use any pronouns @flamingtides - Tumblr Blog

Finally changed that fuckass name

Maybe a decent tag system next lmao

people always talk about the doomed love timeloop when they talk about hadestown. look i love that shit as much as the next homosexual but can we please talk about the revolutionary politics. genuinely one of the best anticapitalist pieces of art of the 21st century. can we watch act 2 with our brains please

millenianthemums

sometimes plushies make me cry because it’s like. they’re little guys made to be loved. their only purpose is to be held and hugged and loved. we made them because we love making things and we love loving things. and they’re so cute

morriganwarrior

Years back, I was working at a specialty store, and we got this HUGE crate of plushy toys. They were all insanely cute and squishy. I knew kids would go nuts for them, as it was the first week of December, so parents and grandparents often had kids with them while shopping for furniture, lamps, cooking equipment, lights, etc.

One night, I was working my last hour of my shift covering the Customer Service desk, which meant when I wasn't busy, I was supposed to help clean up around the cash registers, including taking back items people changed their minds about at the checkout. Earlier, I had witnessed a kid carrying thos cute plushy toy. It was a brown and white hedgehog. The kid, at the checkout, saw a remote control car and he told his dad he qanted it. The dad told him, "The plushy or the car- you can't have both" (by the way, I respect boundaries with kids and parents sticking to their guns about it), and the kid picked the car.

So, I'm cleaning up, have less than an hour left of my shift, and I see the little plushy hedgehog. Somehow, he never got put back nor had anyone else seen him and decided to buy him. He was just sitting there, slumped to the side, unattended.

It's Christmas and I'm a sentimental old sap at heart. My brain starts replaying the scene from RUDOLPH where he's on the Island of Misfot Toys, and is told a toy is never truly happy until it is loved. I picked him up and quickly took him back to the bin with the plushies but... It was empty. He was literally the last plushy toy and my boss was about to wheel the bin out. We weren't getting any more toys till November, so that meant any toys left at this point needed to sell or they'd be sent to the dump.

I brought the little hedgehog to the front, figuring someone would see him with the candy, candles, & Christmas brick-a-brack, and fall in love with him. When I finished my shift, I went to ask my manager a question and as I passed the Christmas candle display - there he sat, the sad little slumped over hedgehog plushy. No one had bought him, or even moved him.

My manager, Phillip, saw me and the hedgehog. He asked how the hedgehog got there. I told him how I'd put him there when the bin got sent back, and he was the only plushy left. Philip had kids, I figured he'd probably get sentimental and buy it for his kids. Nope. He shrugged and said he'd send it back to be disposed of.

That night, I came home with a plushy hedgehog in my passenger seat. My mom saw him and just thought he was the cutest little hedgehog and asked what I wanted to do with him. I told her the story, then added I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with him.

My mom is a child psychiatrist, specializing in children with PTSD and brain damage that results in learning problems/issues with processing their emotions. She asked if she could have the plushy hedgehog (even offered to pay me for him, she didn't expect me to just give him over), so kids could hug him when they were upset in session.

Murphy, the plushy hedgehog that still slumps a little to the left when seated, has been hugged by hundreds of kids. Little girls have held him tight while explaining about bullies, little boys have held him tight while crying over their panic attacks, younger siblings have held him to whisper secrets while elder siblings and parents talk about self-soothing techniques, teenagers have hugged Murphy while talking about the worst day of their lives. Murphy has also been hugged by kids excitedly chatting about a new friend at school, a teen girl excited to be called by her name instead of her dead-name, little kids proudly saying they've mastered their ABCs, and even staff members who just need to come chat over a case they are having trouble with.

Every now and then, my mom brings Murphy home for a weekend. He gets washed (she calls it a Spa Weekend, to her coworkers, all of them laughing), dried, and sits outside with my mom in the sunshine to get aired out, then on Monday, they are back to work. Some kids even just ask to hold Murphy while they talk, no matter their mood or what they want to talk about. They just want to hug Murphy.

