Villains -- or those we're told are villains -- are always more interesting. Proud Bisexual; proud neurodivergent, proud autism mom. This blog is and has always been and will always be LGBTQ+ loving and accepting. I don't care what part of the Rainbow you're under, you're family.
…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment
likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post
…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment
likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post
You're about to close on your very own, suspiciously affordable and comfortable house. Just before you sign the contract, the realtor shows you the required legal disclosure: your new house is haunted by the type of presence you'll get from this spinner wheel.
Of course it is.
Are you still buying the house?
🥳 Yes! Are you kidding?!!! Now I'm buying the house BECAUSE of the ghost!!!!!
😊 Yes. I'm happy to have found this house, and the ghost is a nice addition.
😶 Yes, but the ghost doesn't play into my decision at all.
😒 Yes... I guess. I'm not happy, but I'm not passing up an affordable house.
❌ No. I've found my limit, and this ghost is past it.
Man, when I was like 16 I got so sick of being made fun of for being the fat kid that I took an axe down inna woods, chopped down a tree, and started doing log-lifts all the time. I got strong as fuck, but I didn’t lose no weight. I actually got bigger.
Same thing happened when I got into fighting. I got even stronger, and I got *fast*, man, and nimble, like a cat. Still chubby.
Body-building culture is a bunch of crap, my dude. Functional muscle is not necessarily toned or lean. You can be swole as hell and still be heavy. And that’s cool.
Embrace your inner barbarian. And when fatphobic little gym twinks try to body shame you, you should DESTROY THEM with your MIGHTY AXE
You know, I train with (martial arts) a bunch of dudes, and a few bodybuilders have showed up over the years.
And every damn one of those huge shredded motherfuckers has the endurance of a fucking newborn puppy. Fifteen minutes into warmups and they’re panting for air like like they’re about to die. I’ve sparred them and every one of them telegraphs their moves about two weeks in advance, and are slower than my dead grandpa because their huge useless muscles get in the damn way.
Now. I also work with a couple of guys who are not weightlifters. They do, however, do very physical jobs and are Big Dudes. Picture this sort of build.
No abs to speak of, a bit of a tummy, and those motherfuckers can pick up one of the weightlifters and throw them.
And they’re fast. Like, unfair fast.
Bodybuilding culture is bullshit. Embrace your status as a giant barbarian and if anyone gives you crap throw them off a mountain.
Extremely correct response, leaving out the inevitable debacle over citizens declaring counterfeit genders in order to have rarer pronoun pins to sell to collectors in the underground pronoun market.
Dibbler, only mildly discouraged, eventually realizes he can sell embellishments for your pronoun pin, which he claims will upgrade your gender.
Also of note is that there are no cops present at Ankh-Morpork Pride. This is not because they aren't welcome (everyone knows Nobby is as kinky as they come), but because the festivities include throwing bricks at the City Watch building and they are busy trying to make sure they still have a place to work the next day. The Night Watch prepares each year with a barricade, and pre-marriage Vimes always collects the good bricks so he can save for a house. Nobody is really sure where the tradition came from, but it's good fun and usually nobody gets hurt too badly.
The bricks are provided by Vetinari, who considers it a good test of city infrastructure and training for the Watch.
Cheery would 100% march in the parade. She'd get Nobby to go with her, but Nobby would be completely oblivious as to why (he assumed she just wants company).
Moist von lipwig would have pride-themed stamps made; these would inevitably have some kind of issue, which would create some outrage and ultimately make the stamps more valuable as collectors' items.
I don't get the impression that Ankh Morpork ever had anti-sodomy or crossdressing laws, so I don't think the queer community's history with the police would be the same as it is in the real world. Especially because Cheery Littlebottom literally started the Dwarf trans/feminism movement as an officer of the Watch, with the Watch's support.
Dibbler would totally sell pride flags with the wrong colors (and then insist it was the "new, updated version" if anyone questioned him)
The nobility are all scandalized, meanwhile the Seamstresses Guild has a float in the parade
Adora Belle Dearheart is deeply involved with at least one queer organization and is one of the main organizers of the Pride festival, but refuses to answer any questions about why
Ridcully decides the wizards should be involved, and Ponder Stibbons should make a float and organize the refreshments for them to eat while riding on the float. Ridcully's concept of allyship is loudly saying, "Well done, that man!" and pointing at anyone he thinks is exhibiting particularly queer behavior.
