Just A Small Garden Gnome @justasmallgardengnome - Tumblr Blog

WELCOME ALL THEE TO MY GARDEN!

I keep recruiting irl friends to the Hellsite and this is a welcome post to my blog.

This ain’t your mamas twitter… this here is the wild wild west. Tread carefully lest you find yourself surrounded by porn bots. But learn the tagging system and build up some mutuals and the harvest will be kind to you.

Happy tumbling!

#screaming into the void

jetix

Dandelion shoot, 2026-05-11

passerinearts

When it comes to chronic illnesses, mental illnesses, and disabilities, I've noticed that a lot of able-bodied people either don't take names seriously, or don't understand and ask you to explain what it is to them.

Now, if you have any kind of disability, you know it's fucking annoying go have people make you explain something over and over again, or have people go "oh, you have X? You mean, like the [awful stereotype] thing?"

So, I have realized recently that being Vague As Shit is great for making people leave you the hell alone.

I have autism and anxiety, and with that comes the symptom of selective mutism. If you don't know what that is, Firefox is free. But I had an episode where I couldn't speak today in one of my classes, and knew I would have to explain it to my partner and probably my professor.

This usually goes with me writing that I can't speak, them asking why, me saying selective mutism, and them asking me what that is. Then I have to painstakingly write out an explanation. And, obviously, I'm tired of this. So I tried something new. When he asked, I simply told him I couldn't speak, and when he asked if I physically couldn't or just didn't want to, I just opened my mouth and unleashed the terrifying, awful, broken stuttering that comes out when I try to speak while mute.

His response was "OKAY OKAY OKAY YOU CAN STOP NOW" and he did not question me for the rest of class, and even explained to the professor what was wrong when she tried to make me popcorn read.

This also works on doctors. When I tell doctors I have PCOS, POTS, or hEDS, they usually hear "oh the crazy women self diagnosis disabilities" and treat me accordingly. So, instead I drop unhinged symptoms until they leave me alone.

"Yes, my last menstrual cycle started on December 12th, 2025 and ended January 28th, 2026." "I have experienced several events where I have passed out randomly, yes." "My hip has subluxated six times in the past week."

It's like in the principles of writing horror. If you name and describe the problem, it's easier for people to minimize and ignore. Don't let them. You live with this fucking bullshit every day. Let your symptoms haunt people. They don't need to know everything about you. Besides, it makes them treat you better than when you give them names.

schmergo

The summer between the end of high school and the start of college, I wrote a ridiculous play about pirates and put on a staged reading with some friends at an amphitheatre at a local park before a small audience of friends and family. It was never published or staged again. But I just got a message from an old high school friend I haven’t seen in years. He accidentally quoted the play in a conversation with friends, was asked what he was quoting, he couldn’t remember either, and wracked his brain until he finally remembered it was that silly play reading that we did one day in the park over 10 years ago. It made me happy. (The line was, “Huzzah for mercantilism!” by the way.)

A very tiny percentage of creators go on to be famous, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t remember little things you did for years and years. Who came up with most of the world’s most famous jump rope rhymes? Who coined some of the famous idioms we use in daily speech? Who made up ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells?” Somehow, all of these things stuck and spread around.

When I was a small child, I saw a high school put on a production of the musical HONK. In one song, the mother duck describes various dangers that her baby should avoid in the water, including fishing line, which could strangle him. A member of the ensemble played the role of fishing line, doing a maniacal laugh and over-the-top strangling motions, and I found it hilarious– and to this day, that’s an example I often think of when talking about how ensemble members can still stand out in theatre. The guy who played the role might not even remember that he did that, but I do.

I took Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. The teacher made up lyrics to some of the songs, and she let her students make some up, too. Now whenever I hear the instrumental of one of those pieces, I always remember these ridiculous lyrics about a skunk that we sang in violin class. I don’t even know which student invented them!

In middle school, I found a video about atoms parodying Bill Nye made by some kids for a school product. It probably had less than 1,000 views, but I think of quotes from that video all the time. They had a parody of “We Will Rock You” with the chorus, “Protons, neutrons, electrons” that I think about a lot.

