Random Things That Float Down The Cosmos

Gay | He/Him | Leo | 20 | Figuring Life Out During An Apocalypse | Don't Diss My 5 Year-Old Fashion

[lumsel]

its dark outside. i'd better press 'f' to activate my 'flashlight'

[itsbenedict]

[creekfiend]

Ship is copy editing a novel that was originally written in Japanese, and one line they had to edit for clarity in English was "the river was so big it could be considered a large river," which was so clearly the result of there being a specific term for "a river that's huge" in the original language and not in English that I was like why the fuck DON'T we have a word for that though ???

i have often wondered this, bc it threw me off enormously as a child, bc the rivers I had personal experience with were the Huron river in Michigan and the Soque river here in north Georgia, pictured:

And I was thus utterly baffled by stories where rivers were these massive and incredibly dangerous things that were impossible to ford. I was always like... like, I believe you, but I have no way of envisioning this based on the rivers I have met.

Now as an adult, the largest river I've met personally is the Colorado, which is indeed a different scale than the ones I'm more personally acquainted with, but also I have now seen footage of, for example, the fucking Yellow river:

...and it's absolutely absurd we don't have a specific word for "a river that is Fuck-off Huge" in English! We have a bunch for "a river that's Teeny Tiny" like creek, stream, brook etc... and I'm sure part of it is that rivers like the Yellow river (or Amazon, or Nile, etc etc) aren't present in the lands where English initially developed, obviously, BUT STILL... "river that you would have to be suicidal to try to ford" seems like a useful linguistic shorthand and it's weird that we don't have it. imo.

[ospreyonthemoon]

it's something I've noticed before but i was like well maybe im being a pedant for wanting a word for bigger rivers? but maybe we should be pedants. we could do the old faithful and slap together some latin and greek word roots and get some shit like aquapol, amplipotamus or pollavon but honestly all of those suck, latin and greek dont have the right feel and making up words is a lot more work than just finding a nice loanword from a language that DOES have a word for it. so i think we should be doing that

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

the thing that drives me up the wall about “anti/proship” discourse is that it frames grooming as like, primarily an ideological practice in which the threat is that kids will “think adult/minor relationships are morally ok”. which sure maybe that happens idfk but the thing is that grooming is in practical almost entirely divorced from ideology and is so much more about individual exceptionalism… which I think is especially true for fandom-aged demographics! these aren’t kids who are just freshly learning the basics of right and wrong, most of them probably already generally know what pedophilia is and think it’s bad, it’s just that they’re also particularly susceptible to individualized attention that makes them feel uniquely special and mature.

like. I don’t know. it’s just incredibly frustrating to see people continually talking about CSA like it only happens because the perpetrators and victims believe pedophilia is morally permissible rather than because they think that their own personal circumstances exonerate them and make it uniquely acceptable and not harmful.

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

it is overwhelmingly my experience that kids and teens who met and then “dated” adult partners struggle to think of themselves as victims of CSA because for whatever reason it just didn’t count—not when it was them. they were too precocious, they had too much agency, their abuser didn’t mean any harm, and what would have been a terrible criminal travesty if it had happened to anyone else was just a weird but understandable fluke situation that they brought upon themselves.

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

sort of related—lots of kids do not actually see themselves as children. a child who sees themself as mature, different, and sensitive to condescension is not going to Identify As A Child™️ and will hold themself to (what they think is) an adult standard. any effort to protect them that relies upon their seeing themself as A Child™️ and accepting their status as a being of lesser agency is doomed to fail. and I think that’s true whether they’re punished or rewarded for their apparent maturity because any kid who perceives being a child as a bad thing is… well. they’re right. to be a child is to be a second-class citizen with very limited rights who is, functionally, private property. any child who becomes consciously aware of this will be traumatized by it and I don’t think that Good Parenting will ever fully prevent that. so of course they’re not going to conceptualize themselves as victims of CSA because CSA can, by definition, only happen to real children.

[johannestevans]

Watched a documentary about abuse and advice one guy said to give children was, "Tell them that if someone is hurting them, to tell someone - and don't just tell one person. Tell as many people as possible, and keep telling as many people as possible until the abuse stops." and i really liked that

Bc so many ppl focus on the idea of telling A Trusted Adult, but even a well-meaning individual can fuck up and let abuse fall through the cracks or not know what to do

Whereas if a child tells LOADS of adults AND other kids, there's far less opportunity for an abuser to do damage control

Consistently telling their story and spreading it around disempowers the abuser to control and coerce the flow of information, or to utilise gaps and weaknesses in systems of reporting or welfare to isolate the child

Just really good advice. Not suprised I don't hear it more often.

[flowercrowncrip]

This is really good advice and, in the UK at least, also applies to “adults at risk” as well. It’s what I did when I had problems with my social care provider that amounted to a safeguarding concern earlier this year.

If your school safeguarding lead, youth worker, scout leader, neighbour, doctors surgery, local citizens advice office etc. all make referrals and follow up on them to make sure they’ve been received and taken seriously then it’s more likely that it will be taken seriously and that action will happen.

