[notyournoma]

[roswellsoup]

four trans people walk into a movie theater …

[hugintheraven]

Reminds me of EEAAO.

[elodieunderglass]

Reminder that if you

Live in the UK

are an adult and have at minimum Indefinite Leave to Remain

Can scrape together about £1200 in one place for a few minutes (can be salary/your actual bank account, but better if not, as you’ll need to park it somewhere else for a month or so)

Can reasonably do mildly convoluted admin tasks (I.e., could you keep a spreadsheet that juggles a few things like “dates to cancel subscriptions”, and remember to cancel the subscriptions?)

Are confident, capable and able to do life paperwork such as opening bank accounts

Then you can usually farm a bit of pocket money with bank switching.

Bank switching is taking advantage of cash offers that UK banks offer to switch your current account to their bank. They often offer £150 cash for doing this. The definition of a “current account” is usually “has ~£1200 in it and two direct debits set up,” so if you’re willing to quickly set up a free throwaway bank account that meets these criteria, you can then switch that account around various banks to take advantage of incentives.

There’s some decent offers right now if you’re willing to do the homework (you could get up to £1500 at the moment if you’re eligible for everything), and people on Reddit write really careful hand-holding tutorials. https://www.reddit.com/r/beermoneyuk/s/DLrpVkmDOo

Reddit - Please wait for verification

You can usually only max this out once a year, and then have to take a break (most banks have a cooldown period.) of course, if you have a partner or other family members, you can do theirs. You can pass the £1200 back and forth between you for this, and make double the amount.

If you only do £1000 a year, it’s about the limit of the admin most people want to do, and is tax-free.

You can mess it up - but rather than losing money, you’re more likely to accidentally fail to meet the criteria, or get into an admin snarl where you get querulous emails from bizarre institutions like the Ulster Bank of Lobsterworkers and Divinely Inspired Miners, telling you that they can’t close your bank account until you remove £0.37 from it. However, allowing reputable UK banks to hold your £1200 is a low-risk activity.

You must follow the instructions (and guides) attentively to receive the payouts.

Bank switching is a good, honourable and reliable way to raise a few hundred pounds to pay off large unexpected expenses. A big credit card bill, an air conditioner, an unexpected flight - I find it useful to know that a little bit of extra admin-headache can write off the whole expense.

Hope that helps someone out today.

[velvetcloak]

Ottoman cape and vest, 1890s. Whitaker Auctions.

[transmisc2]

// re-stringing //

[letmeinimafairy]

Back to the classic with icebound HMS Terror on labradorite, a long-awaited gift for a dear friend.

[jaubaius]

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[sandersstudies]

More about Nora!

13-Year-Old Scientist's Research Shows Hand Dryers Can Hurt Kids' Ears

Research finds many hand dryers operate at noise levels that are harmful to children. Nora Keegan is the 13-year-old student who did the stu

[creekfiend]

although if we ARE talking about passive aggression my technique is generally (and I have had a LOT OF PRACTICE developing it lmao) is to interpret what I think they're implying and then say "are you asking me to (x)?" in a very polite tone with a friendly (sincere! not mocking!) smile. I find that this often 1. ceases the tiresome cycle of ignoring passive aggressive behavior -> behavior escalates -> ignore it -> it escalates, and on and on that you get if you simply ignore it, 2. lets the person know that in the future they can just fucking ask you directly for god's sake, and very importantly 3. although I strive not to sound condescending when I do this, it is inescapably and obviously something that I learned to say when talking to toddlers. the people I use this with the most (mostly older female relatives but not infrequently on men as well) will often catch a hint of that and sort of realize that their method of approaching me was childish, not in a derogatory sense, but in the sense that they don't need to try to get me to do stuff in the way they got used to working in the past. they can do it differently.

obviously how effective this is varies wildly based on the relationship, or lack thereof, that you have with the other person. but I find it effective with people who are In Your Life but don't meaningfully have any control over you. quite often it DOES result in increased directness in the future, especially if it's something I end up doing fairly often. and it's not rude; I'm just politely seeking clarification about what is being communicated. it makes the person have to think about what effect they were expecting their behavior to have on my behavior, and then just... tell me straightforwardly. but without escalating the situation or making the person feel 'called out' most of the time.

its very simple but I so much more often see people say "always ignore passive aggressive communication" and while I think that's absolutely a good approach much of the time, especially especially from strangers. it is not especially EFFECTIVE at helping them change how they're approaching communicating with you in the future. in my experience. so. I prefer to use my method when I determine that it might be effective.

