time. His mouth
half-cooked. His body spectral and quivering. And his lovely wife –
no longer delicate and pale as a shivering lily but quicksilver and
burning, bright as Alderaan falling into dust. Livid spots of colour
on her cheeks. “You burned my diplomacy! I loved you but Maker
above – I loved the council just as much – my sweet children
were torn from my arms – I loved you so much and you destroyed
everything I loved –”
My
darling –
I love
you –
You were
everything good in my world; the only good thing in my world –
Skywalker,
Skywalker, she
had said, that is
the – that was the problem –
So here is the boy Anakin Skywalker, skin full of fire, and his
afterlife is anything but easy.
You
wouldn’t,
his son says to him, slack-jawed with horror, he’s
your grandson, he’s –
He’s
destroying everything I built. You know I once knew a good woman.
And she watched as someone she loved burn all she loved down. And
she let him live. And I won’t make her mistake. Do you understand?
You’re
not Vader anymore; you don’t have to be so ruthless,
Luke says, fretful and old and when did he become so old? Why does
he look so much like Kenobi, bent-backed against the assault of the
Force?
“This isn’t Vader,” says Anakin Skywalker, “this is all me.”
And it is true. He is a soldier. He is the saviour of the known and
unknown world. He was torn from his mother’s arms and given a sword
to hold instead of a hand. How else could he grow up? How else could
he die?
Listen
to me listen to me listen to me he
snarls in Kylo Ren’s ear and with each day the boy listens less and
Anakin tries less. He is dead and he is furious and perhaps this is
hell; this irony. He tore down Padme’s love and her lifework and now
he must watch a sickly imitation of Vader do the same to his love,
to his life.
Kylo
Ren will, one day, lift his lightsabre against his mother – or his
uncle. The blow will never fall. Anakin will pour his fury and fire
and limitless power into the boy’s skull and burn him from the
inside out. One day, the Knight of Ren will attempt to fufill what
he thinks is Vader’s legacy. One day, he will learn – too late –
that Vader is nothing, nothing, nothing compared to the anger of
Anakin Skywalker.
Imagine if Alya and Marinette got into an argument because Alya was tired of Marinette never facing her fears and talking to Adrien. So Marinette, enraged and determined to prove Alya wrong, storms over to Adrien and says “You wanna go?!?”
It’s only after Adrien nervously chuckles and hesitantly backs away that she realizes that she forgot the “to the movies with me” part of her sentence
Aliens invade Earth and everyone finds out that they’re actually huge nerds who fall in love too easily and really love cats.
See now this is great because it basically implies that the aliens invade Earth, guns a-blazing, and STOP DEAD the first time they see a cat and do the standard “OOOOH FUZZY THING” coo and drop their guns and the cat’s owner comes out and makes friends with the aliens and suddenly the invasion turns into…like a very large parade with a lot of cats and alien affection.
Okay, curse you all, now I have all sorts of headcanons for
That One Where Padmé and Anakin Are Pen Pals.
So Padmé gives Anakin her com frequency before he leaves
Naboo at the end of TPM, because she cares about this kid and she wants to make
sure he’s all right, and she doesn’t know that the Jedi non-attachment rule is
going to mean he’s not supposed to keep in touch with her at all.
When she doesn’t hear from him at first she figures he’s
probably really busy, settling in and starting his Jedi training and all that,
so she gives him time.
But when she still doesn’t hear from him eventually she gets
worried and shoots him a quick message, basically just “Hey how are you?”
It takes him a while to reply and when he does it’s not
anything Padmé was expecting. “The Council says I’m not supposed to talk to you
because you’re an attachment, like my mom, and I have to let you go if I’m
going to be a Jedi. But I want to
keep talking to you. You’re my friend.”
So now Padmé’s all righteously angry so she says, “Well to
hell with that. You’re my friend too. So how are you with encryptions?”
And Anakin sends back some super goofy winking space emoji
and he’s like, “I grew up in the Quarters we have a secret language and also me
and Kitster had a code I’ve got this.”
concept: Aliens who have absolutely no cultural or personal use for humor as a concept, but are very adept at figuring out socio-linguistic systems and how to manipulate them. Being funny makes humans more comfortable and easier to negotiate with, and it’s easy enough once you familiarize yourself with a particular culture and set your speech synthesizers to the correct setting.
and i mean sure eventually they’re great at it, but at some point in time a group of haggard aliens in a room somewhere compare notes on irony, hyperbole, and cultural references, with one exhausted individual clicking “No, Gxiiijhux VIII, puns are a no-go, puns are counterproductive, I don’t care if Susan emitted optimal pleasure decibels, everyone else in that room hated you.”
