brainthings

hashtag relatable. aka @pricklyest. [icon id: a photo of some street art depicting a robot hunched over with a single tear coming out of its eye. /end id]

[t4timekeeper]

yeah i just love it when a character is in an inescapable torment nexus for a huge portion of their life and it defines every aspect of their existence forever. also whats cptsd

[tlirsgender]

Maybe one day we can stop moralizing the concept of privilege & everyone will get normaler about being told they have relative privilege over other people. Like literally everyone everywhere in some way. It's fine. Being aware of it can't hurt you

[tlirsgender]

There's such an endless chorus of outraged "but what if I'm poor? What if I'm autistic" and it's like. Ok. You're not getting this at all let's just start over

[fox-bright]

Years before the covid pandemic began, author Naomi Kritzer wrote the charming, emotionally genuine short story "So Much Cooking," which was a pandemic log through the eyes of a cooking blog. The premise is that the author is a home cooking blogger raising her kids, and then a pandemic hits--and bit by bit she's feeding not only her own, but her sister's kids, some neighbors' kids, and so on, in a situation of pandemic lockdown and food shortages.

It's very good, and was prescient for a lot of the early days of the covid pandemic. I found myself returning to it often in the first couple of years because of how steadfast it was in its hopefulness.

Last year she wrote a novelette, "The Year Without Sunshine," which attacks a similar problem in a similar way; instead of pandemic, this one is about the aftereffects of a distant nuke or a massive volcano explosion (it doesn't say), which has churned a great deal of dust into the air, causing massive damage to society and agriculture. The story covers one neighborhood, pulling together to keep each other alive--not through violence, but through lawn potatoes and message pinboards and bicycle-powered oxygen concentrators.

I recommend both stories. They're uplifting in a way that a lot of what I see lately isn't. They're a bit of a panacea for constant fearmongering about intracommunity violence and grinding hatefulness. We can be good to each other, if we try.

[servantofclio]

These are both excellent stories, and I also heartily recommend her story "Better Living through Algorithms."

[mikkeneko]

[bungerc0re]

inviting a girl over to cut symbols into you and she keeps agonizing over what to use. alchemical is too fake, catholic is boring, etc. eventually you propose a pentagram just to get something moving and she says that'd be "poser gnostic shit" and walks out

[artmagine]

The beautiful art of Thomas Blackshear II

[kingfucko]

i went to his website and saw even more great art! sharing some more which i particularly appreciated

[just-jae]

Holy Granola this is gorgeous and so energetic!

[lostxanadu]

the thing about being bullied for being weird as a kid is that even if you've always embraced being weird your brain is still always looking for the line where it's too much. you can be as proudly and intentionally weird as you want and you can love being weird but your mind is still convinced there's a point where you get too weird and people start treating you like a weird looking bug again. also it feels like you reach that point 500 times a day even if everyone you've spoken to today found you pleasant and likable and even if you're completely alone in your house with nobody looking at you at all.

[icarusplumbales]

Flow like a chart, spread like a sheet

[carmilla-minus-one]

in deep psychological distress: i should make a post on the internet

[dragongirlsweetie]

smalltalk is probably great if you've got your shit together but if you are a total fuckup of a person then seemingly innocuous questions end up forcing you to reveal information about yourself that you would have preferred people didn't know about you. i wish there was a socially acceptable way to decline a question about yourself that didn't require you to justify it somehow

[luckydicekirby]

sometimes a fic can just be about the age old question 'how emotionally bad for everyone involved can a threesome be when they all did in fact agree to be there'

[wuntrum]

so true ayo edebiri

[etherealspacejelly]

this is your gentle reminder to stop fighting against your adhd and instead structure your life around it

buy a pack of chapsticks and put one in the pocket of all of your coats and jackets because you always forget to bring one and chapped lips is sensory hell

leave important things where you can see them. if they go in a box or a drawer you will forget they exist

put any appointments or deadlines in your phone calendar As Soon As you get them. set a reminder for a week before, a day before, an hour before, as many as you need as often as you need them.

when that little voice in your head says "i dont need to write that down, ill remember it" that is the devil talking!!! write it down anyway!!

plan for down time. have a few hours at the end of every day to just do fun stuff like engage in your hyperfixations. even if you didnt get all of your work done that day, have the rest anyway. you probably spent the whole day beating yourself up for not doing what you Should be doing, so you still need the break.

if you never eat vegetables because its too much effort to chop and cook them, get the frozen or canned shit. it doesnt go off for ages and you just have to microwave it. theres no point buying fresh vegetables if they just keep going off and being left to rot in the bottom of your fridge

if you struggle to decide what to have for dinner every day, take the decision out of it. choose a set of meals and eat those on rotation until you get sick of them, then choose some new ones and do it again.

its not stupid if it works! our brains literally have a chemical deficiency. you are allowed to accommodate yourself. go forth and stop making your life more difficult than it has to be because "this shouldn't be this hard". it is hard, so make it easier.

[should-be-sleeping]

You are allowed to accommodate yourself.

[homunculus-argument]

A free-range group therapy called "get herded, idiot", where you and everyone in your group is set loose to run around on an open field while a highly trained shepherd dog tries to keep you all in one group. I am not sure what benefit this would have for anyone involved.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

This would fix everyone involved including the dog

[geyfrog]

Referring to someone as your “partner” sounds as if you are deliberately obscuring their gender and may subtly out you. “My ex”, however, is entirely unobtrusively gender-neutral. #breakupallrelationships

[makingtrouble]

It's my cat's birthday (anniversary of me getting him) so I told him the story of his life while petting him real good

Highlights include:

For your first two years (when you were small) you lived in a foster home with people who raised you into a very polite young man. Two is like you plus me, that's what two is.

Some people adopted you before me and they called you Timmy (which is a stupid name) and they returned your ass almost immediately because you were so annoying at that age.

Like think about how annoying you are right now at seven years old, but way worse.

I'm better than them though, I don't call you Timmy and I wore earplugs to bed for three years because you love to scream at bedtime. Earplugs are like when I roll over and go back to sleep even when you are yelling so so so loud.

I got you at a time in my life when I was really sick (being sick is like when I'm up late because I'm throwing up and you are a very handsome good boy who sits with me) and they had to put me asleep for a procedure. A procedure is like what happened to you when they put you asleep and took your balls away.

Now you've lived with me for five years. Five is like the number of toe beans on one of your feet. When I clip your nails five is when we're halfway done. But we're hopefully not even halfway done with how long we get to be together. I'm gonna have to figure out new ways to help you count.

[makingtrouble]

Actually I've decided this is a poem

[gondorrevealparty]

Polycules should be able to trade people like sports teams do

[gondorrevealparty]

Listen -- you're a good defender and your pussy is fantastic, but that's not what our team needs right now. We're trading you to Greater Boston in exchange for someone who has a car.

[wormsermonizer]

horse