Madam Sharn and Pepe release a whole new line of Pride-themed chainmail
Bengo Macarona is embraced as a gay icon
Reg Shoe decides the main pride event is too corporate, and organizes an alternative pride parade for the same time and place; this immediately gets subsumed by the main pride event. Some Omnians show up to Pride to protest and Reg is delighted to have someone to fight with.
Suddenly being smacked in the middle of this by the fact Vetinari was disappointed Vimes didn't properly handcuff him and made a note to get some proper shackles for next time
'You're not going to handcuff me?' Vimes's mouth dropped open. 'Why should I do that?' 'Treason is very nearly the ultimate crime, Sir Samuel. I think I should demand handcuffs.' 'All right, if you insist.' Vimes nodded at Dorfl. 'Cuff him, then.' 'You haven't got any shackles, by any chance?' said Lord Vetinari, as Dorfly produced a pair of handcuffs. 'We may as well do this thing properly -' 'No. We don't have any shackles.' 'I was only trying to help, Sir Samuel. Shall we be going?' - Jingo
Would it be ok if I asked you some questions about the court reporting academy and your experience with them/the field so far? I'm thinking about taking the leap this spring
Of course!
I can tell you that they're good people and that they absolutely will help you inasmuch as they can. I can tell you not to miss the Monday classes that have to do with Zoom. I can tell you that it can seem very overwhelming but if you slow down and breathe that it will be okay.
As for the field: I'm finding it very interesting myself. Of course I worked in legal transcription for over a decade as well.
I can also tell you that if you can find a court job, take the court job. You'll get benefits. Yes it sounds great to get to work from home, and it is, but honestly I'm not making as much money as I thought I would be. And I have to pay my own taxes, so if you're not into being an independent contractor, try to find a court job or a job with a company that hires you as an employee rather than as an independent contractor. I'm still considering whether or not I want to try to go work for the Milwaukee court system rather than continuing to work from home, at least so that I'm not paying my own taxes.
I can tell you that I sweated a LOT over my certification test but it wasn't really that bad; I can tell you to really pay attention during the live classes, because I wish I had paid more attention; I can tell you that even six months later, I still sweat when I'm asked to perform a readback.
I hope all of that helps, and if you have specific questions to ask me, please feel free to do so! I don't get on Tumblr much anymore but I will try to keep a better eye on my inbox for you!
Hey, guys. I've been working up the nerve to post this for a while. I'm putting most of it under a cut but I'll give the TLDR up here:
We are going to be homeless for an unspecified amount of time due to some legal issues - whole separate post. We will be living out of the car and a tent, so essentially long-term camping. We need some gear and other assorted items. Here is our wishlist.
Signal boosting is appreciated for obvious reasons.
I have a Paypal.me and a Ko-Fi; the Ko-Fi has a store that will soon have stuff available on it, and a subscription model. I also have Chime, Paypal, and Cashapp, all with the cashtag NovasPrime. At a later date I may set up a gofundme but I don't really want to right now, because guilt and self-internalized ableism is a helluva drug.
On to the story.
So, we were told (mid-December) that we needed to be out by the end of February, from the place we were living in, or eviction would be filed. I don't want an eviction on my record, so I started the process of working towards that goal.
I quickly realized that there was an Issue, and the Issue was that we simply cannot get into any of the low-income housing because… Raven has a felony "failure to comply" warrant in Oregon.
We were surprised, because we thought they were in compliance, but it turns out… No. No, they were not. The records of their attending therapy and anger management were not being sent to the place. On top of that, I discovered that they had ordered Raven to do community service, and even though they were helping with lots of causes and orgs down here, it doesn't count.
Why, you may ask? Well, for one, it wasn't being documented. Not a huge issue, it can be. But also…. They wanted Raven to do THEIR community service.
Which they wanted to charge $40 a day for.
Raven is a disabled veteran. They are limited in the type of volunteer work they can do, but also? They can't afford $40 a day for 30 days. Who the hell can? Why would that be a thing?
After a couple of phone calls, I realized we just needed to go to Oregon. So I began planning for THAT. Our roomie was still adamant about the end of February, so I started planning. We got a storage unit and started sorting shit, and packing it, and slowly transferring it to the storage unit.