[gayofgaymark2]

I use this technique on my grandmother a lot.

She frequently makes requests by telling me what I want, eg "oh wouldn't you like to.." "don't you think it's be nice if..."

It used to drive me up the wall, but now as an adult with better understanding of what's happening I say "Actually I'm fine with x, but I'd be happy to do y if that's what you want?"

One day she actually asked me, "Why is it so important to you that I say that y is what I want?"

and i got to say "Well I don't like being told what I want. I have enough life experience to know my own desires and limitations, and I can advocate for them when I need to. However your opinions do matter to me and I want to take them into account. It's much less stressful for me to do so when I'm not guessing what's in your mind."

And folks, she Actually Listened.

Later that day she wanted something that ended up not being possible, but because she said so directly I was able to help her find a different way to achieve the same goal!

She still slips up, of course, but it was so good to see her Understand.

[creekfiend]

I love thissssss. yes I have had similar experiences modeling this behavior for older female relatives. I think a lot of them got real used to having to be indirect to get their needs met and it becomes maladaptive but they get stuck.

[copperbadge]

I was speaking recently with a colleague about a donor, who is a poet and has written some quite profound poetry surrounding some of the work we do, and my colleague said, “Yes, she’s a kind of Lizzie Borden, I think.”

“I…what?” I said, perplexed. “She hasn’t murdered anyone, has she?”

“No, but you know, she’s reclusive, writes her poetry for her…”

It took a little while to sort it out but it turns out my colleague has, until now, believed that Lizzie Borden and Emily Dickinson were one person. 

Which actually makes a kind of sense; whether or not it’s true, both women have been strongly rumored to be lesbians and had pretty unhappy family lives. The narrative arc of a sensitive, reclusive lesbian poet who one day snapped and murdered her parents is a compelling one. 

I know that we strongly question whether Lizzie Borden actually did murder anyone these days, and she was found innocent in a court of law…but just imagine the archetypal murderess Lizzie Borden writing

Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me; the carriage held but just ourselves, and Immortality.

[bedupolker]

I wanted to compile and print some standalone comics too, what better excuse to draw nautical creatures?

I'll be selling physical copies at Anthrocon (& hopefully beyond), but the PDF is also available digitally!

Ko-Fi | Patreon

[the-bedheaded-league]

This take is definitely too hot for a lot of fans but I’m gonna say it anyway: Sherlock Holmes is a canonically queer character. What type of queer he is is up to interpretation, but he is canonically, explicitly Not Straight, and people who write him as an allosexual hetero man are the ones who are actually projecting their own headcanon onto him.

I’m 100% serious. Here are the canonical facts we have about his feelings on sex/romance:

- He says multiple times that he is not interested in women. When Watson comments on the attractiveness of a woman, Holmes responds that he “didn’t notice”.

- He is uninterested in marriage and remains a bachelor his entire life, and never expresses any regret or sadness over this.

- He states that he has “never loved” (in this context it is implied that he is specifically talking about romantic love.) He repeatedly expresses disdain for romance in general.

That’s IT. That is ALL the canonical information we have about his sexuality. We know that he is capable of love in some sense, and Watson even explicitly says that Holmes loves him. But we never see any evidence that he has romantic feelings for women.

Any interpretation of Holmes as a heterosexual man directly contradicts all of the evidence we have about his sexuality. It assumes that everything he or Watson have ever said about his feelings on romance is a lie. The only interpretations of him that actually fit with all the facts are if he’s aroace, gay, or some combination thereof.

Anyway I’m going to start referring to straight interpretations of Holmes as “straight headcanons” now. Holmes is canonically queer.

[emilybeemartin]

I saw a post saying that Boromir looked too scruffy in FotR for a Captain of Gondor, and I tried to move on, but I’m hyperfixating. Has anyone ever solo backpacked? I have. By the end, not only did I look like shit, but by day two I was talking to myself. On another occasion I did fourteen days’ backcountry as the lone woman in a group of twelve men, no showers, no deodorant, and brother, by the end of that we were all EXTREMELY feral. You think we looked like heirs to the throne of anywhere? We were thirteen wolverines in ripstop.

