jacuzzi splot

Tis more secure to be feared than to be loved. - Niccolo M

[princess-bel]

So I was rereading Harry Potter, when I came across this and thought- what if instead of Cedric Diggory, Cassius Warrington had been chosen to compete in the Triwizard Tournament?

Imagine Dumbledore calling out the name of the Hogwarts champion and it isn’t a Gryffindor, or a Ravenclaw, or even a Hufflepuff, but it’s a Slytherin. A student from a House most people hate.

Imagine Cassius Warrington getting up, and three out of four Houses are booing at him and shouting things like “NO!” or, “We can’t have a Slytherin champion!” or demanding a retry. But he’s a Slytherin- he’s been dealing with this shit since he got sorted, so he keeps his head high and joins the other champions.

Imagine Harry trying to catch Warrington alone because he doesn’t really want to associate with Slytherins (plus Malfoy has this tendency of being around the guy ALL THE TIME since he got chosen), but at the same time he’s also fair enough not to want him to walk into the first task unprepared.

Imagine Warrington walking over to Harry a few months later, and Ron and Hermione both jump into a protective stance, wands out, but instead of attacking Harry he just tells him to stick the egg underwater. (Because Slytherins don’t forget those who helped them out).

Imagine Warrington and Harry helping each other out in the labyrinth.

Imagine Harry being devastated when Peter kills Warrington- because Voldemort doesn’t care what house they’re form, a spare is a spare.

Imagine the uproar that causes among the Slytherins, because some of their parents really are Death Eaters and they know what really happened.

Imagine Slytherins fighting in the Battle of Hogwarts and shouting “This is for Cassius!”

[aplatonicjacuzzi]

Imagine Harry returning with Warrington’s body, and the crowd realizes what’s happened, but Warrington’s parents don’t show up. There’s no one to mourn him, to cradle him in their arms and cry for their son. The Slytherins know why. His parents were Death Eaters, too.

Imagine Slytherins reaching out, asking for help from classmates from other houses. They’re terrified, truly terrified because the being their parents claimed would never hurt them because they’re pureblood, they realize that he does not care.

Imagine Slytherins in the 5th book sneaking off to join Dumbledore’s Army, to learn more about who Voldemort is without their parents acting as a filter. 

Imagine the shock when they’re told what he’s really done.

Imagine that a few talented Slytherins went with Harry and the others into the Ministry of Magic. The others are a bit wary but they prove themselves as friends.

Imagine them being confronted by Lucius Malfoy in the the Hall of Prophecy, and when the Death Eaters descend, they know that any one of them could be their parents.

Imagine the shocked gasp of a Death Eater as they realize their own child, a pureblood, is standing defiantly with Harry Potter. They choke back a cry. They can’t let their child know that they were about to duel to the death.

Imagine a DA Slytherin facing off against their own Death Eater parent. That they make the decision to let their child defeat them, because in that moment, they realize that they love their child more than they fear Voldemort. They go down, mask unveiled, and the Slytherin kid has to be dragged from the fight before he gets killed.

Imagine Book 6 Slytherins getting more friendly and cooperative with the other houses. Two years of Voldemort terrorizing the muggle and Wizarding world, two years where their parents just up and leave some days, cringing from the pain in their arm, two years after the death of the first Slytherin pureblood, Cassius Warrington, killed by Voldemort’s right-hand man, and they’re slowly hitting the breaking point.

Imagine Slytherin kids keeping tabs on their parents, sending the information to Harry, who shares it with the Order of the Phoenix, and hoping that their parents won’t be killed.

Imagine Book 7 Slytherins low-key rebelling against the new oppressive Hogwarts staff.

Imagine the final seige on Hogwarts, where Slytherins stand proudly by their fellow houses, knowing full-well they could be fighting their own parents. Some Slytherins know their parents were in the fighting. They hope to find them first and sneak them away. Their fellow students understand. Professor McGonagall allows 7th Year Slytherin, Pansy Parkinson, to duel a death eater in her stead; her father is under that veil. She knows it.

Imagine the aftermath of the battle; every house suffered loses. Slytherin students crying over the deaths of friends they made in every house.

Imagine a Cassius Warrington statue made in his honor, the first Slytherin to fight and die nobly with Harry Potter, the boy who lived, in the face of ultimate evil. He was a true Slytherin, and its in his name that Slytherin children and their families have cut all ties with the Death Eaters, denounced Voldemort, and are finally living in peace.

[hayguala]

I ain’t even gon flag this is 100% me.

[democraticsenator]

THE LAST FUCKING PART I CANT

[houseofmind]

1. The impostor syndrome is real (google it!) and can be quite crippling if you allow it to be. My first year in graduate school was rough. I was a bio major that took a handful of psych courses (and surprisingly, no neurobiology courses). This means that when I started the...