Gxiiijhux VIII finds xemself unexpectedly annoyed at the Merchant-Leader’s correction.
Although further experience indicates that the Merchant-Leader is right about the puns, Gxiiijhux VIII somehow cannot help xemself from clicking out several more of them during the next negotiation session. (All of the humans in the room groan except for Susan, who, again, emits optimal pleasure decibels)
“You need to stop,” the Merchant Leader clicks in frustration.
(But Gxiiijhux VIII can’t seem to stop.)
Gxiiijhux VIII realizes halfway through the trade negotiations that xie is more interested in causing Susan to emit the optimal pleasure decibels than in the successful negotiation of a lucrative trade regulation treaty. This causes xem much stress and confusion.
Eventually, the marriage of Gxiiijhux VIII and Susan is included as a feature of the treaty.
(Gxiiijhux VIII’s former associates breathe a sigh of relief as the merchant ship pulls away from the space station, leaving Gxiiijhux VIII, Susan, and the terrible puns behind.)
Gxiiijhux VIII never does quite get the human concept of humor, but xie is quite content to spend xyr life listening to Susan make the optimal pleasure decibel sounds anyway.
If u have a physical disability, a visible disability, need aides like prosthetics, wheelchairs, braces, canes, oxygen, you get stared at, unwelcome comments, and just generally have to deal with the backlash of being AS WELL AS looking disabled
-you’re important
-you’re a babe
-you look so damn good
Because we get left out of *everything* (including body posi) too much and it just needs to be said that you are whole and more than enough and beautiful the way you are
Okay, this is such a yucky subject, but unfortunately it could happen to anyone. I just went through ALICE training at my school and I wanted to share what I learned just in case
1. Get as much information out as possible. Obviously the best tactic for this is like in a school setting announcing over the PA where the shooter is and what he looks like. That way people not near there can get away
2. GET AWAY. Run. Get out. Don’t huddle in a corner like school lock down drills teach you. Pretty much no school shooting death has been someone the shooter chased. They’re there to hit as many easy targets they can then kill themselves, so don’t just wait for them to shoot you. Make a barricade if you can to buy yourself time then find a way to get out.
3. If you run out of other options due to circumstance or proximity, throw something at the shooter. Do something to surprise them and throw off their concentration. They’re generally not trained to ignore distractions. So throw things at them, then SWARM them. The strongest body builder you know couldn’t fight off 5 people at once. Everyone grab a limb ( grab the one with the gun first is the beat option obviously). If you’re not able to coordinate efforts, just find the bravery to dive at them. Statistics and psychology say that others will join in help once they see one person taking action.
4. This is a scary thought, but good to know. If you are shot and conscious, chances are VERY high you’ll live. Like 85%. Humans have a habit of getting shot so doctors and first responders have gotten very good at fixing them. So just keep in mind that (while it won’t be pleasant) its not over if you get shot. Remember that when you’re deciding whether or not to dive at the shooter.
5. If you happen to get the gun away from the shooter, kick it away and secure it (put a trashcan or something over it) but DO NOT PICK UP THE GUN!! if the police get to the scene and see someone waving a gun around, who do you think they’ll shoot first? Secure the gun and the bad guy, but do not hold the gun ever.
Again, not a nice thing but I know a lot of teacher blogs follow me, plus it could happen anywhere. Pls be safe. If you have questions ask because maybe they covered it in my training!
Also: in the event that someone has been shot, grab something like a shirt and apply as much pressure as possible. It will not be fun for anyone involved (applying pressure tends to make the pain level skyrocket), but slowing the bleeding raises your chances of survival significantly.
You hear all these “you’re not a real fan unless” and it lists a hundred things, but I met a dude today who saw my Deadpool pin and asked what my favorite story arc was, and I explained that while I loved Deadpool, I was new to Marvel (I only really got into it a year and a half ago) and hadn’t been able to find a lot of the comics. Instead of making a face or a derogatory comment, he just offered to send me all the stuff he had. That is a true fan.