And then Shit happened, as it does. The car started overheating. It has also come due for an oil change. It needs a transmission flush, too. And new brakes. Some of this I can do myself, but some of it I can't. I have a friend who could help me do most or all of it, but he's on house arrest until March 25th (he is in recovery now, but drunk driving is a bad thing, guys. Don't do it). He said he'll help after he gets off, which is awesome of him, but like. That's still about a week away (as of right now, because he works) before I can even get the overheating taken care of, let alone the rest.
In the midst of all of this, I was also trying to figure out a timeline... and realized I couldn't, because we had no idea how long we were going to be in Oregon. I have a few friends scattered throughout the state, but I wasn't counting on being able to stay with anyone. We have three cats and two people. What to do?
A friend of mine agreed to watch two of the cats for me for as long as it takes. She has her own house and cats of her own. So, until the car started overheating, we brought the two girl cats over once a week to get used to the place and meet her cats.
But we weren't packing fast enough. Winter is a rough time for both of us because of our disabilities; the weather makes it painful to move. We also had to sort through 20 years of assorted shit; at one point I had a life that hadn't fallen fully apart, so I kept everything. Plus, I had all of my dad's shit that I inherited. I've finally accepted that I can part with most of the useless stuff, but some of it I can't bear to. TLDR: our stuff is mostly still at the old place.
I was able to work out a deal with the friend who's taking care of our cats, to crash at her house for a month. WE and the CATS were out of the old place by March 1, but our shit wasn't, and we've had issues packing it up and moving it. Luckily, old roomie has agreed to just tack an extra month of rent onto what I owe him (to be paid back when we get back from the debacle in Oregon) so we're slowly moving things to storage. I'm just constantly filling the car with water to keep it from overheating and praying that the engine can take it.
However, here's the thing. The Big Thing.
We're technically homeless now, and we'll be Real Homeless as of April 1. The car cannot currently make it to Oregon (honestly? I'd rather buy a cheap minivan or SUV, and leave the car here with my kid, but I simply don't have the money, even though there's a ton of them for sale around here in good shape).
We're going to have to rough it for a while. Raven can get a pass to camp for free at all Nevada State Parks for $30 a year, so we're getting that on payday, and we have a decent tent and sleeping bag (singular, but it'll do). I have some assorted camping gear, even. But there's a lot we do need to just….fix our shit and be able to get to Oregon. Oregon has one of these as well, and it allows 10 days of camping per month. It's free and we've already applied for it. California has one too, but you have to apply in-person if you're not a CA resident. So that'll happen in a bit.
But we are gonna need… help. Raven gets VA disability. $2200ish a month. Sounds like a lot right? It's not. It's really not.
Between car insurance, gas, fixing the car, general car maintenance, phone bills, food (we qualify for a whopping $26 a month in SNAP benefits), things we have to buy to fulfill our end of bargains here, and the camping gear we DON'T have, next month is looking pretty awful.
While Raven is in jail, they get no benefits. I'm also disabled, but juuuust disabled enough on paper that I can't get disability (as you can guess, this is going to be even harder now in the Trump administration, so I'm just working on geting documentation of my disabilities so that when he's gone I can apply). I can't hold down more than really really part-time work because of pain and mental health issues, even though I have been desperately trying to find one. So I'm going to have to survive off of doordash, most likely.
If Raven's jail time isn't going to be that long, it's not that big a deal.
They could be in jail for up to six months.
So, why this post?
One, to explain that my posting will be very sporadic and frenzied when I do. More than usual, anyway.
Two, because I'm going to need your help. There are several ways to help.
Encouraging notes! Currently we have a PO Box, listed above. When we go to Oregon, if we're going to be there for more than a week or so, I'm getting another PO Box and getting mail forwarded from that one to the Oregon one. Digital notes are nice too. I just really like postcards, little cards, letters, etc. Pictures of cool shit where you live. Whatever. Something to keep my spirits up. Anything.
I have set up a wishlist, as seen above. I know, we don't like Amazon, but I don't know where else to do a wishlist that doesn't like. Give out a home address. Since I'm having this stuff shipped to a friend's house, I really don't want to do that. Once I'm in OR, I'll find out where I can have things shipped. PO Boxes are hit-and-miss with Amazon.
As noted above, I am accepting donations and I have a Ko-Fi store and subscriptions. I am working on getting things put onto the Ko-Fi store on a pay-what-you-can model; anything from short fiction to Am Adult instruction sheets to 3D designs, whatever I can manage at any given time. Raven will also be doing drawings and such. I'm also working on making things available to anyone who chooses to subscribe!
