In Which I Do Things That Make Me Happy

My joys and interests. A fandom blog, with a whole lot of fandoms. Also any and everything I find amusing, meaningful, or funny. Basically, expect lots of random. I do what I want, but I also do other things too.

[valtsv]

some observations on color coding eyewear in ficton and their meanings

[fionn-o-nassus]

[goosewithajob]

[furryprovocateur]

when you're autistic and you learn how to smalltalk it literally feels like you started hacking real life

[furryprovocateur]

lifehack: if you exchange pleasantries with people and fake smile a lot people will think you're nice and be nicer to you usually. REBLOG FOR MORE FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

[thelawfulchaotic]

A small preprepared remark about the weather or compliment on a choice they made is perfect for this. “Nice earrings! I hate rain!” Alternatively, if you feel this is too advanced, just echo back their same sentiment (“Doing fine, how are you?”). You are allowed to lie.

[naomitess]

It was genuinely such a revelation at my first job out of college when I discovered that my boss was nicer to me if once a day I walked over to her cubicle and made small talk with her for five minutes.

I totally combined this with checking to see if she was gone for the day and I could fart around on the internet instead of working for the next hour or so.

[leebrontide]

I used to have this one coworker- I didn’t like her and she didn’t like me. The tension between us never resolved and I retain a lot of negative opinions about her.

But after we’d butt heads, within the next day or two she’d come around and start asking me about my very very cute baby who I never got tired of talking about and taking pictures of.

To be clear- I absolutely knew I was being handled. She was doing this to calm tensions between us so we could coexist. But baby was INCREDIBLY cute but also she was doing this because it was very socially acceptable small talk that reliably put me and her in a good mood.

I knew what she was doing and that in no way diminished its effectiveness. I appreciated her offering me an olive branch so very easy for me to grab hold of.

Small talk is a safety social signal for a lot of people. It offers a chance to reset interactions on positive to neutral ground and signal an absence of immediate hostilities. It offered a chance to feel on the same page, at least enough for pleasantries. Really useful social lubricant and worth learning the basics of.

[ryan-sometimes]

It’s wild to me to see transvestigator conspiracy theories online that could be so easily explained by natural human variation. That woman has a deep voice? Yeah, sometimes they do. A woman has broad shoulders?? Maybe she plays rugby or hits the gym a fuckton. There’s a “bulge” in her tight pants?? Maybe her vulva is just fat. All the “markers” of trans woman that transvestigators use to harass any woman aren’t even things unique to trans women.

[ryan-sometimes]

Transphobes talk about women like they’re Barbies. Have you forgotten the existence of cameltoe? Tiny boobs? Narrow hips? Broad shoulders? Why do you think choirs have altos and not just sopranos? What do you think female athletes look like? Do you think a woman that lifts weights and plays contact sports will look like a 90s supermodel? At what point in history did we collectively forget that human bodies have natural variability???

[ryan-sometimes]

[anti-terf-posts]

official anti terf post

[princess-rosiebird]

[starrypawz]

This footage of Elmo after messing up a take on Sesame Street is peak relatable

[sleepy-shark]

In Elmo’s voice: “I only had three lines!”

[mydesignispeople]

Okay but please watch the whole video. It’s just over a minute.

1. Robin Williams making off-the-cuff jokes that are definitely not Sesame Street appropriate.

2. The slow zoom in on Elmo’s face at the end.

3. Robin Williams

[ladofletters]

[working link]

[weasley-detectives]

Robins Williams’ laughter in the background is the most heartwarming, mood lifting thing I have ever heard.