I told the guy at the comic shop when I went in for Black Widow that I’d seen a few Harley Quinn panels on Tumblr and thought it looked badass but didn’t know where to start because my entire involvement in DC fandom was watching the Batman cartoon as a kid. This guy sitting at one of the tables playing Yu-Gi-Oh, wearing a comic shirt and carrying a definitely-hardcore-fan amount of swag, spins around and goes “dude! You’ve never read DC? Check out the back issues wall. They’ve got all kinds of Harley Quinn.” He then proceeded to explain how “New 52″ was a spinoff, and had some split opinions in the fandom, but either continuity is good as long as you pick one and stay with it so you don’t get mixed on what’s going on.
True fans love to see other people loving the stuff they love.
See how easy it is to be “that cool person who helped me get into X” instead of “that asshole who made me feel bad for not knowing everything about X”?
IT’S NOT EVEN DIFFICULT TO NOT BE A SHITLORD. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. And you never had one.
Please stop giving away so much personal information about yourself.
It doesnt seem like it but your blog is visited by hundreds of people with hundreds of different intentions weekly (or hell daily if ur a popular blogger). And posting your height, age, gender, privileges, all of your triggers, gives away a lot of information that you may regret posting later on.
The internet is a very scary place. Full of people who could do you harm with that sort of information.
You all have to understand that nothing on the internet is ever truly deleted or gone. So you REALLY have to be careful about what you post and say.
A lot of you are keen to posting opinions online and as we all know on the internet opinions are going to anger a lot of people.
People could potentially track and harass you. It is a very dangerous world full of messed up people. And as minors you should all be very wary of who you trust online and think twice before you post something. Just posting “please dont follow if youre _____” isnt going to help from that.
ALSO
@ 14 year old side of Tumblr
Please stop posting your skype address.
I know it’s tempting to make new friends. And I know that faceless people are easier to talk to. But it’s dangerous. And we’re not trying to parent or berate you. We just want you to be safe.
Trust me.
Down the road you’re gonna realize you made a lot of dumb mistakes trying to be friends with the world. The world isn’t made of all friendly people. And I truly adore your optimism. I’m the same way.
But I’d rather you learn in a safe setting then after putting yourself in harms way.
Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetry alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.
Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.
You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.
That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?
You really want a human.
you know fantasy dragon soulbonding fic i want more of that where the humans are the dragons, like, we’re huge, we’re old, we’re scrappy as hell, and if you are small and cute enough we would be delighted to carry you around on our back
“One time, I was trapped in an asteroid belt when the main fission compensator blew. Normally it’s no sweat, right? But for no good reason, the backup has failed as well. So the light on the dashboard is saying ‘Abandon Ship’ but we’re in the middle of an asteroid belt, y'know? We’d never make it out alive. So anyway me and the rest of the guys are just like, well, I guess this is our lot in life, we’re done for. At least we have enough power to send transmissions to our broods and go into hibernation and maybe some other group of dumb fucks can find us out here. But then, right, the human goes crazy! She jumps up on the table and starts shouting about how we’ll never surrender, right? It made no gods damned sense! But somehow, she won us all round and we’re all pumped up. Then she started marching around the ship, gathering up all the spare cabling, tape, those little paperclip things they always demand to have on board? So anyway, she goes into a trance, starts building something, and we’re just like, well, even the human has gone nuts, must be because they can’t go into hibernation naturally. So anyway, after a few minutes she jumps up and starts screaming, screaming at the top of her lungs, takes this bizarre sculpture thing to the engine room and wires it in place of the fission compensator’s tertiary manifold. And somehow, somehow, it works. So we limp to the nearest base, and they test this heap of junk, and it should have never worked, there’s no possible way this tangle of cables and bent wire could possibly interface with the engine’s systems, let alone work with them.
But there’s another human at the station and they just look at it and nods, like this is the most natural thing ever.
Apparently, the pile of junk was inhabited by one of their ancient gods, name of Ma Kyver?
And THAT my broodlings is why we take a human with us.”
