Mission: Avoid Failure. Abridged!

[gerrycanavan]

 I’m afraid of Americans

[lindsayribar]

This is super real.

[justgot1]

Completely accurate.

[next-time-you-invite-pam]

@pre-successful America exposed. 

[themightyglamazon]

It’s hilarious watching non-Americans react to this with fear because I read it just nodding along like “yes, in fact this is How Things Are, there you go”

[sexycraisinthanos]

If you ask an American how they are and they respond “Super.” that means they want to die

[themightyglamazon]

ACCURATE

[nyanbinyuri]

If they say they’re peachy it means they’re tired of existence

[drneverland]

If they say “Living the dream,” it means “please kill me, I hate my job so, so much.”

[accordingtomyresearch]

also “that’s a great question” means “I have no freaking idea”

[aampharros]

if asked “how are things going?” and they reply “its going” it means theyre in the middle of a mental breakdown

[notthepopeiv]

“Getting by” means that I, personally, I am just barely surviving at the moment, please don’t ask any difficult questions.

[roguebelle]

Also if you actually answer “How are you?” honestly, it will cause other Americans to have a total BSOD response. We don’t know what to do.

[jumpingjacktrash]

please be aware that this differs by region.

if someone in san francisco tells you your work is “interesting” it means they think it’s galaxy brain and they want to write a paper on it.

from someone in new york, it means they’re not impressed but they’re still going to name drop you when you’re famous.

from someone in minneapolis, it means it’s appalling and they’re embarrassed for you but they don’t want to hurt your feelings.

midwesterners in response to “how are you”:

“eh, same old same old” = actually okay

“not s’bad” = pretty good

“not s’good” = i’m about to ask you for a favor

“can’t complain” = i can, and if you don’t ask i will hint for hours

“really great” = i have something to brag about but i’m too midwestern to volunteer it so please prompt me

“oh i just can’t believe this weather, we have ten thousand dollars of hail damage to our roof, my aunt has bubonic plague, three of our cows were stolen by aliens, and my dog wants a divorce!” = i’m the happiest i’ve ever been and you’re my best friend, i trust you with my life

“could be better” = i have cancer

[weaver-z]

Fondly remembering the time that a cat owner casually entered their calico Maine Coon in a cat fancier's competition and the judges lost their minds because the cat was 1) male and 2) able to bear children

[weaver-z]

Anyway here's Dawntreader Texas Calboy as a silly lil kitten

[weaver-z]

Here's an excerpt from one of the articles about the drama his entry caused among the Cat Fanciers that I thought was very earnest and sweet <3

And also some of Calboy's children!

[gasterofficial]

@pangur-and-grim

[elodieunderglass]

He is fearfully and wonderfully made!

[rainbow-lizzard]

I was about to say he would technically be an intersex king (not because I dislike the concept of trans cats, just bc intersex rep is sorely needed too) but I did some more reading on this icon and actually found the article OP referenced.

He's not your usual male calico kitty as it turns out. That's already cool and rare, but he's even cooler and rarer than that!

Calboy is a chimera!! Which is really fucking cool of you ask me. The chances of having a male calico this way are slim to none, but the mad lad still exists! What an icon. I would die for Calboy.

[frostbittenbucky]

Yo this man is on god mode

When I think of Dick and his acrobatics

This is what comes to mind

[badcushion]

Oh it’s easy he just throws his entire body up over his head over and over again, easy peasy.

[higglety]

He flipped out of his got-dang pants

[anagramofbrat]

This guy has an intimate knowledge of where his center of gravity is and has pretty much hacked how to maximize rotation around it. Also he’s built very similarly to my husband and this just reminds me how once in the very early stages of dating Husbeast decided to drunkenly perform a handspring in a patch of grass walking back home from the bar and I very nearly took him in a not even remotely ladylike fashion right there on the side of the highway

[deactivated-this-account-deacti]

I ended up having a really interesting conversation with some people at the bus stop today. They were getting out of some sort of ‘clean and sober’ meeting and had starting saying how they were so bored because they didn’t have anything to do, and had to stay at home because all their old friends would pull them back. So I said something like, ‘So this is the time to do all the stuff your parents told you they didn’t have money/time for!’ “Whatcha mean?” “You know, like when you were five and you REALLY wanted to have that toy or do that thing and you were like, ‘Please mom please I gotta have this I gotta go do this’ and they went ‘Hell no you think I’m paying for that do you want to goddamn EAT?’ “ And this light went on in their eyes. The lady is going to go check thrift stores for an Easybake Oven and I told her about Wilton cake decorating classes. The dude is going to Griffith Park and ride horses, because, ‘I always wanted to be a cowboy, and you can’t drink when you’re on a horse ‘cause you’ll fucking die!’ Fuck it. This is what being an adult is. Sure it’s bills and work and relationships, but damn it, it’s also time to do the things you LIKE. I signed up for a free class/lecture on Water Gardens. I’m going. It’s time.

