an augmented fourth, if you prefer

jess, she/they, 30s, bi | DiminishingReturns on AO3 | too tired for sideblogs, you get the whole shitpost here

[kurbiismind]

Oh hey,

I am just a fish :)

[prinnay]

y o u a r e n o t a l o n e .

[msfbgraves]

Imagine having been born in 1905... And all your life it doesn't fucking stop. The Great War, the Spanish Flu, and then you go out of your mind for 7 years. Everyone is traumatised and nothing matters. Then another crash. And then the rise of fascism, and the War to end all Wars didn't and it's 1945 and you're just about still there. You may have fought or ferried the boys from Dunkirk or sabotaged the Nazi occupiers or worked in the factories and put out fires during the Blitz and you're lucky to be alive, because not all your friends made it. But you are and finally, fucking finally, it stops. It stops. You are tough as nails and you can put that strength to work into building something and you do, and people have cars and can buy icecream and you have a pension fund and the kids have money of their own and no nightmares.

I want that for us. I so want that for us. I want to be the generation that has seen fucking everything and is like a MRSA bug and unfazed and when that Cheeto finally dies, I want us to. Plant the gardens and clean the seas because we can and we want to and we remember some joy, some time of trust even when it got broken and we can say to the 20 somethings "let us show you what we can build, how it can feel."

And maybe Gen beta will take it all for granted like the boomers did, but we can give Gen Z and Alpha some peace because we, and Gen Z and Alpha have seen the Dark Times and fuck that noise.

[krakenartificer]

At the start of the Pandemic, my spouse’s grandmother was in an assisted-living home, and of course they were severely locked down, because with no vaccination available and we don’t really know how it spreads and no tests and anyone over 80 is deffo gonna die…. They couldn’t take the risks. So they weren’t even allowed to leave their rooms. Staff brought meals and left them outside the door, and they left dishes outside, and that was just their life for the foreseeable future.

So we tried to make sure someone called her every day, so she would have some kind of interaction, and one time my spouse asked how she was doing, and her attitude was basically, “Yeah, this happens sometimes.”

Because that was her life. She did live through the depression, she did lose three siblings to the last pandemic. She did live through WWII, and sent a son off to Vietnam, and made a family and a household and a career while knowing one slip of a button might wipe out all life on earth. And she lived through it; she survived.

And so 2020 wasn’t the end of the world, for her. It was just another thing. Because life is made up of sunshine and rainbows and puppy dogs, AND ALSO fascists and violence and rancid millionaires living high while people starve. And when you are in the middle of the shit times, you acknowledge that they’re shit, and also that they are not exclusively shit, because they still include spring days and new flowers and people taking care of each other.

And it was just… a really helpful perspective to get. You can survive it, you can become strong enough to live to 103 despite everything, you can become a source of strength and joy for everyone around you.

[heavenlyyshecomes]

jess allen, the passing of time (2023)

[moondrunklesbian-deactivated202]

You know the problem with reading a book? You get hooked and then it ends and you feel sad

[moondrunklesbian-deactivated202]

This post is cancelled, I have found a new book and everything is all right again

[moondrunklesbian-deactivated202]

By Talos this cannot be happening

[pro-gay]

nodding furiously at every second of this video

[stereotype-embodier]

I hope she never finds out about the Netherlands.

[maybeasunflower]

What's so bad about "Netherlander"???

[stereotype-embodier]

The only demonym I've ever heard for the Netherlands is "Dutch".

[squadala-were-off]

[luisonte]

[ceevee5]

For the love of God, sound on.

[genderfluid-druid]

@vensre

[nexusspacey]

Is this the “Weird fucking cat outside” guy?

[eldritchgriffin]

Audio transcript:

*the moose’s antlers and hooves can be heard clacking occasionally throughout the video*

Man: “Holy Fuckin’ Shit. MA!!!”

*car beeps*

“Ma come outside there’s a FUCKIN’ MOOSE! Or a buffalo or some shit. They’re figh-”

*car drives off*

“Where the fuck are you goin’?! MA!!! Holy Shit. This is some fuckin’ National Geographic shit. MA, CALL THE FUCKING COPS or the ASPCA!”

*Hey Look Ma, I Made It by Panic! At The Disco can be heard playing in the background*

“There’s animals FIGHTIN’ in the front lawn! Oh Shit.”

/End transcript.

…

Just as a psa you probably do not want to be this close to moose, especially when they’re fighting. Moose are dangerous, folks.

[kedreeva]

You’d imagine, given the range, that the average male moose weighs around 1,000lbs/453kg, which is the average weight of like 5-6 human beings.

And the moose on the right at the start of this video is strong enough to just. shove another 1,000lb animal across the ground while that animal actively resists being shoved.