[help-me-yes]

white people talking about other ethnicities be like

white people talking about themselves be like

[nick-mess]

where is the lie

[uglyassprettyboy]

Bruh

[antinahottub]

when the heart stops

since coming to college there were three things i learned to love more.

i fell deeper in love with the warmth and the support that my mother could give me. i realized as i matured how much she’d given up to raise me, and what that meant for our family, and how little appreciation she got from us, despite all that she did.

i fell in love with a girl, not because she was intelligent or wise or stunningly beautiful, though she was all three, but because she was kind and knew how to look out for people. i fell in love with the feeling of being in love, because i thought i knew confidence before, and there is no confidence like the confidence of being in love the first time, of knowing that you’ve found the one, of having no doubts.

i fell in love with dance, because it was a way for me to move and express myself without restricting myself, without feeling judged. it was a way to improve myself artistically, and to share with the community. it was a way for me to grow as an individual, while also supporting a team. 

i thought, if i lived for those three things, then i could do anything.

asian parents sometimes talk about how they want their children to grow older, and to take care of them in their old age. and we of the modern american generation sometimes give them weird looks and chuckles, because it’s kind of a cheesy, embarrassing, uncomfortable picture, the picture of your parents adorned with the wrinkles you associate with your grandparents, relying on you for their livelihood. it’s not what we want, or are trained to want.

yet i wanted that. i loved my mother, went to college for her, sought to teach my students the values that my mother had instilled into me, caught a thousand drops of laughter every day that i could refine and weave into a tapestry of stories that i might drape it about my mother’s shoulders and hear her laugh.

she is dead.

she is not coming back.

i will never take care of her in her old age, because her old age was a myth that cancer snatched away.

-

the girl grew up. she lost interest in being kind, because kindness wasn’t rewarded, and because i’d grown dependent on the kindness, and because there were a million other things to prioritize over kindness. she became colder, more distant. our conversations that used to stretch late into the night would get cut short, over and over again. any sense of flirting vanished.

our relationship crashed.

i used to stitch imagined images of our future together, in that way that the optimistic are wont to do, and consume the happiness those fantasies generated as inspiration for each coming day. it was fun to be alive, working toward those fantasies with those motes of hope as sustenance.. 

but whether or not a relationship can be repaired, or is meant to be, or is meant not to be, i’m out of time. 

she’s long since turned her eyes to the world beyond me, and it’s a sort of bittersweet burning feeling i get when she talks about the future, and it’s distinctly individual. something privately precious that i can only catch privileged glimpses into.

-

our dance crew branched, diverged from the crew that i’d known. we became more of a clique, more competitive, more cutthroat. i was rejected from my own crew, lied to by my friends, talked about behind my back, promised opportunities to learn and teach on empty lips. my community was snatched away from me even as i stayed within it, trying to see what i could keep of it.

i grew bitter, unable to keep up with the changes and unwilling to acknowledge them.

i made piece after piece to present, to show others, to try to stay relevant, only to get told over and over that i couldn't achieve, couldn't perform, couldn't teach, couldn’t dance, couldn’t hear the music, couldn’t do much of anything.

it was exhausting, having years of work be dismissed so completely, day in and day out. it was humiliating, watching people with far less experience than me get far more praise. it was the best way to kill a passion, and it was successful. 

i’ve lost that passion, mostly.

watched my interest wither away.

-

i don’t know where to go now.

the things i love are no longer love-able.

the three things that i used to live for are gone.

they didn't leave much in the way of directions in their wake.

[antinahottub]

ant rants about the concept of “everyone else”

i’d normally drop this on antunderwater but it fits better here.

the thing that is wrong and abhorrent about me is that i’m different enough that it actually starts to hurt.

the theme of this semester is:

“everyone else is fine with it”

like in dance i hate the drills and the verbal abuse and the rush but “everyone else is fine with it” so it’s just me overthinking things.

and with angela i hate the fact she doesn’t text back and and leaves me hanging and literally forgets i exist but she does that with “all her other friends” and “everyone else is fine with it”.

and with anne i hate the fact that insulting people is apparently a way of showing endearment and i try to express it but “everyone else is fine with it” my brain is just doing things and taking it too seriously.

and with jae i’m just trying to understand something and he goes into this long convoluted explanation and i ask him to just make things simple and he says “that’s how i interact with everyone”.

and of course my dad, telling me that “everyone” who has gone through physics has had difficulties, so don’t worry about my difficulties, and “everyone” who has had a breakup has been sad, so don’t worry about my particular feelings of sadness, because in the end “everyone got through, didn’t they?”

i sometimes wonder if these oddballs i call friends have seriously gone out of their way to verify that “everyone is fine with it” and have found good evidence that “yes, everyone is perfectly ok and not secretly uncomfortable in any way, it’s just you that is the odd duck anthony”

everyone.

what a ridiculously powerful word.

and maybe i’ve tuned or TRIED to tune to people all my life so maybe i’m setting the bar way too damn high.

but i want people to tune to me for a change. to do so with the intention of actually succeeding. to actually make an honest attempt rather than some cursory, one-time two-bit adjustment.