[ruthfully]

Jill. Jill you are wonderful.

[lostwolfling]

no joke, this is such an important aspect of overcoming trauma. I mean the trauma of abusive parents, the trauma of broke ass parents who got toxic because of it, the trauma of capitalism. Like fuck it. Go to Wrestlemania. Build a shit ton of terrariums.

[judgingyourgrammar]

I took a stained glass class during the pandemic and now I have a hummingbird hanging in my kitchen window. And this year I’m finally getting chickens!!

[prismatic-bell]

This is literally why I have my Sailor Moon thermos.

[alarajrogers]

it doesn’t even have to be the trauma of bad parents. It can be the everyday human pain of “I lost my favorite toy when I was 12 and never found it again.” It can be the parents who loved you and fully sympathized with your desire to have the thing, but honey, we just don’t have the money right now. It can be the fact that you no longer live with your brother who’s highly allergic to dogs, so you can finally have the dog you always wanted that you always understood why you couldn’t get, and you accepted it, but it was still painful. It can be the Atari games or Nintendo games or Sega games that don’t exist anymore that you played in your childhood.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized – you don’t have to be suffering some great trauma, something unusual and particularly damaging, to feel pain. You don’t have to have lost your entire home in a hurricane to have lost something you truly valued and miss a lot. You don’t have to have had toxic parents to have been denied some things you wanted because they just didn’t have the money, or the resources, or the health.

Time is pain. Loss and disappointment are part of human existence. But you don’t have to try to justify why your specific loss or disappointment is especially bad to admit that it hurts and do something to rectify that hurt in some small way.

[mj-irl]

Good advice

[klinger4yossarian-deactivated20]

enjoying yourself is a good thing

[kerryrenaissance]

And it’s allowed.

[thestuffedalligator]

All the weird misinterpretations and revisions of Russian history aside, Anastasia is one of my favourite movies because its plot structure is so fucking weird

It’s a period piece romance. That’s cool, that’s all well and good, except that on the sidelines there’s an undead warlock who’s trying so hard to kill the protagonist, but all in ways that the protagonist either doesn’t notice or doesn’t accept as supernatural

And it isn’t a twist! The audience knows about the warlock! The warlock has a villain song! The warlock is one of the principal characters! But the protagonist spends 95% of the movie completely unaware of the warlock, and just spends the entirety of the movie doing period piece romance things while being repeatedly inconvenienced by the warlock until the climax, when the protagonist has to very suddenly

Acknowledge the existence of the warlock

Acknowledge the existence of the supernatural

See some real-ass goddamn magic

Kill the warlock

I have never seen a movie with a plot structure like this before, and I don’t think I’ll see one like it ever again. It’s like an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that turns Lady Catherine into a vampire who’s just repeatedly trying to drink Lizzy’s blood, but Lizzy doesn’t even notice until the climax whereupon she stuffs Lady Catherine’s mouth with garlic and cuts off her head (an adaptation I would kill to see, by the way). There are two completely different genres playing out at the same time, and one of them is trying to kill the other

Anyways that’s why the stage musical is bad, thank you and good night

[13thsongbird]

The only thing I’m adding to this is that Disney’s Hercules has almost the same hero-villain dynamic in that the protagonist and antagonist think they are the heroes of two wildly different stories, and the protagonist doesn’t really know the antagonist exists until the endgame starts. It’s so fucking bizarre. They also both came out in 1997, and feature a red-headed protagonist who starts the story trying to find out who their parents are and falls in love with a shady brunette with dubious intentions who winds up trying to sacrifice themselves so the protagonist can live/be happy. I dunno what this means, but coincidence? I think NOT!

[deathcomes4u]

Listen that was just the vibe of 97 alright some shit went down that year

[valtsv]

why don't you look at a black cat's fur turning brown in the sunlight and maybe you'll calm down

[this-is-a-representation]

my boy's time has come

[dragonsinheaven]

[ydrill]

My girl

[tonysaintborgi]

[rooksandravens]

[rhubarbgrl]

[astoldbyandi-moving-deactivated]

[ookaookaooka]

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

[upthehillart]

“Hello, old friend.”

