identity under construction

eclectic personal blog | she or they | queer aroace | still in the process of learning how to social | I figured out how to turn on my ask box! feel free to use it!

[turing-tested]

its just. it's incredibly painful to see and understand on a base level that you aren't 'bad' when you're autistic, adhd, ND, and still you internalize that ableism....it does such incredible damage to your self esteem. you internalize so much pain and hurt and the idea that 'if I just try harder, if i just try to work around the roadblocks in my head..." is constantly on loop, it's the background radiation of your life. there's something wrong. there's something bad. some basic building block of who you are got messed up along the way, but god help you if you don't personally overcome that by imitating a life where you're not affected by it.

it's hard to remind yourself you are allowed to exist as you are, and that your goals should be to exist as the best version of you that you can be. that can be hard when someone else's idea of success doesn't match up with yours. it can be hard when you think that making a meal for yourself is an accomplishment, when that's just expected anyways. congratulate yourself and exist as you are, and it might still hurt and tinge and burn, but you are allowed to function, and get to a point where you function best, not how others feel you should function instead.

[spellcore]

ah yes they call me “No Queue” Jones because I post everything I reblog at once with no breaks in between and then vanish into the night for extended periods of inactivity

[prokopetz]

I’m not sure which is objectively funnier: “do you want to start a riot?” to the tune of Frozen’s “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”, or “let’s build a snowman” to the tune of Three Days Grace’s “Riot”.

[discofriend]

Harry Potter AU in which Fred and George are in different houses and they steal and wear each others ties whilst doing stupid things in hope of the others house losing points

[thatwriterchickyouknow]

Finally a Fred and George AU that doesn’t make me want to set myself on fire.

[lytefoot]

AU where Fred and George are in different houses and they get their hands on house ties from the other two houses as well. By the end of their first year nobody knows which house either of them is in and just take points off a random house whenever they see a redhead getting up to something.

The confusion runs so deep by the time Ron starts that Snape once takes points off Slytherin for Ron fighting with Malfoy.

[chippish]

There’s a few months in Fred and George’s second year when they successfully convince most of the school that they’re actually quadruplets, one in each house.

[roseverdict]

“George! Why are you wearing a Slytherin tie?”

“What? No, I’m Edward. Y'know, Slytherin’s resident Weasley?”

“Wh…huh???”

“Next you’ll be telling me you don’t know Hubert!”

“?????”

[doctorgeekery]

After this confusing quadruple mess, a conspiracy theory emerges that Fred and George are actually just one person, and there were never any Weasley Twins. To add fuel to this theory, Fred and George make a point to never be seen together (publicly).

When asked about this theory, Fred/George subtly insinuates that he used Polyjuice Potion so that there could be multiple versions of himself at once. This goes around the Hogwarts Rumor Mill like fire. The Weasley family says nothing to dispute it, not even Percy.

[hippocrates460]

Percy makes polyjuice successfully for the first time in his fifth year, when he finally has sufficient motivation. Fred, George, Edward and Hubert walk into the great hall one morning, identical but for their school ties, and the chaos is so great that nobody realizes Percy and Ron are missing.

[kyraneko]

Or they get two random year-mates to take the Polyjuice potion and Ron and Percy are right there looking all confused that anyone thought they only had two brothers in the third year.

[invertprivileges]

Opinion | A Hidden Cost to Giving Kids Their Vegetables

Poor families can’t afford to experiment with picky eaters.

For the poor parents I met, children’s food rejections cost too much. To avoid risking waste, these parents fall back on their children’s preferences. As the mother of the 3 year old said: “Trying to get him to eat vegetables or anything like that is really hard. I just get stuff that he likes, which isn’t always the best stuff.” Like many children, her son prefers foods that are bland and sweet. Unable to afford the luxury of meals he won’t consume, she opts for mac and cheese.

I met plenty of poor parents who wished that their children liked healthier food. But developing their children’s palates has hidden costs. When I asked her about offering cauliflower 10 times to shape her son’s tastes, a poor mother from a town outside Boston said: “No. No. That’s a lot of wasted food.” This mother faces an uncomfortable choice: She can experiment and risk an empty cupboard, or she can make her food last by serving what her son likes, even if it’s not the healthiest and even if she feels guilty about it.

