Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

cheeseanonioncrisps:

What if a lot of alien species didn’t actually evolve as pack species, and just adapted to living in communities out of necessity? So they can still work and live together, but they don’t have all the little instincts humans have that help them work in a group.

And they are freaked out by us.

We all wear the same clothes. It’s not a uniform— we just somehow all seem to like roughly the same outfits. We fit in so naturally with the people around us that you can use a human’s clothing to tell what country and what time period they are from. Aliens have no idea how we know what clothes are appropriate— they end up having to hire humans to act as fashion consultants after several incidents where diplomats showed up wearing mismatched clothes from various time periods and countries and looking totally ridiculous.

And what about yawning? Aliens who work on human ships say they never fully get used to hearing one human yawn and then having the whole room start yawning along with them. Or telling a joke to one human and seeing humans who say they don’t find the joke that funny cracking up anyway because “their laugh is so infectious!” It’s a common practical joke to tell new nonhuman crew members about this horrible disease humans get, where they feel tired and have an uncontrollable urge to open their mouths. It’s deadly, they say, and very contagious.

New safety procedures have to be worked out for the humans because, on the one hand, you don’t have to go around telling each individual to leave. Humans will just follow the mob. On the other hand, though, you have to be careful not to spread panic, because if one human runs, they all will, and they’ll trample anyone who isn’t fast enough to stay ahead.

Aliens hear humans tell their kids not to give into peer pressure and just get really confused. “Why would they do it if they don’t want to?”

“Because their friends are telling them to do it!”

“But why do it just because they’re telling them to do it?”

“Because they’re their friends!”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

When aliens see earth movies about people being indoctrinated or turned into zombies, it takes them a while to realise that these are horror movies because, from their perspective, that’s just what humans are like.

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

WOAH WOAH WOAH

lovelyladylunacy:

svpergirls:

gaygent-romanoff:

The media is WAY underplaying the women’s march in DC. there are OVER A MILLION PEOPLE. Not “around half a million.” OVER A MILLION.

It’s amazing. Chanting “Black lives matter” and “my body my choice” and “lgbtq and e; we just want equality.” Over a million people shoulder to shoulder with signs and anger channeled into action. THAT’S what the march was.

I talked to a police officer in DC today who said that there were about 1.6 million people. A guy who’s lived in DC for twenty years said that this was bigger than any Independence Day celebration he’s seen, which usually reach about a million.

Don’t let the news tell you that there are only 500k people (which would be impressive in itself). There are at least twice that.

I was at the Women’s March in DC today and didn’t have cell service all day, so I couldn’t get any news updates while I was marching. I thought it was weird when i got back to my campus and saw news sources reporting “about 250k, maybe pushing 500k” turning out.

This event was beyond monumental. We were lined up, completely packed in the roadways, from the end of the National Mall (the rally itself was staged somewhere around the Smithsonian American Indian Museum, with viewing screens and speakers set up intermittently down the Mall, because that’s about as far as they expected us to go) all the way to the Washington Monument and beyond. About two miles, maybe, of residents, students, and tourists, all turning up with their handmade signs for this event.

The Women’s March planning committee had estimated that there would be 250k to 500k people; that’s where they’re getting these numbers. In fact, the crowd so surpassed this estimate that the march itself had to be delayed as alternate routes and new logistics were worked out, because they literally had no clue where to put all of us. We were only supposed to march on Constitution Ave after the rally, but they ended up having to close new roadways for us to march on just because we couldn’t fit. 

In reality, the media’s willfully understated approach to the march is probably to make Trump feel better about his less than impressive inauguration turnout. DC Metro (the main public transit source in DC) has been very forthcoming with their numbers for this weekend, and seem to be loving the fact that the numbers for the day of Trump’s inauguration are outnumbered by both of Obama’s inaugurations and the Women’s March – by a significant margin. Additionally, private charter buses coming into DC for the inauguration are absolutely, embarrassingly dismal compared to those coming for the Women’s March. Meanwhile, Trump administration is getting to work pumping out false propaganda, claiming Trump’s inauguration was record-breaking in attendance. His turn-out was so depressing that when he was setting up his shiny new presidential Twitter, he literally used a picture from Obama’s inauguration for the header; and here’s the kicker: he cropped out the watermark so he wouldn’t have to pay the licensing fee for it.

TL;DR: The inauguration’s turn-out was small enough Trump could hold it in his tiny hands, meanwhile Women’s March was yuuuuge, and now he’s throwing his first official presidential tantrum. Sad!

(Source: lieutenant-sapphic, via yea-lets-do-this-shit)

beesmygod:

its ok to punch nazis guys. full stop its ok. they want you to be dead and they want what freedom you have. you should not respect that, tolerate it or allow it to manifest in your cities. if they dont want to get punched, they shouldnt be nazis. maybe the fact that nazis are frequently the villain of most movies ever made should tip you off about how in the wrong you are about this one

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

slyrider:

frowningfoxbones:

agentquinn:

sepulchritude:

my fav trope is like, nonhuman characters not understanding human needs/customs but still being super supportive of their human companion

“look what I found while exploring this planet’s surface!” “kilrak please I’m trying to sleep” “ah yes your human circadian rhythm. *stage whispering* I am supposed to be quiet during this time in your rhythm, yes?”