I just love that this is part of human life. Our memories don’t just pick up quotes from great art, literature, and music, but little things, too.

cosmonautroger

dogpuppy

unconventiononthelawofthesea

atheist quarterback throws a hail darwin

akindlyowl

agnostic quarterback throws a hail maybe

fossilforager

Obsessed with the diversity of sea slug shapes and colors!

mammalianmammals

n0n-sum-qualis-eram

This is a Eurasian pigmy shrew (Sorex minutus) I believe. Wikipedia says she is 5 centimeters in length, plus 3.5 cm of tail. She weighs 4 grams.

tgirl-tamag0tchi

Thank you!! Very shrewd of you.

spankerella

@ goodgoodgoodco

persisting

People keep popping up in the replies on that post to insist that adults are and can be groomed and I am the world’s most exhausted whack-a-mole champ.

persisting

The thing a lot of the people who keep returning to that post to yell YUH HUH ADULTS ARE GROOMED don’t get is that I’m actually trying to advocate for children too, here. I work in Trust and Safety, which is a largely digital field devoted to all things terrible you can do online: terrorism, self-harm, and, of course, CSAM and CSA, which are my career speciality. I’m considered an expert in my field. I helped to build anti-abuse tooling that the (Biden) White House shouted out as a revolutionary step forward in combating grooming online. I was part of the team who first ousted and identified the people and behaviors behind 764, a really hideous ring of abusers whom I don’t recommend you look up unless you have a strong stomach. Some of the arrests in those cases are directly my doing.

Simultaneously, I’m an adult who, in my spare time, enjoys engaging in adult fiction spaces. As a result of that, I have, unfortunately, been shouted at a decent number of times by young adults (18-25 seems to be the common range) about children, and their well being, and how what happens in adult fiction spaces causes harm to children, and themselves by proxy. (I’ve also been yelled at by actual children, but I’m happy to ignore them, given many of them have been influenced by the previously mentioned young adults to behave that way.)

“Grooming” isn’t truly a technical term, though my industry uses it as one often. It doesn’t have a precise definition or pattern of behavior beyond “inappropriate conduct with a child.” It’s had other uses, of course, like saying someone was “groomed to inherit a title” or similar. But generally what we mean online is “this has to do with child abuse.”

Children are, no joke, one of the most uniquely oppressed classes of human being in the world. Most of the time, they simply have no recourse, no legal right to self-advocate, no ability to retain counsel, choose their own living environment, what they do, how they dress, what they eat. To even report their own abuse — which I assure you, most children are perfectly aware is abuse — they must first be believed by an adult, who may then choose to do something on the child’s behalf, or not. Any option a child has for safety or freedom of choice is entirely dependent on an adult deigning to humor them in the first place.

When you turn the age of majority in your country, you are automatically given a new set of legal and social rights. Even a severely disabled adult, in most places, may advocate for their rights on the basis of their legal adulthood. (There are constant failures here by the legal system, of course, but the point is that you are allowed to advocate in the first place.) You become a different class of person, who can do and ask for things that children are simply not allowed to.

When you try to say that “adults can be groomed,” by bringing up all kinds of random possibilities like “well what about cults” “what about age gaps and different levels of life experience” “what about this or that,” you’re still ignoring the idea that the exploited adult has recourse, in those situations (again, leaving out that there are many failings with the system that allows that recourse does not eliminate the fact that recourse is an option.) Restraining orders. Moving away. Going no contact, with no parent to force you to continue to see that person on holidays. Even if you are young, you are not helpless. You have an agency allowed to you that children simply are not given.

Of course, an 18 year old can be abused and exploited. And I absolutely am wary of a 19 year old dating a 40 year old — personally, I question the shit out of that. I’d even suspect that that 19 year old was previously groomed in some way. But the distinction is important to me, here, not to diminish the abuse that young adults can face, but to ensure that the plight of children is properly understood.

Children matter to me. Their harms and their rights matter to me. And just as I find it reprehensible to compare the fictional behaviors of fictional characters to real world harm, I am frustrated with the constant need to insist that young adults are on the same harm level as children are. It is the very opposite of “who gives a shit about kids and young people suffering.”

persisting

Once in a while I still see people going on about young adults being “groomed,” so here again is my take on why that’s wrong and unhelpful.

chokedqwerty

that au wehere ilyukhina and yao dont die and everyone is a bit more happymaybe? a bit sillier?

chokedqwerty

everyone saying they would starve if the crew didnt die BE QUIET taumeoba soup 4 everyone 5ever

stuckinapril

“Do it scared” “do it alone” are all great tips, but my biggest takeaway from therapy is do it messy. This is especially true if you’re getting out of a burnout, which I experience often. Literally just do it messy. You don’t need to pick the perfect trail to walk, the perfect playlist to listen to, whatever the fuck it is. You don’t need to have a meticulous to do list and wake up at the exact time you planned and drink the exact amount of water you planned to drink. Like the biggest thing for people like me to remember is sometimes it’s okay to do it messy. Put on a random yt workout and just get it done in sweats. Do 5 minutes of a daunting task and go from there. Sometimes just getting up is a win during intense burnouts or depressive funks. Literally just do it messy.