Wealthier parents didn’t face this trade-off. These parents met plenty of mealtime challenges — time scarcity, resistant children, the emotional toll of serving an unappreciative audience. The cost of waste posed fewer concerns. One middle-class mother has hated fruit all her life. But she offered her daughter a host of fruits early on. When I asked her about the cost of possible food rejections, she said, “Honestly, it never crossed my mind.”

this is so important to think about if you grew up eating junk because it was relatively affordable and your parents could reasonably assume you would eat all of it and not go hungry. it can take a huge effort to catch up and acquire a taste for food that isn’t processed shit. and on top of that, no one wants to admit they’re an adult who doesn’t eat vegetables because it’s embarrassing, but there’s a reason for it sometimes.

[jabberwockypie]

Honestly that remains a concern as a poor adult with sensory issues, too - “Do I like this food that I hated/never had available as a kid? Don’t know, BUT if I don’t like it, then that’s a portion of my food budget that I wasted”

[dinosaurrainbowstarfish]

watching purity arguments transform online has been….wild. First it was “write what you want, but tag it so that people who are triggered or uncomfortable can avoid” which, reasonable enough. Then it was “You can only write bad stuff if you explain your trauma to the internet at large and spell out exactly why you like writing about that bad stuff. If you don’t know if you’re traumatized or aren’t sure why you’re attracted to certain fiction you’re evil.” Now apparently it’s “you’re evil for writing fucked up stuff. doesn’t matter if it’s to process trauma, doesn’t matter if you yourself are a survivor, there’s certain content that can’t be written and you’re a bad person if you write it.”

what the fuck, guys. Word replace extensions exist. Tags on ao3 exist. You know who else exists? Trauma survivors who write bad stories to safely dissect and process what happened to them. People who are afraid of bad things happening to them and who write them down happening in a fictional setting so that they aren’t carrying that fear around with them and so that they can practice the idea that you can be okay after something awful happens. People who like stuff that you don’t like and who respect your right to avoid that content. In return, please fucking respect creators enough not to say they’re evil because they write evil characters. Writing about a murder has never made anybody a murderer. This attitude about fiction isn’t helping anybody. In fact, it’s literally just teaching survivors that they can’t talk about what happened to them. I’ve known multiple people who needed to talk and process their trauma and were afraid to because of purity culture. Fuck that noise, write whatever, and tag appropriately.  And if you bully people for doing that? Fuck. Off. Do not follow me. Do not read my sweet, fluffy, innocent fics. Do not interact. 

[dinosaurrainbowstarfish]

in case it wasn’t clear, this post was written as a direct response to a lot of people in the TMA fandom reblogging a post that said “If you write rape fic I don’t like you” If you write UNTAGGED rape fic, no, i don’t like you, because you’ve denied my right to consent to the content I consume. But if it’s tagged? And I choose to read it and it hits me harder than I thought it would? That’s on me, not you as the author. Also please consider how “If you like rape fic, I don’t like you” sounds to a rape survivor who’s writing or reading about what literally happened to them. You should never bully anybody due to their content being not to your taste, but I think it’s doubly awful that a ton of y'all didn’t even bother to consider survivors when you were going on about rape fics, or else you assume every survivor becomes triggered at mentions of rape in fiction, when that’s not actually the case. Everybody’s different, every trauma is different, and not everyone processes their trauma the same way. If you make broad sweeping statements like that with no regard to who they might hurt, no understanding of how people use fiction to cope (healthily, i might add! fiction is a good and safe way to break down and process an emotional event), and no respect for content creators who haven’t actually hurt anybody, I’m not gonna say I don’t like you because it was really just one post, but I’m not gonna lie and say it doesn’t change how I view you. It does change how I view you, because it exposes a way in which you are not able to protect the emotional needs of survivors, and there are a lot more survivors out there than you think there are. This is what I mean when I say that purity culture mindsets are incompatible with recovery. Purity culture assigns moral value to avoidance behaviors, which are literally symptoms of PTSD. Teaching a traumatized person that their avoidance behaviors are in fact moral positions that they must hold forever or be denied community acceptance, is a bad thing and you shouldn’t do it. And I’m not saying you HAVE to stop having those particular avoidance behaviors in order to recover, there’s no one set way that recovery looks, it’s just that if you’re never allowed to examine whether your coping mechanisms are helping or hurting you, because you see them as moral positions rather than coping mechanisms, that’s not a great place to try and heal from. After all, the line between trauma and choosing to curate your online experience is about choice–it’s about saying “I’m not going to expose myself to this because I won’t like it” instead of “If I’m exposed to this my body will tell me I’m literally going to die”. On all of my purity culture posts I get one line about “Oh I agree, but…” and then there’s some condition. The only condition I intend in any discussion is this: if it hurts real people in real life, or if you’re using it to hurt real people in real life, that’s bad. If not, I don’t care how gross or weird or frightening I personally might find your work, I still believe in your right to create it, and I encourage others to do the same.