[fellow-ocean-gay]

wwdits + textposts

[thesassyducks]

These ten ducklings were found orphaned and they were brought to a pet duck called Stella who had just hatched nine of her own two weeks prior. She immediately claimed the ten as her own. 

via @thesassyducks​ instagram

(Source)

[kindness-and-sunshine]

she released those babies like a ramen flavour packet

[kelssiel]

love how stella swims over like “oh shit i must’ve misplaced these ten whole babies!”

[azzandra]

Love how the li’l ramen flavor packets swim over like ‘oh shit that must be mom, she’s mom-shaped’

[lurlur]

[flipocrite]

found-family speedrun

[scrubjayspeaks]

New offspring just dropped.

[tiktokmuseum]

are men okay?

[siderealsandman]

NO

[zymomonasmobilis]

my husband told me, after many years of being together, that when he was about 7 a teacher used to single him out for being disrespectful at school. Apparently his disrespectful offense was “smirking” too much???? So he got punished for smiling???? And eventually just trained himself to stop smiling so this teacher would leave him alone???? And that’s why he has such a stoic facial expression now and can’t smile for photographs.

I had to.....privately cry after hearing that one

[thanos-the-dad-titan]

Wow

[themildestofwriters]

It’s the only way men are able to discuss their issues because society taught them that they shouldn’t burden people with their issues or that their issues are meaningless or that their issues aren’t actually a thing. Sharing anecdotes with friends is one way of talking about it, because they feel comfortable enough to share. At the same time, they might just not know that the event was traumatic because it’s trauma y’all.

[crownquill]

im-

[sammyofthesea]

Take this to be your reminder that men experience trauma too and need a safe space to talk about it. Be that safe space for your friends who are men

[tikkety-tok]

such rage in such a little body

[hjarta-deactivated20260124]

just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees

[scienceoftheidiot]

They existed *before beetles*

[somethingaboutsomethingelse]

[spacedandelions]

Why is this sad? Why am I sad?

[ignescent]

https://xkcd.com/1259/

Bee Orchid

[sepdet]

This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees' range has shrunk by 90%.

(my own photos)

Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.

Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.

You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:

The Trees That Miss The Mammoths - American Forests

Trees that once depended on animals like the wooly mammoth for survival have managed to adapt and survive in the modern world.



[fistfights]

Girlboss manwhore couple she’s killing he’s fucking nobody is doing the housework

[davidbowietookmybaby]

[arkhaeology]

Does anyone remember fanfiction from like 2001 to 2004 tho?

-wacky, highly out of character ‘sleepovers’ with the villains of the series

-not bothering to research the culture the series originated from (we live in Japan but for some reason we’re celebrating a westernized version of Christmas?)

-sugar highs??? the entire cast has eaten sugar and now randomness ensues!!1!

-really surreal oneshots taking a completely illogical idea to the highest possible level played completely for laughs (re: maybe Harry was so good at flying because He Was A Broom All Along)

-user guides for characters (as if they’re adoptable robots)

-disclaimer at the beginning of the story, end of the story, used as page breaks in the middle of the story I DO NOT OWN THIS PLEASE DON’T SUE I’M DIRT POOR

-author’s notes at the beginning of the story, end of the story, used as page breaks in the middle of the story, LOL I WROTE THIS AT ONE IN THE MORNING PLEASE REVIEW

-nutshell/condensed retellings of the series, again usually humorous

-AUs where everything except the main character’s names are completely different that have no real connections to the series (High School AUs are EVERYWHERE)

-The writer’s favourite character isn’t dead and the rest of the cast questions it once and then never mentions it again

-the writer talking to the characters in script form before the story actually starts

[gokuma]

I don’t think I had Internet in 2001

[katbelleinthedark]

I had. The fic of that era IS bonkers.

Though high school AUs are still everywhere.

[bakasara]

I first read fanfic in 2005 and it was still like this.

[aggressivewhenstartled]

Oh god I wrote these.

[hellaswawesome-deactivated20170]

Quizilla choose-your-own-adventure fanfics tho

[tiktokmuseum]

this is so cute

[gay-jesus-probably]

If they just had the same onesie this would be adorable, but the fact that they also both have a matching onesie for their respective dogs? I don’t believe in soulmates but I think these two are the exception.

[fuckingguide]

What We Do in the Shadows | 1.01 - 3.08 | “Creepy” paper

[tlirsgender]

A nonhuman character in heavy makeup: *is very long*

Me: is that you, Doug

The credits: Freaky Creature played by Doug Jones

Me: YEAHHHH

[agir1ukn0w]

A nonhuman character in heavy makeup: *does that elegant hand movement that Doug always seems to do*

Me: DOUG!!!