Signal boosting this post. I need as many people to see it as possible, not just for monetary benefit, but so I can find people in Oregon maybe willing to let me and my one cat crash on their couch or pitch the tent in their back yard. I'm also going to be documenting all of this and getting documentation on the case in the first place, because Raven shouldn't have even been arrested. So I need people to see this so that word gets out about this kind of thing. Oregon needs to change some shit.
[ID: A billboard decorated with a super Mario background, and the words, “Have a super Mar 10!” The super Mar 10 looks like it says super Mario. /end ID]
Can you tell me why Frodo is so important in lotr? Why can't someone else, anyone else, carry the ring to mordor?
but someone else could.
that’s the whole point of frodo—there is nothing special about him, he’s a hobbit, he’s short and likes stories, smokes pipeweed and makes mischief, he’s a young man like other young men, except for the singularly important fact that he is the one who volunteers. there is this terrible thing that must be done, the magnitude of which no one fully understands and can never understand before it is done, but frodo says me and frodo says I will.
(when boromir is thinking of how he can use the ring to defend gondor, when aragorn is thinking of how it brought down proud isildur, when elrond is holding council and gandalf is thinking of how twisted he would become, if he ever dared—)
but then there’s frodo, who desires nothing except what he has already left behind him, and says, I will take the Ring.
it is an offer made out of absolute innocence, utter sincerity. It is made without knowing what it will make of him—and frodo loses everything to the ring, he loses peace and himself and the shire, he loses the ability to be in the world. It’s cruel, the ring is cruel, it searches out every weakness you have and feeds on it, drinks you dry and fills you with its poison instead, the ring is so cruel.
and frodo picks it up willingly. for no other reason except that it has to be done.
(the ring warps boromir into a hopeless grasping dead thing, the power of the palantir turns denethor into an old man, jealous and suspicious, it bends even saruman, once the proudest of the istari, into a mechanised warlord, sitting in his fortress and bent over his perverse creations—all the best of intentions, laid waste)
but there’s a reason gollum exists in the narrative, which is to show—well, to show what frodo might have been. because even as frodo grows mistrustful and wearied, as the burden of this ring grows heavier and heavier, he is never gollum. he is gentle to gollum. he is afraid—god frodo is so afraid for 2/3 of these books he is so tired and afraid, but he keeps moving, he walks though it would pull him into the ground, because he asked for this, he said he would.
someone else could have carried the ring to mordor, I suppose. the idea of a martyr is not dependent on the particular flesh and blood person dying for some greater purpose. but such a thing has to be chosen, lifted onto your shoulders for the right reason, the truest reasons, and followed into the dark, though it would see you burnt through and bled out.
I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.
y'know say what you want about tumblr (and I have), but this is still probably the simplest and most powerful distillation of the heart of the Lord of the Rings I’ve ever read. I think back to it all the time
I reordered Jody's death certificate because when I went online to check the status I noticed that apparently, unless you expedite your order, it can take up to ten weeks to get there.
So I reordered it, expedited.
While I was at it I reordered my wedding license; hopefully to fuck they get it right this time. Jesus what a shitshow.
Hopefully I can get my paperwork in so that we can get married next month. Hopefully.
Oh, you mean you hadn't heard? Yeah, @palaquinn and I are getting married once I get all my paperwork. We were going to wait until September, and try to make a big deal about it all, but really and honestly I can't afford that. So we're just going to go to the courthouse and do it once we get the paperwork in.
In other news, our brand new dishwasher won't work for some reason. I'm desperately hoping it's a manufacturer's issue because then the repairs are free, and apparently it's really, really ungodly expensive to have a repairman come out if it's not. Of course, that depends on the repairman calling me BACK so that we can make an appointment. Which hasn't happened yet. I'm half tempted to just find one on Google who has good reviews and call them instead if it's going to cost us a lot of money anyway. At least then we can get it done sooner rather than later.
Football boy decided to quit his job last week, but he already has a new one. he's going to go work for the USPS now. Hopefully he likes it, because this is not the kind of job you quit. Once you get into government jobs, you should really keep them if you can at all, especially the Post Office. I've heard they have really amazing benefits.
The Bumblebee is doing well in school; I know prom is coming up soon and we haven't even started dress shopping yet, which I am dreading for a multitude of reasons. I have to get them a visa so that they can go to Australia and New Zealand this summer. Got the passport, though!