[kestrel-tree]

Ridiculous yet effective ways to deal with Executive Dysfunction

Dealing with executive dysfunction and ADHD becomes so much easier when you stop trying to do things the way you feel like you should be able to do them (like everyone else) and start finding ways that actually work for you, no matter how “silly” or “unnecessary” they seem.

For years my floor was constantly covered in laundry. Clean laundry got mixed in with dirty and I had to wash things twice, just making more work for myself. Now I just have 3 laundry bins: dirty (wash it later), clean (put it away later), and mystery (figure it out later). Sure, theoretically I could sort my clothes into dirty or clean as soon as I take them off and put them away straight out of the dryer, but realistically that’s never going to be a sustainable strategy for me.

How many garbage bins do you need in a bedroom? One? WRONG! The correct answer is one within arms reach at all times. Which for me is three. Because am I really going to get up to blow my nose when I’m hyperfocusing? NO. In allergy season I even have an empty kleenex box for “used tissues I can use again.” Kinda gross? Yeah. But less gross than a snowy winter landscape of dusty germs on my desk.

I used to be late all the time because I couldn’t find my house key. But it costs $2.50 and 3 minutes to copy a key, so now there’s one in my backpack, my purse, my gym bag, my wallet, my desk, and hanging on my door. Problem solved.

I’m like a ninja for getting pout the door past reminder notes without noticing. If I really don’t want to forget something, I make a physical barrier in front of my door. A sticky note is a lot easier to walk past than a two foot high cardboard box with my wallet on top of it.

Executive dysfunction is always going to cause challenges, but often half the struggle is trying to cope by pretending not to have executive dysfunction, instead of finding actual solutions.

[roachpatrol]

i left cabinet doors open all my life and couldn’t make myself stop leaving them open until i figured out my subconscious just wants to know where everything is at a glance. i put labels on each cabinet door for what was behind the cabinet and after that i was a lot better at closing them. 

showers are hard for me because they involve a lot of steps to get in and out. buying cleaning hand wipes helps me stay a lot cleaner and happier when i’m too tired or distracted to make myself be a normal person– they’re faster and involve way less prep time, decision making, and unpleasant physical sensations. 

i have disordered eating because, again, getting food is complicated, much less cooking anything. buying 10-12$ of cliff bars at a go and keeping them in my room by my bed gives me a headstart on breakfast and lets me take my meds on time. otherwise i would lie in bed, not taking my meds because i had to eat, and not eating because i was too tired and nauseous from being hungry to get out of bed.  

‘just try harder’ is not a solution. figuring out the actual problem and addressing it is the solution.

’normal’ isn’t the goal. you can’t be normal. it’s too late, but you know what, fuck normal. trying to be normal is going to kill you. ‘functional’ is the goal, and you can be functional. you can kick ass at functional. and that’s a lot better. 

[copperbadge]

When I talk about how there is no universal system for Keeping Your Shit Together, and how it’s more important to find a system that works for you, this is exactly the kind of thing I mean. 