[valtsv]

recurring dead wife flashback where it becomes increasingly apparent that the person remembering her has dishonestly claimed a romantic dynamic to their relationship that never actually existed and erased any conflict that ever existed between them now that she's no longer able to say no to them

[valtsv]

dead wife flashback where each time we see her she looks more confused and upset by how she's remembered, then desperate and furious, until she's hammering on the glass screaming to be let out

[valtsv]

this isn't how it happened. you know this isn't how it happened. but you still keep coming back, keep disturbing my grave so you can play out your fantasies. voyeurs crowding around my autopsy, straining for the best view; pawing through my entrails like grubby butchers trying to find some golden meaning in blood and shit because you can't bear to face the cold light of truth. you just can't bear the thought of never having really known me at all.

[hellsite-testing-ground]

˙ʇɐqʇᴉnɹɟ ɐ ǝɯoɔǝq oʇ pǝpᴉɔǝp ǝʌ,I

[deadsprout]

i dont want to be in a fandom that critisizes the choices of fictional characters like they are human beings. i want to see THEORY and ANALYSIS and STORY STRUCTURE and CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!! I WANT PARALLELS AND MOTIFS AND VISUAL CUES!!! They're not REAL they are TOOLS so stop acting like they are people who made bad choices and should be punished. of course they made bad choices!!! that shit is funny and cool to watch!!

[chipper-smol]

tap for meow

[warcrimesimulator]

no actually i don't think antivaxxers' kids should die from a disease. i don't think gun advocates' kids should die in school shooting. children dying is bad actually, even if they're children of people you don't like.

[hyperlexichypatia]

Part of "Children are not the property of their parents" is "Children should not suffer for their parents' decisions."

[pocket-deer-belly]

it's like, definitely still mansplaining if the man is dominating the conversation unintentionally and he would totally stop if you asked him to, actually. like, the term exists to describe a phenomenon that arises from the implicit bias that women are expected to simply be less knowledgeable about things. it doesn't matter if he's doing it on purpose or not. he does it cause he expects women to not know things or to not have any input. maybe don't fucking expect women to stand up for themselves every single time they have to have a conversation with a man because that shit happens like daily for a lot of women

[pocket-deer-belly]

genuinely, sincerely, if you are a man you need to learn to shut up when you're talking to women

[pocket-deer-belly]

you need to catch yourself explaining something to a woman and go "oh wait, you probably know about this right?"

[druidquest]

words of affirmation for those seeking a werewolf girlfriend

[t-auto]

[were-ralph]

[mrgaretcarter]

Doctor Who 5x10 - Vincent and the Doctor Cunk on Life (2025)

[aichu-dechu]

[heroineimages]

I'm still amused when I think of last summer when a coworker said, "Oh, bullshit, you are not," when I mentioned that I was 43.

[hardwrench]

to me, correctly using 5+ commas in a single sentence is like perfectly executing a combo in a fighting game. to me.

[little-theatre-fairy]

if you think a sentence needs 5+ commas it should be two sentences

[hardwrench]

it’s not about what the sentence needs, i’m afraid, nor is it about economy, clarity, or style. it’s about winning, little-theatre-fairy.

[startedwellthatsentence]

Comment on my MA thesis:

[bobdylanyaoi]

i still can’t believe “our age of bronze is collapsing” is a line from the odyssey. bro i can’t believe we’re in the middle age right now. it’s such a nice day in feudal japan rn. i’m so glad we are having this agricultural revolution.

[hiimneptune]

To be fair "our digital age is collapsing" goes hard

[seriousjones]

the sexual tension between two gas stations on the same intersection

[yarking]

I’m so sick of this shit. Two gastations can’t even be on the same block without some walnut shipping them, while I can’t find a single fic for dennys/applebees with dennys bottoming.

[storytruths]

you’re literally out of your mind if you think Dennys isnt a top

[sam-sometimes-wise]

see? this is what tumblr dot com is supposed to be about.

[the-punforgiven]

I'm just saying, if you're going to worldbuild magic being a "raw, primal force, akin to and interweaving with nature itself" you gotta explain to me why animals don't use it

[the-punforgiven]

I know the normal answer is "they just aren't smart enough for it" but idk I've seen enough media where a character uses a spell in a moment of brain-off panic ilI feel like animals could probably stumble into a spell or two like, accidentally

[the-punforgiven]

Also how funny would it be to see a completely normal regular bear cast magic missile outta nowhere

[the-punforgiven]

Also there is no way ravens wouldn't figure out spells, tbh

They're smart fuckin birds, I believe in them

Either through observing or just figuring shit out ravens could 100% learn how to cast spells I'm sure of it

[the-punforgiven]

Dogs can also cast Magic Missile but every time they do the projectile is shaped like a bone or a stick and they chase after it

[rathayibacter]

group of wizards who ask this in-universe, and after extensive study learn to their surprise that animals are casting spells all the time, just that their magic is so fundamental as to be unrecognizable to humans. turns out the only reason acorns grow on trees is because squirrels keep wishing for them.

[thatquietkid108]

When a species becomes extinct humans have to figure out what kind of magic they were doing to keep the ecosystem from becoming out of balance