We were planning on going to AnimeMKE but I don't know if we'll make it now because Bee has a chorus thing that day and we don't know how long it will take. We really need to think about whether we want to buy tickets or not because of that.
But if we don't get to AnimeMKE then we'll get to the Gaming Con that's happening in April for certain. Honestly I'm looking more forward to that, because there'll be retro games there for me to check out, and probably somewhere to buy Bee a 3DS because they had said they wanted one a few months ago. We'll see if they still want one first.
We're still working on The Nightshade Clinic stuff; I think eventually we're going to Kindle pub it just to see how it does. I think it's fun and interesting, and we're about to put in some weird plotlines instead of just having these connected short vignettes, so that'll be interesting. If you haven't read my Nightshade Clinic stuff, you can try looking in my archive, but good luck; I don't remember when I last posted any of it. But we're up to 18 or 19 little vignettes in our Google docs.
was gonna leave my comment in the tags but tbh i’m silent enough about this as it is.
seeing stuff like this is so upsetting because these terms were well known and widespread in the ace community but because of exclusionists many people stopped using terms like this because they felt uncomfortable and unsafe.
i loved these terms when i was in highschool, i loved the feeling of community, but i lost that because i didn’t feel comfortable openly and proudly calling myself asexual.
they’ve hurt so many people and damaged our community badly and i will never forgive them for that. we deserve to use our own terminology and feel safe within our community.
I remember ppl - even other ace ppl - saying the card suit thing was “cringey” and “straight ppl aren’t gonna take us seriously” (sounds familiar?) So i guess the community wound up abandoning it. We were also having severe issues at the time with aces being stereotyped as “childish/immature” for associating things like cake, dragons, and space with asexuality, plus in general as most aces just don’t “get” allosexual things in media and irl. We were starting to be viewed as ignorant, virginal, childish, losers, etc. I haven’t seen an ace-cake thing in a good while now.
This was the infancy of exclusionary influence on us. I didn’t realize it did more damage than just closeting us. Whole symbols and terms have been lost. Community has been lost.
I remember three-four years ago I got myself into the ace community on Insta, and I came across these terms. People in these circles would talk about cake, space, dragons, and the black ring on the middle finger. Then, a year or two later, ace content fizzled out (I thought it was Insta’s algorithm figuring out that I knew all this and didn’t bring me the old stuff) and young aces had no idea what any of these were - including the black ring. Finding out young aces had no idea what the black ring meant nearly snapped my heart in two - I proudly wore the black ring, I drew characters with it, and it was my quiet way of communicating to others what my sexuality was. I was baffled at the lack of knowledge - and it turns out that exclusionists got their hands into our community and snuffed us out.
Anyways, we need to bring this back. I thought the card suite thing was cool, it taught people the different ways people can experience attraction, I loved making jokes about preferring cake, I loved wearing the black ring and talking about it with my fellow queer people at my highschool QSA club.
I’m sorry, people don’t know about the cake or ring anymore? I remember being welcomed with spams of cake gifs, photos, and MS Paint drawings. I also distinctly remember that the block solo ring in the midle was meant as reference to the Ace of Spades (black, solo, middle of card). Only thing I didn’t know was that other aces could represent a more refined nuance. Let’s see if we can get this all rolling again.
Welcome to anyone who is interested in helping with the culture revival.
This is the exact reason I started my #ace positive and #aro positive tags. I remember learning about asexuality and thinking it was cool, but not for me (yet). I remember ace visibility day where people would post selfies with an ace card to signify their orientation like in the original post. I remember going through the tag and following every ace blog I could find, turning notifications on and scrolling through their blogs endlessly to learn more about it. I haven’t gotten a notification for any of those blogs in ages.
Going through all those blogs and seeing validation, learning more things about my newfound orientation was so incredibly as a questioning and unsure 15 year old. It’s devastating to me that this community has fallen quiet so much. So I started my tags, hoping to spread some more positivity and maybe inform people. This community is full of incredible people and the fact that so little of them remain, it heartbreaking.
Check out my tags if you ever need to. Maybe I’ll add more tags to my list to do whatever I can in support
Being able to wear my black ring (and white ring for aro) was so so important to me- in fact, almost a decade after coming out, I STILL wear them every day. My parents showed me their acceptance by gifting me a black ring for Christmas. I have found members of my community *through* these rings. They matter so, so much to me, and to my fellow ace/aro friends- let’s not let them fade away!
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