“everyone else is fine with it” is such an ADULT way of looking at the world. no child would ever accept that as the RIGHT way of thinking. it’s such a bizarre dichotomy to draw. even in my black and white world, why on god’s green earth would “everyone’s consensus” be a good way to define how you behave? as adults, I suppose we do that to fit in, to not shake the boat, but every single individual has their own blacks, their own whites, and it’s valuable to figure those out and to examine them.

painting everyone with the same brush and just assuming that everyone is that way is DANGEROUS. it’s the danger that comes from just saying “oh, i totally functionally believe in shades of gray” and then not actually going into those shades at all, and being even more black-and-white than i am, with no nuance to that black-and-white-ness. looking at you gray people up there (all five of them).

and people are like “anthony don’t worry about it” but i’ve been saying the same things on all five of those fronts for months and it’s not actually FUN. it’s not FUN to worry about things. i don’t WANT to worry about whether or not i’m sane, whether or not i’m overthinking things, whether or not everyone else is normal and i’ve just gone off the deep end of intolerance.

i whisper to myself that their standards aren’t mine. that it’s not selfish to have standards, and to want to hold to them.

i want to lash out!

in the majority of the world everyone is fine with abusive relationships. in the majority of the world poverty is a fact of life. in the majority of the world democracy is a foreign concept, and a good ruler is one that doesn’t completely screw you over, just screws you a little bit. in certain, very well developed parts of the world, everyone is fine with a state religion, or with online murder threats as a joke, or with covering up less palatable parts of their nation’s history. 

standards are what make people valuable. they are what make people interesting. they are what make interactions mean a fraction of what they have the potential to mean, the tick and tock of our biological machinery.

and i’m becoming so bitter, so angry, so petty about this fact that i hold to be a “NO DUH” truth, and that everyone else seems to just...ignore.

i hate feeling this way. i hate feeling vindication when things fall through, or people get hurt, or things don’t go a certain way for someone. but it gives me those little moments of “aha, your way of looking at the world is full of holes”. it gives me little bits of “aha, caught you in your completely fucked up reasoning”. it gives me little bits of signs that i’m actually a sane individual who over the course of the last year of trying to readjust to this damn campus can still get something, anything, right.

it’s the same feeling i got when i laughed at the people who said my mom was in a better place while bawling their eyes out, because what their actions were didn't even come close to what they’re preaching.

it’s such a relief. 

just writing this out.

weights off the chest and all that.

just to be able to say the sentences:

“i’m not going insane”

“this argument holds no water”

“i’m ok. i’m ok.”

[antinahottub]

today is just

dance is triggering

simple physics problems are triggering

equations are triggering

kind words are triggering

jokes are triggering

everything is a trigger that tells me i’m doing everything wrong

[antinahottub]

within the boundaries of maybe

maybe a “we’ve danced together for three years now”

or a “you’ve come a long way”

or a “you did well on that piece”

just

anything

any evidence over the span of a year, in words, that i’ve done anything, at all, worth any amount of anyone’s while, for the past three years

is there really a family that can be said to exist

if we breathe not at all, only hold it between one performance and the next, crunch through one set and the next

where did family go 

[antinahottub]

i feel trapped.

i’m exhausted by people telling me that i can’t dance.

that i can’t learn.

that i can’t understand.

[antinahottub]

mother, i still mourn your passing.

i dream you sleep by my side and i am five.

i dream you hold me when i’m bullied and i am ten.

i dream you laugh beside me as we hike and i am fifteen.

i dream your hoarse whispers and weak, cancerous grasp, and i am twenty.

you are gone, and i am twenty-one.

i would kill the world over the course

of my next twenty years

if it would bring you back.

[probirb]

UMM EXCUSE ME?????

[heartsignal]

I don’t need this

[antinahottub]

if it seriously snows this Saturday somebody needs to fucking find fucking God and tell the Geezer to retire because He be too old.

like this is what the antichrist is for y’all. to manage the freakin’ weather because He is losing all His marbles.

[antinahottub]

let it be known that heartsignal is an amazing lifesuck-remover. if your life sucks, she will remove it.

not the life the suckage.

deep conversations about being petty, being evil, and needing to pee.

realtalk yo.

(no but seriously anne zhou you are a panacea for the soul and one day my kids are going to ask me like who is a role model in your life and i will point them your way and be like LEARN FROM THIS WOMAN and you will probably be super confused and annoyed that little Wulets are clogging up your door)

[jchastainsource]

[rewatchingpokemon]

[darkseid-deactivated20190806]

what the fuck ash

[antinahottub]

brilliant

[otterwize-deactivated20140711]

"hey can i have a couple of those fries"

[wordsnquotes]

I like how sleeping next to someone means more than sex sometimes, the body’s way of saying ‘I trust you to be by my side at my most vulnerable time,’ you have no defenses when you are asleep, you tell no lies.

Eric Shaw (via wordsnquotes)

[kimpossibooty]