So yes. Plushies are made for one purpose. To be hugged and loved. To be a comfort.

theharlotofferelden

purple--starrrs

By the way it's like. Really fucked how society's thoughts on epilepsy is just "get over it." Seizures can cause permanent brain damage. Seizures can kill people. Seizures hurt like hell. Allow me to reiterate that seizures can kill people. And you're just gonna casually put flashing lights, a common trigger for seizures in your advertisement, in your animation meme, in your edit, on your billboards, without even thinking about putting a simple disclaimer? That's unbelievable. Your little anime edit could deadass cost a life and you're not gonna put a warning because it's "inconvenient" or "people like that shouldn't be on the internet" (ableist) (the problem exists outside the internet also). Or you'll give insufficient ones like putting it in the captions or only giving like one second before the flashing lights appear, meaning that the trigger's already in motion before anyone who needs the warning can read it and save themselves from literal physical danger.

We need to start commenting under other people's posts about how to properly warn for flashing lights and eyestrain. We need to be emailing and calling companies about their possibly triggering advertisements that could induce seizures. We need to stop tolerating ableism and start speaking up for the more vulnerable.

Also, stop putting epilepsy warnings. That's like saying "warning: schizophrenia" on a post including unreality or "warning: dyslexia" on a post with a typing quirk. First off, the disability mentioned isn't the only group of people that this could trigger. Second, it doesn't truly get the message across and instead makes it worse for those with the disability-- scrolling through the epilepsy tag on Tumblr should get you to view the content of other epileptic people, but no, you just get a bunch of flashing lights and eyestrain, even though you could instead tag for, oh I dunno, flashing lights and eyestrain.

Anyways this Disability Pride, and for every month that comes after, think about epileptic people and others who are triggered by flashing lights/eyestrain. Happy pride to those who experience seizures too frequently due to the unaccommodating and ableist societies we live in!

selene1311-f

All of this is worth the read, so reblogging for visibility.

Just to try and help out and spread the word, there are two chrome extensions I've found that might be able to help.

Seizafe: This extension scans youtube videos and warns you if they contain things like flashing lights that could cause a seizure.

CogniShield: This extension (supposedly, it has like no reviews) dims the screen to a safe level if flashing lights are detected; it can also be used to limit volume. It might help.

If anybody else knows of any accessibility tools, please share them.

bane-of-technology

My comment got nuked within minutes, no surprise there

standwithdaanes

averlym

"you're lost, little girl"

oggeminivenus

writerswritecompany

an0neemouse

If you think what you're writing is above your skill level, do it anyway. You might surprise yourself in what you are able to do, and even if you don't, the experience is worth it. Write, and write, and write some more. You can always re-write it when your skill increases. But your skill level will never increase if you don't challenge yourself and above all else-- write.

markovchaingang

pinkbowsandstripedsocks

edwardspoonhands

Honestly, Tvyek is pretty miraculous. It’s permeable to water vapor but not to water, it’s nearly impossible to tear, but can be easily cut. It’s cheap and made entirely without binding chemicals. In addition to being used for wristbands, it’s used to wrap construction sites to keep out water during construction, for tear-resistant envelopes at Fed-Ex, coveralls for mechanics, and my wallet, actually.

Fun tip, though it looks like paper, Tyvek is plastic, and cannot be recycled with paper.

fairypsychicarchive

andromedafalls

holy fuc

piisbetterthanpie

I didn’t even know it had a name

checkyourasianbias

the entire line is "White Parents Self-Segregating Neighborhoods and Schools" which is in fact white supremacist no nuance

skyscrapersanddandelions

kids of color, you’re allowed to get a bitey when a white friend does something racist. literally 0 percent of people of color are obligated to be nice and palatable for white people. holding your tongue in the name of kindness doesn’t really do much in regards to stuff like this because white people are going to see you calling out their own racism as unkind anyways. white people, if a person of color comes off as aggressive while calling you out for racism, just fucking listen to them. they’re not coming from nowhere, and believe it or not: they know more about racism than you do! shocker, i know. just thickskin it, because it’s really not about you.