My boy Boromir? Spent FOUR MONTHS in the wilderness! Alone! No roads! High floods! His horse died! I’m amazed he showed up to Imladris wearing clothes, let alone with a decent haircut. I’m fully convinced that he left Gondor looking like Richard Sharpe being presented to the Prince Regent in 1813

*electric guitar riff*

And then rocked up to Imladris a hundred ten days later like

[emilybeemartin]

Some people have been wondering about the raccoon. Listen. Listennn. Don't ask about the raccoon.

[mavaris]

But does the racoon survive the Uruk-Hai? Does he curl up on Aragorn's head, or does he go straight to Faramir? Does he bite Denethor?

[emilybeemartin]

My friend. My colleague. My brother my captain my king. I too have been pondering this question, and in my mind there can be only one ultimate outcome.

A few months later

All hail the High Warden of Gondor.

Epilogue: It ADORES Faramir.

[elodieunderglass]

Every time I see this post I’m obligated to reblog and make it your problem too!

[raingardening]

i think there is a phenomenon where sometimes a trans person will go “hmm. i am treated as a man when it is convenient for others, and a woman when it is convenient for others, and often as a freakish third thing excluded from the advantages of both. surely, because of the gender binary, the Other Type of trans person experiences the opposite: they reap the benefits of maleness and femaleness at once.” like babes no they can do it twice

[bleekay]

had a fucked up dream i had a book that turned out could never be read again the same as the first time because each reread the characters became incrementally more aware that the events of the book had happened before and they were “reliving” it and i reread enough times that they became self aware, figured out they were in a book, acknowledged me as the reader, and some lost their minds or had existential crises, became violent to other characters or themselves, some begged me to never stop reading or they ceased to exist and others begged me to end it all stop reading and keeping them trapped in the endless loop of torment, and the literal only way to get the book back to its first run was to hand it off to someone else to read for the first time and for some reason i physically couldn’t tell anyone about it so i’d have to just hope whoever i gave it to would only read it once and i could never open the book again to check if they were okay and back to normal because i was terrified of fucking them all up again :(

[bleekay]

i'm glad people are finding this fun as a concept and making references to stuff that this reminds them of but i really gotta express how bad of a nightmare this was for me. i had fallen in love with the original story and characters (though on waking i couldn't tell you the details), unintentionally warped their story beyond recognition, and found myself an unwitting god that could not provide mercy for some without doling torment to others. one of the characters started offing themselves every time i started another reread. stress dream doesn't even begin to cover it

[dreadwedge]

LOL so the other day I was scampering about squeaking and looking for cheese and such when I saw the farmer out in the field and, get this, he was trying to pull a turnip out of the ground, but the turnip was like really big, right, so he couldn’t do it 😅 like he was really struggling. Weak fuckinh farmer. So he calls over his wife and she holds onto his waist and starts pulling too but the turnip is still stuck. So she calls over their kid and she grabs onto her grandma and now all three of them are huffing and puffing but the damn turnip won’t budge. This is one crazy ass root vegetable. So they call over the dog and I’m thinking, girl, this is not going to work. but the dog bites down on the kids pants and starts pulling. It’s like a damn conga line. No dice. The dog starts whimpering and next thing you know the cat wanders over and bites the mutt right on her tail and starts pulling. So I’m laughing my ass off at this point but the cat starts looking at me. And normally we don’t really get on, the cat and me. But there’s this desperation in her eyes. In all of their eyes, really. Like, if I can’t dig up a damn tuber then who am I. What’s the point of it all, if there’s an enormous turnip that’s stronger than me. And I can see the future unfolding in my mind. The cat will never respect the dog again, and dog will never obey the kid, who will probably run away from home to find a new jacked grandma. And the farmers wife will leave him, and the whole damn charade of masculinity will crumble and fall. And I shouldn’t care right. I have no stake in this. This is some funny shit. But how funny would it be if little old me pitched in and the turnip actually came uprooted. I’ve got no ego. nobody respects a gay little mouse in this city. If I don’t make a difference here, no loss. But if I save the day? Can you imagine? Outdid by a mouse? The farmer would be delivering me fresh brie on the daily and the cat would probably have to move to a different area code to escape the mockery. So, in the spirit of cooperation, I grab the cat’s tail, and I give a little tug. Just the one. And I swear to god, it feels like an earthquake. Up comes the turnip, big as a house, and the farmer falls on his ass, and so does his wife, and all down the line. And I hop up on the cats head and scamper up the backs of the team as they catch their breath, and I leap up onto the turnip itself and I take a big bite out of it. And let me tell you: that shit? Tasted like a turnip

[depsidase]