My keys hang on the door so I literally can’t leave my apartment without touching them. My socks kept getting everywhere when I kept them with my other clothes, so instead I now keep them in a little hutch in the kitchen, where I keep all my shoes. All my silverware is in jars on my kitchen island so I can see clearly when I am out of forks. When I didn’t want to put on my socks to go running, I bought running shoes that didn’t require socks. There are people who would find all of the above unworkable and/or appalling but they don’t have to live my life and I do. 

Find what works for you and work it. Doesn’t matter if it’s weird or unusual or not as healthy as some weird ideal which is probably just a marketing tool anyway. If it works, work it. 

[snakewife]

’normal’ isn’t the goal. you can’t be normal. it’s too late, but you know what, fuck normal. trying to be normal is going to kill you. ‘functional’ is the goal, and you can be functional. you can kick ass at functional. and that’s a lot better.

Reblogging for this bit. It’s okay to be functional.

[justalurkr]

Me, on first visit: I need to fix this!

Therapist: let’s get you functional, and we’ll talk.

Funny how much getting functional fixed, and little the rest mattered.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Saw a post where someone made fun of another persons atypical way of typing and when they were then told that the person in question type like that because of a disability, they went “how was I supposed to just know that?” - and in case anyone wasn’t aware the answer to that kind of fuckery is: 

“You’re not supposed to know that, you’re just supposed to not make fun of anyone’s harmless differences regardless of whether they’re disabled or not. You’re not supposed to be able to tell “weird” abled neurotypicals and disabled/mentally ill people apart, you’re just supposed to treat people with respect generally speaking. It’s not that hard. “I didn’t know they were disabled” is just not the excuse you think it is cause you’re not supposed to make fun of anyone for completely harmless differences regardless of whether said differences are related to a disability or not.

[yehudah]

why did polyamory ever start becoming “cringe” on here lmao

[yehudah]

like damn REGs will go on and on about how they only bully the “cringe asexuals” because they dont face any sort of marriage discrimination or legal/societal issues but suddenly when it comes to the topic of polyamory this logic is completely destroyed

i see so many posts on here abt how polyamory is so “annoying” and polyamorous ppl are “cringe” and dont face any sort of oppression, as if half this fucking website forgets that in most, if not all, western countries outlaw polyamorous marriage

like there are posts and posts on here about how polyamorous people dont also face societal oppression, as if polyamory isnt frowned upon in western society? as if saying “my boyfriend’s girlfriend” or “my girlfriend’s husband” isnt a common fucking joke punchline, and will give you weird looks if you try to drop it casually within a conversation

yall cant make the “i only bully the minorities that dont face oppression 😖” argument and then completely throw polyamorous people under the bus and make them face the same bullshit as they always have lol

[renthony]

My boyfriend’s mother straight-up threatened me with a gun after finding out we were in a polyam relationship, and proceeded to kick my boyfriend out of the house. He hasn’t talked to his family in years now.

We regularly get told that our relationship isn’t child-friendly. Concerned parents corner us and ask us not to “bring our lifestyle around their children” even though we didn’t do or talk about anything inappropriate.

My city apparently has an ordinance that prevents more than three people living together unless they’re related by blood or marriage (not that we pay any attention to it, but our landlord could LEGALLY evict us if she found out).

When we had to take my wife to the emergency room due to severe chest pains, our boyfriend had to sit out in the waiting room, scared and alone, while waiting for me to text him updates.

And I’ve just resigned myself to not being able to have kids because of all the legal issues that could arise if a bunch of polyamorous trans people tried to adopt.  

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[aveimperatormagnus]

This reminds me of the time when I was sitting with a co-worker during a slow period and she was texting on her phone and laughed. I asked her what was funny, as we do- we share memes all the time. SHe says ‘oh, my girlfriends boyfriend just-’ and froze. Like. Terror-froze, and looked at me. The amount of relief on her face when I was just like ‘your girlfriends boyfriend just what?’ to try to continue the conversation was… Heartbreaking. I had to interrupt my own ‘please continue’ to say something to the effect of ‘Like, you’re Poly, right? You were saying something funny?’ But just … The fact that she ‘slipped’ and was so afraid I would judge or condemn her for it was.. Fucked up. I’m queer as hell, I get having to be mad-careful about what I say and to whom I say it. But the look on her face when she wasn’t sure how I was gonna react to hearing that… Is gonna be a long time before I forget that face.