“the book I purchased on ragnok V says humans require physical touch when upset. therefore, I shall engage in a ‘hug’ with you.” *supremely awkward five-armed hug ensues*

*human sneezes* “OH MY GOD SIL'EEN GET THE MEDIC OUR HUMAN IS DYING”

“this pamphlet I received recently says that humans require companions and packmates in the form of small earth creatures. you should have told me this before we departed earth, but it is no worry. we will have to stop at the next trade planet to get you one of these ‘cats’ or ‘dogs’.”

imagine the aliens really purchasing a kitten for one of their rough and world-weary scifi badass human companions and watching in helpless wonderment what ensues 

“she’s been cuddling that small animal for the past fifteen minutes just going ‘kitty, kitty’. did we - did we break our human?”

a more seasoned alien puts one of their tentacles around the younger one as the rest of the team gathers to watch their human make kissy noises. 

“no, kilrak,” the alien says. “we did good.” 

“Human-Steve! I have heard that today is the anniversary of your hatching! According to my human culture pamphlet, it is customary to set a sugary pastry on fire while chanting your species’ growth incantation and presenting sacrifices wrapped in shiny paper. I am afraid to ask, in case this ritual is sacred and this request therefor insensitive… but may I be allowed to participate? It sounds much more fascinating than molting.”

@words-writ-in-starlight

awed-frog:

Honestly, though, the best part of teaching Greek mythology is that soft ‘huh’ coming from behind you as you’re finishing up a diagram of the gods and the relationships they have between them.

“Is something wrong?” you ask, turning around while you try, and fail, to clean white chalk off your fingers.

“It’s just,” the boy says, and then he blushes a bit, because people taking Latin are usually good and shy and the last thing they want is to get into a fight with a teacher. “Those two characters here - aren’t they both men?”

And okay, at this point everybody’s paying attention except the resident class child - that one girl who still has to uses four different colours for everything she writes and will get upset if you point out she should only use black or blue when filling in exams. So, yeah, you look at the boy, and then at everybody else, and then you turn back, pretend to check.

“Yes, they are,” you say, frowning, as if you never had to answer that question before.

“So why is there a double line between them?”

“Because they were in a relationship at some point. Double lines are for sex, remember? Single lines are kids and parents, and double lines are lovers.”

Someone giggles. The two kids whose parents bring them along to weird art exhibitions - the ones who’ve grown up hearing frank political discussions and the occasional dirty joke - are now looking collected and a bit smug. The others are losing it, and fast - they look at the board, as if only just noticing the thing, and then at you.

“So, they were like, gay?” someone else asks, and it’s always a girl asking this question, because ‘gay’ is just something boys aged 14 and a half never use - a Voldemort word, something that’s on your lips today and on everybody else’s tomorrow.

And this, of course, is the moment you’ve been waiting for - what the lesson was actually about. You wouldn’t plan a lesson around that, but you will mention the subject if it comes up, and so you start talking, about all of it - about sexual orientation being a cultural construct, about the Greek language not even having a term for ‘gay’ and ‘straight’, about warriors falling in love with each other and neglecting their teenage wives, about the fact our society is still coming to terms with something people have known in their hearts for millennia - that there’s no choosing and no free will, not about this. About how the most important thing is to respect yourself and each other, and the rest doesn’t matter all that much.

Statistically, in every class there’s a kid who’s struggling with this. Maybe two. Here things are not as bad as they could be, but it’s still hard, especially when you’re fourteen and you think you may be the only one and you don’t want to be different and how the hell can you even have a conversation about these things, with anyone?

And sometimes when you talk about these things - and dedicated teachers will find a way to include this speech somehow, because you never know who might need an ally, and who might need to hear it said out loud - teachers who loves their kids will mention the issue when discussing Michelangelo and Leonardo and Shakespeare and the Iliad - sometimes you see exactly who these kids are. Sometimes you see them looking at you, wide-eyed and fearful and yet full to the brim with that Go on look that’s so endearing on any kind of student. And sometimes all you see is their floppy hair, because they will keep scribbling in their notebooks and pretending like this is uninteresting and embarrassing and Oh my God, but the tips of their ears are getting red, and you find yourself hoping they’ll get a hug today, because they really need it.

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

dracofidus:

princeofdoomrps:

ghostcries:

also guys i think it’s time to start spelling ‘small’ right again,, it’s been long enough

see the thing is, at this point, smol isn’t even a “mispelling” of small anymore; it has its own connotations. while small is a regular adjective, smol acts more like a diminutive marker, which English has been lacking

in essence, a smol dog will always be a small dog, but not all small dogs are smol.

THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING

(via windbladess)