[theimprobabledreamersworld]

This is literally the best thing to see first thing after I wake up 😊

[butterfly-sapphic]

This is incredible

[marzipanandminutiae]

Sophia, the Boston woman from 1875 who haunts a lamp I got at Brimfield: what is a stay at home girlfriend, if you please?

me: well, it's a woman who's financially supported by the man she's dating, and she lives with him and usually keeps house and cooks for him

her: and they're not married?

me: well, no; hence "girlfriend" rather than "wife." I know that may alarm y-

her: oh calm down I know about Kept Women. he has no legal tie to her, though? she has no sort of standing with him in the eyes of the law? only his word that he'll follow through?

me: yes

her: and remind me again- you don't have to be financially dependent on a man anymore, right? there are more than like three careers open to women that will let you support yourself at a decent level now? and society isn't pressuring you 24/7 to get married and stop working outside the home?

me: yes

her: so these women. CHOOSE to be dependent on a man. who could leave them at any moment without legal consequence. because they don't like their jobs. the jobs, while imperfect, that let them live on their own, answerable to no-one

me: yes

her: that had better be some absolutely amazing jewelry they can pawn off if he leaves them, then

me: it's usually not

her: THERE'S NOT EVEN SECURITY JEWELRY?!

me: oh by the way they blame feminism for "having to work"

her:

her: I became fully dependent on my in-laws who hated me, after my husband died two years into our marriage, because I was a 23-year-old orphan with no marketable skills in any avenue besides Running A Household and the only men left unmarried in my social circle were widowers thirty years my senior. I also couldn't establish lines of credit as a widow because the merchants said my husband dying so soon meant that I didn't have stable enough income. and that was entirely legal

me: yeah

her: I'm going to go slam some doors please do not bother me

[eldenturtle]

Stop giving men the ability to ruin your life 2k25

[reverseblackholeofwords]

Not the point of this post but I'm endlessly amused that Tumblr has rediscovered ghosts as a cultural metaphor for confronting the horrors of the present through the lens of the past in meme format. The essays I could write-

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

please please please please reblog if you’re a writer and have at some point felt like your writing is getting worse. I need to know if I’m the only one who’s struggling with these thoughts

[seananmcguire]

Good news! At various points in your development, it is!

As you write, you level up in little ways. It's not like D&D where you get a level all at once. Oh, no. You get tiny improvements to your skill tree, and there will be points where your build is entirely unbalanced. As you adjust to these changes, you will naturally regress in some areas. This is just your mind and overall skill level getting ready for the final leveling, where you're briefly fully balanced again!

TL;DR: Regression is a natural part of improvement, and while it's frustrating as hell, if you keep going, you can write through it.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Also this.

[voltaspistol]

[escapefromcamazotz]

who’s ready to talk about how wicked is one of the few examples of a love triangle that is actually a triangle

[escapefromcamazotz]

my impact

[noodles-07]

on friends and soulmates and that type of love that feels like it's going to burst right out of your heart

@/zmije / @/leptodiera / @/bichopalo / lyrics from two best friends by bb bean / animatedjames on youtube / @/killingmyselfbutnotdying / unknown / @/sadiekane / friedrich neitzsche / katfish draws / @/elytrians / @/wormbus-art aka @/angel-pond / @/mushysuggestion / the unsent project / mhairi mcfarlane / unknown

[assiraphales]

you guys made luigi mangione trend for days and I need to see the same energy for brianna boston. she is a 43 year old mother of three who ended a phone call with blue cross blue shield (after being denied a claim) “delay deny depose, you people are next” and is now being held under a 100,000$ bond and could face FIFTEEN years of prison if charged. she has no weapons, her record is clean, and yet she is being held behind bars. they are afraid of the public and are trying to subdue. do not let them!!!! be outraged that our freedom of speech is being threatened!!!!! deny defend depose! free brianna boston!

[megmelodia]

Good news, she is out with all charges dropped

[montreal-derogatory]

The biggest benefit of being a certified nail tech…

Is that I can put WHATEVER THE FUCK I want on my nails and it always looks professionally done, because it is.

I wasn’t feeling traditionally festive this season, but I have been enraptured by the Gävleboken, and whether the goat will burn. So I decided to do my December set based on beloved holiday arson traditions.

Without further ado, my magnum opus

[hasgavlebockenburneddownyet]

Woah

[upstartgeek]

[whyamilaughingatthis]

[elwenyere]

[titleknown]

Blogging this tweet because this explains SO MUCH about the mindset of pretty much all the folks I’ve known who’re against single-payer, it’s not even funny…

[hopesterling]

This….