[thatonewiththebluehair]

“as if polyamory isnt frowned upon in western society? as if saying “my boyfriend’s girlfriend” or “my girlfriend’s husband” isnt a common fucking joke punchline, and will give you weird looks if you try to drop it casually within a conversation“

[websurfingspider]

I was more afraid of telling my mom I was in a polyam relationship than of coming out to her as trans. My mom had been around queer and trans folks and was basically accepting if a little confused sometimes. My mom’s one experience with polyamory was my dad using it as a piss-poor excuse to cheat on her (aka not really poly bc it wasn’t consensual for all parties), and she saw it as just another word for cheating basically. She didn’t believe poly relationships could be healthy or viable. I was even more afraid to tell her when we later broke up, and I thought I was going to get a nasty “I told you so” instead of the support I needed.

[trans-axolotl]

people need to stop leaving intersex people out of conversations about reproductive justice. 

intersex people are routinely sterilized at birth, and the choice of whether or not we want to have children is taken from us before we even can reach an age where we would be ready to make that choice. 

intersex people and their families are lied to about surgeries that have no medical benefit, because doctors are so worried about making sure that they uphold the binary system and create people who look “normal” instead of preserving our right to consent to what happens to our bodies. 

intersex people are often denied access to fertility treatment, or have many barriers to accessing infertility treatment because it is believed that we will not want to have children, or that we should not want to have children. 

yet, intersex issues are rarely, if ever, brought up in the context of reproductive rights, despite the fact that bodily autonomy and reproductive justice is a huge issue for the intersex community. 

if you’re fighting for reproductive justice, please consider fighting for our rights to choose as well.

[cripdeaf]

This includes putting a stop to people spouting bullshit that intersex people are all or mostly inherently sterile.

Our variants aren’t what make us sterile in most cases, it’s the fucking doctors.

[damianmcgintleman]

i hate when someone says “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies” and some white 21 year old trying to be ‘woke’ says “haha… go ahead and cry your white tears sweatie (:”

no one thinks it’s a racial issue against white people. that’s not why people say to stop that shit. it’s an issue of classism. because the truth is that the majority of y’all who think you’re amazing activists just REALLY fucking hate appalachian people, and i know that because y’all think it’s funny to say “karma’s a bitch!” when something bad happens to an appalachian state.

you don’t care about the poverty in the appalachia and you don’t care about queer people and/or people of color who live in the appalachia. you don’t care about education in the appalachia and you don’t care that these low rates of education mean higher rates of poverty and child poverty, which persist over the years. rural children are twice as likely to live in areas with persistent poverty. you care that poverty stricken children are statistically less likely to not have timely immunizations, have higher delinquency rates, and have lower academic achievement — but only when we’re talking about urban areas outside of the appalachia.

people in our region die earlier than most. mortality rates are higher in the appalachia, and they’re even higher for people of color that live in the appalachia. suicide rates are higher than anywhere else in the country by 17% — it’s 31% higher in central appalachia, and in rural areas within the appalachia, it’s 27% higher than metro appalachia. cancer morality rate is 10% higher, and it’s 15% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. COPD mortality rate is 27% higher, and 55% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. injury mortality rate is 33% higher, and it’s 47% higher in rural appalachia than in metro appalachia. stroke mortality rate is 14% higher — and you guessed it’s, these rates are higher in rural areas vs metro areas by 8%. the rate of Years of Potential Life Lost, which measures premmature mortality from all causes of death, is 25% higher in appalachia, and 40% higher in rural vs metro areas.

the appalachia has an opioid epidemic. in 2015, our rate of death with drugs was 65% higher than the national average. 69% of those drug deaths were from opioids. these deaths have a connection to our poverty and education rates. the poorer you are, and the less educated you are, the more likely you are to die from an opioid death.

when i say “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies”, that doesn’t mean i think you’re being racist against white people (and again — the majority of people who claim this also happen to be white 🙄). i say that because you are perpetuating extremely toxic rhetoric about our region, you are promoting stigma, you are encouraging blatant classism, and you are furthering the idea that we somehow “deserve” it because our elected officials vote republican. it’s not cute. stop acting like none of us have the right to call you out on your classist bullshit. like i’m sorry if this comes off as too aggressive but i am sooooo sick of y’all thinking it’s funny that our region is suffering.

and before anyone asks me for resources and links: google exists. i did my research and you can do it too.