Report from Cultural Researcher Qulix’tch to Home Swarm University:
Re: Human Survival Rates As it Relates To Diet:
Dearest colleges, I am ever grateful for your kind communications and support. I have compiled all collected data and attached it to the overview for your perusal. Let me say first and foremost that the rumors that I was sent to investigate, ie that humans were the first observed truly omnivorous species, have turned out to be a gross understatement.
It is not simply that humans can eat both vegetative flesh and animal flesh, not even that they can eat anything in between but seriously, they eat everything regardless of it’s inherent nutrient value and risk factor. Indeed this increases their odds of survival but from an intercultural interaction standpoint it is a little weird, and creepy, let’s be honest, that it seems like their first thought when encountering something new that isn’t a rock is “Can I eat this?”
Mostly they prefer plant matter as (thank whatever deity you will) they seem to be squeamish about eating sentient beings and the odds favor that plants won’t be. It has also come to my attention that our particular eight-legged and multi-eyed form, added to our chitinous outer membrane is particularly unappetizing to them across their multi-culture. This is reassuring but hardly a firm deterrent as they have an instinct set that drives them to make digestible anything that isn’t inherently.
The nutrients are trapped in an unusable form? No worries, the human just finds something combustible, builds a fire, and heats it till the undigestable fibers or whatever release the nutrients.
Is the edible bit protected by spikes, spines, and thorns they might just grab a rock and beat it until the edible bit is avaliable.
They carry around vats of acid just in case they need to add it to the mix to denature large proteins.
I kid you not they have hundreds, hundreds, of different species of microbes on their skin, in their mouth, in their digestive tract that help them break down what their own systems won’t.
If the nutrients are contaminated with unfriendly microorganisms they count on this friendly micro-fauna, as they call it, to fight them off. Failing that they have developed an entire subculture devoted to brewing poison of just the correct potency that it kills the intruding microorganisms while leaving them alive.
And if there is no plant matter they can eat? They just find a (hopefully) non-sentient species that can break it down for them and wring the proteins and nutrients out of them in ways that don’t bear mentioning. (see appendix Eggs, Milk, and Meat)
It has been reported, if you can believe it (and with humans why not), that on their own planet. In an ocean that is full of fish that they can eat with no processing at all, there is one species that is particularly poisonous to humans. Instead of avoiding it and eating the swarming fish species that are so benign that they can be eaten without even the basic heating, humans pay to have a specialist in food preparation known as a chef go through a complicated ritual to remove the deadly toxin. They will do this even when the non-toxic fish flesh is readily and far more cheaply avaliable.
Then, even when they have enough nutrients they will masticate whatever inorganic substance is at hand in some odd, seemingly unconscious ritual. The humans I encountered seemed to have a preference for writing utensils for this purpose
I hope the information I have gathered will prove useful.
The largest mass shooting in American history was a hate crime against gay people. Don’t ever forget that.
June 12, 2016. Putting a date on this for when it gets reblogged months from now by people who think the post is about something from 30, 40 years ago.
Not when used as a self-identification, and not when used as an umbrella term within the community, at least.
See, here’s the thing: The most common identifier used by bi, pan, and trans people to describe their sexuality? Queer.
Given that multiple studies have shown that bi people alone comprise about half the community, that makes it by far the most common term we use to describe ourselves.
What’s more, it’s not just an identifier: it’s a rallying cry. It’s a banner the whole community has assembled under forever. “We’re here, we’re queer” is a cliché for a reason. It’s a statement of power, and of pride - yes, we’re weird. We don’t fit into the “acceptable” categories cisheteronormative society gives us. And that’s a good thing. It’s a call to demolish those “acceptable” boxes, to build a world we’re all part of.
Its rejection is a relatively recent move by the same homonationalism that brought us “Bi people don’t belong,” the thrilling sequel “Trans people don’t belong,” and the stunning conclusion “Ace people don’t belong.” It’s a deliberate strategy employed by respectability politicians seeking a seat at the table - taking the work we’ve put in and distancing themselves from us so they can tell the straights “We deserve your respect because we’re just like you! We even hate queers!”
(And don’t think it’s a coincidence that the community suddenly forgot the massive, massive overlap between “queer” and “poly” when building the very self-conscious image of two clean-cut upper-middle-class smiling young professional men or women either. Anything that wasn’t “respectable” enough had to go. My deepest thanks to the person who pointed this out.)