skyscrapersanddandelions

white ppl can rb but keep your damn mouths shut

thisisracism

The notes on this post get a 0 for reading comprehension. There’s probably a pretty good reason OP deactivated, unfortunately.

blackshvck

the idea that every summer will be as hot if not hotter than this for the rest of my life is unbearable i need to (remembers suicide jokes are bad for my mental health) murder an oil executive

skaylanphear

Okay but teacher Grace on Erid having very little say in which kids get filtered into his class, though he is aware that the selection process is super specific and that most of the kids he gets are high performers with star academics and some even with influential parents. He isn't quite comfortable enough with Eridian culture yet to object to the selection process and make it more inclusive, however. That is, until he learns about the special needs kids.

Obviously, there are Eridian kids with special needs, and a few of them even filter into his classes. But one specific type of special needs kid has never shown up in his classes, and the only reason he even learned of the condition is because Rocky and Adrien's first pebble has the condition.

It's initially quite a struggle for them to deal with, and Grace sympathizes of course, because the child will apparently have huge learning and academic struggles and will likely never be able to live on their own. That is, until he learns the details of the disability.

Basically, it's a condition where the part of the Eridian brain that gives them their eidetic memory isn't fully developed, and so these kids just... can't remember things the way most eridians do. And in a culture where an eidetic memory is the norm, all things cater to that, so not having that is actually a massive disability.

But Grace is like, so... this kid just learns the same way a human does, or something like. Which is nothing new to him, though he is somewhat boggled at how much Rocky and Adrian struggle with their infant and their "slow" learning curve, even as far as initial developmental stages. Grace, on the other hand, simply treats the kid the same way he would a human infant, and Rocky and Adrien are impressed with his patience.

But, through this, it occurs to Grace that there must be other kids out there with this disability who likely aren't getting the attention and chances in life that they deserve, because Eridian culture is particularly hostile toward this disability, and actively views those with it as unable to function in regular society.

So Grace demands that a special course be put together where he teaches kids with this disability specifically. Rocky is hesitant, as most kids with this disability are home schooled and kind of... kept shut away. But Grace insists and as one of Erid's saviors, he gets what he wants eventually.

His first class is super small, maybe only three kids because so few parents were willing to advertise that their children have this disability. And because of the stigma around it, even those who agreed to it are super unsure and want to be present during the lessons, perhaps paranoid about the impression it will leave on Savior Grace, who is so accustomed to only teaching the most gifted students.

But Grace knows exactly how to deal with these kids. Some of them have varying degrees of function when it comes to their memory banks, which isn't so unlike teaching kids on earth. And so Grace is able to introduce all these tools and teaching techniques that were previously unheard of on Erid (though very normal on Earth) like having textbooks for reference with you at all times and having strategies that are less focused on memorization for understanding, and providing these kids with tools like calculators and teaching them the art of taking notes to look back on, etc etc.

Suddenly, with all these tools that most Eridians don't need, these kids are learning at a much faster rate, and succeeding with the help of all their little tools. And because so many normal eridians are ignorant of Grace's actual biology, it's shocking to them that Savior Grace doesn't have an eidetic memory either (shocking to everyone but Rocky anyway)--that his brain functions quite similarly in capacity to these "disabled" children.

Once this news gets around, suddenly there's more kids in his special classes, and there's all kinds of discourse being inflamed because the real reason these kids can't live on their own or function is lack of support from Eridian society.

If Savior Grace, who is well respected as a genius in his own right amongst the Eridians, can function so successfully, they why can't these kids?

I dunno, I just think it's an interesting premise.

zer0brainc3lls

This is very near and dear to me and this is an amazing concept!!

abyssalaerlocke

*rolling around in all the love that's in this*

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

sceptixfakemon

i really genuinely wish I could hit chatgpt with my bare fists and hear its pityful electronic voice fade into glitched robotic gibberish and choking beeps as I hit it before I smash it for good and it shuts the fuck up forever

sceptixfakemon