EDIT: https://www.arc.gov/assets/research_reports/Health_Disparities_in_Appalachia_Trends_in_Appalachian_Health.pdf here, since y’all are too fucking obnoxiously incapable of taking 2.3 seconds google and instead want to claim I pulled random numbers from my asshole

also here https://www.arc.gov/assets/research_reports/Health_Disparities_in_Appalachia_August_2017.pdf

[josephus-miller]

a big problem with the people who say stuff like this is they don’t realize just how many “rednecks and hillbillies” are non-white. there are so many appalachian and southern POC that also suffer through these conditions but people like to cling to their idea that the only hicks are white hicks, so they couldnt care less if places like WV or KY just fell off the map, and to hell with who it is that’s actually hurting.

people also act like it’s only appalachian and southern whites that voted for trump and that vote republican and it’s not true - half of all white women voted for trump. the rich ones and the poor ones. it’s not a problem that’s tied specifically to southern and appalachian white people but it’s an easy scapegoat and allows people to not think about what they’re actually saying.

as long as they can say that it’s just them shitty racist white hicks that are suffering, then they don’t have to actually care about them. they can ignore them and not do anything to help them. like another person said in the notes, the teacher strike in WV is a better example of leftist organization than a whole lot of the people saying shit about hillbillies have ever done but they don’t care about that because, well, theyre just white hillbillies so what does it matter?

[clatterbane]

Too relevant, yet again: THE LEGACY OF SOCIAL DARWINISM IN APPALACHIAN SCHOLARSHIP

[wodneswynn-deactivated-deactiva]

To paraphrase George Orwell, these self-ID’d socialists do not love the poor, they simply hate the rich.

Classism is a real bad look, y'all.

[hermitmouse-deactivated20230813]

A lot of this also relates to the people of the ozarks, like in Oklahoma, which is the forced home of many indigenous nations.

[lonely-eluret]

how do you tell the difference between being hungry and being full

asking for a friend

[messengershooter-deactivated202]

.pdf (poison dart frog)

[manicpussydreamboi]

what do tumblr posts even mean anymore?

[messengershooter-deactivated202]

when have they ever meant anything

[thatadult]

I don’t think welfare fraud is a problem period I genuinely don’t. I don’t care when it happens and it means nothing to me. I’m glad. As if the government doesn’t steal from you every day lmao… I don’t give a damn

[fayanora]

It’s also literally not a problem because there isn’t enough welfare fraud happening to even be a problem to any reasonable human being. It’s practically nonexistent, in fact.

[wandererriha]

My first “real job” out of college was working for the welfare fraud and collection line.

My God.

If ever there was a job that made you despair for humanity.

I learned two things there: 

1. People are petty-ass bitches who can’t stand to see their “neighbor on welfare” doing “better” than they are.

2. 99.9999% of the time there was no actual fraud, just a GROSS lack of knowledge as to how the welfare system actually works on the part of both non-recipients.

Example: Had some guy report his neighbor for owning an “expensive antique car”. Said car was a 1978 Buick with no remaining paint, no hubcaps, and was at least fifth-hand. At the time, the year was 2002. I politely explained that a) that’s not a classic car and b) he should pity his neighbor the gas mileage and insurance costs. The caller said he had not thought of that and hung up.

My other favorite was someone calling to report that their “neighbor on welfare” who was a single mother with no income or support had her children in a “private school”. I asked what the name of the school was. Said private school is actually a charity-run orphanage and school for children who have no parents, or whose family situation is less than stable. I informed the caller of this and they hung up without a word.