In the rush for our place in an oppressive hell, we’ve lost our revolutionary edge, lost our fire, and lost a lot of what drove us in the first place. Fuck. That.
I’m queer, and you will never take that away from me.
It’s nice being
Tumblr Old and having some recollection of the self-identifiers we
used before this website. The slogans alone should tell you the
motivators behind using “queer” as opposed to other terms. There
was “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” There was “queer
rage”. There was “not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you.”
That last one especially shows rejection of any neat essentialist
boxes – go away with your binaries, your easy categorization, and
last but not least your respectability politics.
I’ve never seen “q
slur” used before Tumblr, and even that only in the last maybe two
years. I’m not playing the whole “you kids turn everything into a
trigger” game, that’s not the point. My point is that almost
uniformly older LGBTQ+ people on this website associate “queer”
with empowerment, and it’s teenagers and early 20-somethings (who are
almost the same age group as me, I’m 27) constructing this idea that
it has always only been a slur, that it’s more prevalent than any
other slurs still in use, and that this is somehow the “historically
correct” view of the term and everyone using queer is ignorant of
history. Which is just not true.
So anyway, here are
some great functions of “queer” that aren’t replicated by any
other term:
1) Wide relevance.
Queer can be related to gender, sexuality, or both.
2) Opacity. It can
be a stand-in for some other term (gay, bisexual, trans, etc), or it
can actually mean something else altogether! Something that isn’t
fully covered by any of those categories!
3) Queer could,
therefore, actually function as an umbrella term (yeah, I know I
can’t get away with that in the present climate, thanks for that).
Calling everything gay, as has become the norm on Tumblr, isn’t only
sticking it to The Straights ™; it’s also sticking it to all
the LGBTQ+ people who don’t identify as gay specifically (not to mention
straight trans people), and who never see ourselves brought up in
casual conversation anymore. It’s back to “gay rights” style
language.
And you know what,
of course it is, because “LGBTQ+” and other versions of the
abbreviation aren’t catchy. “Gay” is catchy. “Queer” is
catchy. But for some reason, gee I wonder why it could be, “the
community” has decided to eliminate precisely the term that does
actually by default encompass a wide range of identities. And replace
it with one that again gives primacy to “gay” as the default
descriptor, as if the rest of us just don’t matter or should be happy
with being “obliquely included” (that is to say, erased). We’ve
come up with all this specialized terminology for gender and
sexuality, but when it comes to being actually talked about aside
from specifically describing yourself in an intro to your blog, it’s underused.
I could go on about
how targeting “queer” disproportionately affects MGA and trans/nb
people, including people with multiple marginalizations, who
especially are likely to have a problem with all these discrete
one-dimensional categories and feel that “queer” expresses something
the other terms can’t. But that’s already covered in the OP under
good old respectability politics.
TL;DR: You can’t
just take away a term that many, many people in the
community have been actively using for decades before your latest
iteration of SGA discourse and expect no meaning to be lost or
broken.
if you’ve ever left me a message asking me if I’m okay, or liked a post in which I was ranting about my bad day, or liked a selfie, or just anything nice like that- just know that I remember you, I am grateful for you, and you made my day better with your tiny gesture.
I literally cannot believe I let someone talk me into writing this. Whatever. It’s written. Another chapter is forthcoming. Blame @twistedangelsays for everything.
Reblogging for the “goes to bed at reasonable hours” crowd.
Person A owns a flower shop and person B comes storming in one day, slaps 20 bucks on the counter and says “How do I passive-aggressively say fuck you in flower?”
Omfg
MY TIME HAS COME
so you’d need a bouquet of geraniums (stupidity), foxglove (insincerity), meadowsweet (uselessness), yellow carnations (you have disappointed me), and orange lilies (hatred). it would be quite striking! and full of loathing.
I literally cannot believe I let someone talk me into writing this. Whatever. It’s written. Another chapter is forthcoming. Blame @twistedangelsays for everything.
The “friend zone” and unrequited love are not the same thing. Unrequited love is, “I love you, you don’t love me in that same way, I am sad about that.” The “friend zone” is, “I love you, you don’t love me in that same way, you have therefore wronged me.”
Unrequited love is, “My unilateral crush is my problem.” The “friend zone” is, “My unilateral crush is your problem.”