This never occurred to me. Not once. That Americans are against Health Care because they think it actually costs tens of thousands of dollars for a broken arm, hundreds of thousands for a complicated birth, millions for cancer treatment.

Because they’ve never known anything different. The idea that a broken arm is only a couple hundred bucks; a complicated birth a couple thousand; cancer treatment only tens of thousands; all easily covered by existing tax structures.

[withasmoothroundstone]

This explains a lot.  And it’s a good example of what I was talking about in my post on scarcity being used to prop up ableism – always question the idea that a resource is genuinely scarce.  Even if it seems obvious that it is, quite often that’s the result of careful manipulation and misconceptions that you’re not even aware of.  

And never think you’re too smart to be fooled by that kind of thing, it doesn’t work like that.  Similarly, don’t think people who are fooled by something are stupid.  Nobody can have all the information about everything, and nobody has the time and energy to investigate and put together conscious conclusions about every piece of information they’re given.  It doesn’t take being stupid, or even just gullible, to believe something like this.

[lizardtitties]

I currently live in a country without free medical care and still, it’s enormously cheap compared to the USA. An American expat wrote a piece for our English language paper about how she paid more for parking at the hospital than giving birth to her baby that’s pretty interesting:

https://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2016/01/06/healthcare-in-iceland-vs-the-us-weve-got-it-so-good/

[thebibliosphere]

Yesterday I had to go to the hospital cause I injured my eye, I’m frankly dreading what the bill is going to be, but what made me balk was being told in the pharmacy that my insurance was denied for the antibiotic eye drops and it’d be over $100 out of pocket. So I didn’t get my eyedrops.

I’ve had these same drops before living in the UK. They cost me seven GBP.

It’s the exact same drug, same steroid, same strain of antibiotic. But somehow the US gets away with charging $100 for a generic non brand version of a drug which is easy to create and widely used. It’s downright robbery, but also a form of eugenics through poverty and class warfare. You keep the poor poor by making sure basic necessities remain unattainable and then you make it seem like the norm so no one fights it.

The rest of the world is not like this.

Eat the rich. Resist.

[dyannehs]

When I was travelling in Germany once, I seriously hurt my ankle. In a few hours, it had swollen to twice its size, and I went to a little ER in a tiny town. I spoke no German and only one nurse spoke English. They ran an X-ray and an MRI to determine what had happened (turned out I had bruised my peroneus brevis muscle and pulled the tendon), gave me a ton of very regulated meds for the pain and swelling, including some supports so I could walk…and my poor little 22-year-old ass was sat there, knowing all of this would cost thousands, if not tens of thousands, back in the US. I was shaking.

I’m in the exam room, post diagnosis and with pill bottles in hand, and in walks the one nurse I’ve been able to speak to the entire time. She pats my hand and tells me (and this is verbatim—I will never forget this conversation as long as I live), “I’m so sorry. We had to run those tests, and they are expensive. You don’t have insurance so you will have to cover the full cost.”

I start crying.

She continues, softly, as if telling me someone has died, “It’s going to be three hundred.”

I start sobbing, certain I’ve misheard, certain that I would be absolutely fucked, broke and going into debt in a foreign country. “Thousand?” I clarify.

Her entire demeanor changed, and she looked at me as if I had sprouted four extra heads. “No,” she says, “euros.”

That moment radicalised me.

[plasticbutthole]

[hoooshiiiii]

Sent this to my mom (she’s a nurse) and this was her reaction

I love her-

[carby]

I had a doctor tell me my liver was "unremarkable" one time. Sir do you know what my liver has been through? My 20s, for starters,

[rapidlydecayingcorpse]

this shooter shit is the coolest stuff to happen in my lifetime to be honest. wdym his goodreads consists of the lorax and 1984. what do you mean he wrote “deny defend depose” on the bullet used to kill the head of an evil ass corporation. what do you mean he left a backpack full of monopoly money in central park. what do you mean he has a youtube video scheduled for when he got arrested. what

[snowflakeeel]

the holidays are never officially here until i see the christmas light extension cord of death by electricity and I have yet to see it.

[snowflakeeel]

gotta do everything myself around here

[junk-thunder]

[ominous-signs]

Official ominous sign(s)