Someone else called and felt that their “neighbor on welfare” should have to sell all their jewelry, antiques, family heirlooms, and collection of vintage sports memorabilia before they could be eligible to be “given free money” by the state.

The system is old, overtaxed, convoluted, and being forced to function in a way that was never intended. Like the workhouses of the 19th c, welfare was originally for out of work men. But the people who wound up using it were women, children, the disabled, and the elderly. This continues to this day.

If there’s fraud, it’s minimal to the point of barely existing. Ya’ll are just greedy, nosy, entitled assholes who can’t mind your own damn business. If you REALLY want to do something about “all these people on welfare” try, I don’t know, ACTUALLY HELPING THEM. Offer to watch their kids. Make them a casserole. Drive them to the store. Don’t make their lives harder than they already are. I guarantee, their lives are a LOT harder than yours.

[birchsoda]

Also it costs $0 to mind your own beeswax!

[princeofmara-deactivated2022112]

geralt @ anyone about to harm jaskier: excuse me, sir, that is my emotional support bard

[alecvolturi]

New Moon au where after the cullens leave Bella just.....moves into their house. It’s hers now. What are they gonna do about it? Come back? Good. That’s the POINT! Checkmate, fuckers.

[alecvolturi]

They cullens get a bill for their utilities from their house in Washington and are confused bc they’re not there so why???? Is the bill like this???

Bella leaves everything on all the time.

[alecvolturi]

The heat? Cranked.

The lights? ON

Hotel? The Cullen residence in Washington

[cullensboyfriend-deactivated202]

bella runs a bed and breakfast out of the cullens residence

[funwithlanguages]

A faster way to start learning a language

You can get to the point where you can express yourself in a language by learning basic grammar and just 200 words.

My test for being able to express myself is: Can I keep a diary in this language? Can I talk about what I did today and my opinions on just about any subject?

Too often, people who have been learning a language for months or even years say “no.” However, in my experience, it’s possible after learning just basic grammar and the 200 most useful words. If you wanted to go fast and learn 20 words a day (the default rate of Anki), then you could learn 200 words in a week and a half. (In my experience, learning basic grammar doesn’t take as long as learning the words, so the total time could be three weeks. However, I didn’t teach myself my first foreign language, so I can’t speak to that case — if you’re teaching yourself your first, kudos, and let me know how long the grammar takes!)

The key is that you have to learn the right 200 words. When I was teaching myself languages before, I could never find a good answer to the question: What words should I learn first? If you use Duolingo, they’ll start by teaching you words like “apple”, which aren’t very useful. I spent a lot of time writing and talking in order to determine which 200 words would let you express the most. I think I finally got it. But don’t take my word for it — see this demonstration.

I personally tested this method out with Esperanto and French and I’m now able to keep a diary in both languages, writing about anything that happened in my day and any thought that crosses my mind.

To be clear: 200 words won’t make you fluent, but they’ll allow you to express yourself, and it’s a lot easier to keep improving from there. Feel free to adapt the method based on what works for you. Here are the steps:

If your language uses a non-Latin alphabet, learn the alphabet.

Learn basic grammar

Learn ~200 basic words

Practice writing (This method is introvert friendly! You don’t have to talk to strangers if you don’t want to. But at this stage you can also practice by speaking, if you prefer.)

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Also, please send me your feedback! I’d love to know if this works for you or if it doesn’t. I welcome all comments, criticism, and suggestions for improvement. And if you think this guide could help other people, please consider reblogging it. :)

Additional notes:

To be able to express yourself with 200 words, you’ll need to be able to rephrase things: e.g. “she comforted him” = “she caused that he felt better”. Even if it’s hard for you to rephrase things this way, the 200 basic words are a great starting vocabulary list.

This is the order in which I usually learn an alphabetic language: basic writing and speaking, reading, listening, advanced writing and speaking. Being able to express yourself doesn’t mean that you’ll immediately be able to listen to the language and understand it, because native speakers may speak fast and use a wider vocabulary (though hopefully they’ll slow down and simplify for you in a conversation). But it’s a lot easier to keep improving from a point where you have basic writing and speaking skills than from one where you don’t.