If Trump wins the presidency and is suddenly in command of, like, fucking nuclear launch codes and shit, that means that the world’s greatest need is TRULY at hand, right?
So what are the odds we’re going to see King Arthur and the court of Camelot return sometime in the next year?
Raaaadiiiii, your MCU/Hamilton thing is killing me with how awesome it is, I am so sold on everything about this, my life is so much better with this in it. Do you have any more to say on the matter?
OF COURSE I DO. btw i am taking tremendous liberties with mcu canon because i don’t read the comics. i don’t know how infinity stones work.
Alright, alright: not the last ever showing of Hamilton but the actors are going their separate ways and it won’t be the same after this night, and oh how bright the lights are and Lin Manuel Miranda’s eyes wet with tears and history has its eyes on you and eleven Tony awards and history made, history in the making, an audience singing along in their hearts and minds, hands tight in laps as if in prayer, thoughts tangled along the same lines: if only there was time –
Here’s the thing: there is an infinity stone in New York. Left behind by the Chitauri invasion: waiting, waiting, waiting. It pulses red and violet and gold, all the colours from the heart of the universe, shaped from the very stuff of creation, carried in the claws of one of Thanos’s finest warriors, cast aside in panic as the Hulk attacked. And there it has waited – I am not biding my time; I am lying in wait – for something, for an awakening, for the sort of mad passion and love and song that created it in the first place –
have I done enough? have I told your story?
Infinity stones are alive – for a given definition of alive. Think insectoid levels of sentience. They don’t understand morality but they understand this: what they need to survive. And beneath New York, buried first under rubble and then under construction, the stone senses the hungry pulse of humanity. It stirs. It vanishes, leaving a nebula of colours that defy human description. And it reappears beneath a Broadway stage. And as the music fades away and the emotion infuses it with heat and life it dissolves into a reaching, grasping thing and – if you only had time –
Alexander Hamilton dies. This is written; it cannot be unwritten. But the belief, the tremendous desperate cry from an audience in 2016, coupled with the energy of a dying infinity stone, coupled with a patch of reality thinned by invasion from an other world –
He wakes up in a dumpster, somehow twenty again. If I only had time –
Are you telling me, says Lin Manuel Miranda, wet-eyed and disbelieving, that I resurrected Hamilton through the power of song – and Stark starts saying something about transdimensional reach and wormholes and Thor laughs mightily, claps a hard hand on his shoulder and says yes great one, that is what you have done.
i cant believe we actually have a gay feminist version of supernatural……. with a fiercely protective female lead, her smol queer sister and her confident yet dorky gay girlfriend, where the plot twist is characters are brought back to life and fan favorites are confirmed to survive the season, where all the men are either the butt of a joke or pure eye candy except for the moc who is just as complex and intriguing as the women im just. what did we do to deserve wynonna earp. i love-
Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”.
There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.
or the one where the bridge never came out for Javert’s suicide and so he just pretended to stab himself and then lay there until the lights went out
best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere
During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well
Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.
Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.
So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).
This is wild from start to finish
I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hook’s mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went “YOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!” in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)
In my seventh grade play, which was a midsummer night’s dream, Thisbe didn’t have a sword so she stabbed herself with a coathanger
My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and she’d get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com “zombie Juliet” and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.
i attended my county’s performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so it’s not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actor’s workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show.
my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.
in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.
so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-
everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.
the lesson: sometimes there are fuck ups you just can’t recover from.
During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?
Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.
The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.
Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.
Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.
Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.
Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.
Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.
Sunday Night:
Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise - apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.
Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.
In a dress rehearsal for Peter Pan, Wendy forgot one of her lines and started singing the star spangled banner and the audience was singing along and people got emotional
Once during the closing night of our high school production of south pacific, we were havin our pre-show pep talk, and our director reminded everyone (mostly seniors) not to go off script to try to be funny. Of course we had one lead who decided to ignore this advice. So during one scene where the sailors were “fishing” at the edge of the stage, he decides to pull up his rubber fish, make a comment about how it wasn’t big enough, and throw it back into the “ocean”, which of course, was the audience.
Now, this probably wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if he had gently tossed it, since it would have landed right behind the pit. But naturalt, he decided that this fish had to break free in the most dramatic way possible, so he winds up and chucks this fucking foot-long rubber fish with all of his strength.