[exhaled-spirals]

« When I think back on the year 1915, it seems to me that I still hear my friends tell me despondently: "I can't think of anything else! I can't read, I can't work, or find useful distractions (...), I only ruminate about our times, incessantly, until I'm nauseated (...). I've just had two hours of liberty—there was a time when I would have offered them to Tolstoy or Pascal. Today I read about [the war], or European colonial methods; issues that are entirely beyond my reach, but how to think of anything else?"

And perhaps we shouldn't strive to think of anything else; the point is not to turn our backs on our times, but to consider them calmly and thoughtfully. (...) It may be that the philosophy which absorbs you leaves no room for indulgence. Perhaps you feel yourself full of bitterness and rancour towards your fellow men, perhaps you have made up your mind to see in their activities nothing but greed and selfishness. (...) Do not be too eager to prove yourself right! Above everything, do not rejoice in being right in so dismal a fashion. (...) My only ambition is to beg the world to look for anything which can lighten the present and future distress of mankind, to find what interests the soul in a life burdened with troubles and disillusionments, to honour more than ever the faithful and imperishable resources of our inner life. (...)

The storm rages on, the events escalate, worsen, never cease. Never have they seemed more complex, more severe, more demanding. More dangerous. Wherever we turn, an opinion holds up its head and vehemently solicits our belief. (...) Our convictions, our certainties, are at each other's throats. (...) Yet mankind, even in these terrible hours, is only seeking happiness. Men have set off to conquer happiness, clutching in their hands the tools which will forever destroy it. (...) The wrong direction the world has taken is so obvious, so cruel, so vast (...)

Regardless, I would suggest not to lose hope—so long as a single wallflower still opens, in April, over the ruins of the world. Like algae, like mosses, like these laborious lichens which attach to the very ruins their infinite need for happiness, we will find joy in our present affliction and we will grow it, like a wind-battered plant in the parched soil of a wilted world. »

— Georges Duhamel, La Possession du monde (translation mine) Written in 1917 as he worked as an army surgeon.

[onemuseleft]

Do you ever get reminded of that one really intense longfic that you had every intention of writing and had meticulous notes and complicated outlines for but then something happened and you aren't in the fandom anymore and you still have the desire to write the fic but it's slightly hollow now because it's a good idea and you think it would have been a great fic but you haven't been in the fandom for literally years and you don't have that bit of passion for it that you did when you were writing it and have just a weird moment of nostalgia where you want to reread it but it never existed

[wolfythewitch]

This too shall pass but like holy fuck

[youlooklikearealbabetoday]

Fleabag (2019) // Derry Girls (2019)

[parkchanwoohoo]

I don't fuck w nerds, the moment I can smell lore correction coming I'm like "Oh Neptune" and I gotta call my mom and ask her to pick me up

If I'm like "I really liked the scene where Gandalf learns the truth about the Ring in the first movie" and someone's like "Oh you mean when he was in Minas Tirith, originally known as Minas Anor when it was first built in the Third Age?" I am pulling the nearest fire alarm

[parkchanwoohoo]

Them: Pelargir prospered further under the reign of the the Ship-kings, and Tarannon Falastur, 12th king of Gondor, built a home there, though Berúthiel, his wife, didn't care for it

Me, sweating: D. Did you know that. That Viggo Mortensen really broke his toe. In that one scene

[tricky-pockets]

hey quick question, probably not important - how did you know all that stuff to put in the hypotheticals

[parkchanwoohoo]

[Throws smoke bomb down on the floor] [When the smoke clears I am still in the room with you but lying facedown, possibly dead but more likely unconscious. There is a visible dent in the nearest door.]

[pocketss]

distressing things to say to your friends

[it-is-only-a-novel-deactivated2]

Reminder to self:

[ramshacklefey]

What do you mean?? I took one whole day off! Why am I not immediately recovered from years of barely scraping by at subsistence level???

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

I think one of the kindest things you can do for people with various mental health struggles is just... let people back into your life after they've been absent for a while.

Making friends as an adult is so fucking hard already and isolating yourself from other people is a very common symptom of depression, anxiety, burnout, ocd, trauma, grief, etc. Which means that someone will do the hard work of recovery/healing and resurface back into a world where their previous friends have written them off because they stopped showing up.

So if you know someone where you're like "yeah we could have been better friends but they fell off the map a bit" and that person suddenly reaches out, or starts showing up to events even though you kind of forgot they were still in the group chat... well they may have been Going Through It and you don't actually have to punish them for their absence you can just be glad that they're back.

[quadriviummuse]

Needed to hear this today.

[insomniac-arrest]

waking up every other morning in the usa like "are you in a good headspace right now to receive an eldritch blast to the brain."