So now imagine the stage crew, all of us huddled together, silently screaming as this limp fish goes sailing over the heads of the audience in what looks like a low-budget reenactment of free willy, only to slap some poor parent across the face.
I swear, you could almost hear the chorus of “mmmm whatcha saaayyy” rising from all those backstage.
From that moment on, all rubber fish were ferociously guarded by yours truly, under the direction of our stage manager.
This post gets better every time it shows up on my dash
My Junior year of high school our drama club put on Peter Pan,which involved the construction of a small boat fashioned out of scrap wood,plaster and an old wagon. A few of the actors who were cast as pirates had to ride the boat-wagon down the aisle to the front of the theatre,which had a concrete floor that sloped. About halfway down the brake they were using to control their speed gave out,and they crashed into the front of the stage at high speed.The entire boat imploded. The actors just sat there in silence for at least a full 10 seconds in the midst of the wreckage before my friend Adena screamed “ABANDON SHIP” and they all jumped out and took off running.
My school once did a parody of Cinderella and I was Cinderellas dog. At one point Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother, and the dog had to flea the ball. I thought going down the stage steps wasn’t dramatic enough for “fleeing” so I launched myself off the stage and landed painfully in the center isle about three rows in accompanied with a very, very loud thump of face on concrete where I laid there like a dead fish for a while. At this point Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother got to me, not knowing what to do they stepped over me and continued running. But Cinderella had forgotten to loose her shoe so half way out of the room she chucked it back where it hit me in the head. I bolted upright and ran shrieking hysterically out of the room. A moment later the Prince came down to where the shoe was picked it up, looked dramatically at where I had exited and said “I hope that dog’s okay.” completely forgetting his line.
This may be my all time favorite post.
I was once in a production of “Hello Dolly!” and the two leads were complete jokers and would prank each other during rehearsals all the time. The rest of the cast never thought they would do that during a show, but they told the chorus (separately) that they each were planning to add some tongue into the final kiss between Dolly and Horace. Of course, we told neither of them about the other’s plan, so during the very last show, we were all waiting in the wings to see what would happen. What happened was we ended the show with the two leads violently frenching each other on stage as the curtain dropped. They started dating two weeks later.
Last year we did “Once Upon a Mattress” and the jester was supposed to do a somersault off of a stack of like 3 mattresses and then the minstrel and Lady Larken would be covered up with a blanket, but during one show the jester knocked down one of the mattresses and we had no time to fix it so we had to throw the mattress on top of them
In my Freshman year of high-school we put on a performance of Les Mis. In said play there’s the scene where Javert and Valjean confront each-other by the bedside of the now dead Fantine. well, Javert Had his prop weapon (I can’t remember if it was a sword or truncheon,) but Valjean didn’t have his. So we the Crew decided during our builds that we’d rig up a chair to break so our Valjean could use one of the broken legs as a club kind of thing. For all of our shows it went off without a hitch, but for the last one we decided to have some fun.
Originally we really just weakened one of the legs so it would break off after our Valjean hurled the chair on the floor, but for the final chair we too saws and cut into everything. All the legs, the back poles, everything. We cut it just enough so that our Valjean would be able to sit in the chair and not break it, but when he tossed it on the ground? Chaos.
And that’s what happened.
All we told him before the show was “When your toss the chair on the ground, give it your all.” And so when the scene came all of the crew gathered behind the legs and assorted hidden places of the stage to watch. When our Valjean hurled the chair to the ground it shattered. Wood and splinters went in practically every direction and I’m sure that I even saw our Fantine flinch as she feigned death. There was no chair leg left for him to use.
So we all got to witness as our Valjean fended off Javert with naught but a splinter.
Fun times.
My father was once in a production of Arsenic and Old Lace. Early in the play, the main character finds a corpse in the dining room window seat and there’s a hilarious scene of him trying to hide it from his aunts who keep coming into the room. However, somehow the dining room table broke, a leg came loose and nearly collapsed (along with the nice table setting on top). So this scene was instead played as the main character trying to hide both a corpse and a very precarious dining range from his aunts. It was way funnier than usual.
At intermission crew was able to replace the table.
In act two, the nefarious brother returns in the middle of the night. He changed his line about the unchanged nature of the house. “It hasn’t changed a bit since I was kid……except they got a new table.” The audience was in fits.
