What If We Tried to Be Better

Queer 90s kid | She/her | pro human rights | anti bigotry | occasionally NSFW | ♏🌞♍🌜♒🌅 | mobile header image credit: NASA

[0jai0]

[aomitois]

rb and tag your favorite song that's not in english, japanese or korean

[kurzler]

psst. "feminist" retelling writers. yes, i'm talking to you. i have a gift for you: here are some interesting women from greek mythology that you can write about that are NOT medusa, persephone or clytemnestra! there ARE other women, shocking i know!

-medea: she literally killed her brother and her children, i thought "female rage" girlies would be all over her

-danae: her life is so crazy, imagine being imprisoned by you father, getting impregnated by a god, being locked in a box and left to die at sea and then basically becoming a hostage to a king while your son is sent to kill a monster. and she's one of the only ones who, to my knowledge, actually gets a happy ending!

-atalanta: basically the only female hero in greek mythology!! and she was an argonaut!! c'mon now there is so much potential here, why does nobody care for atalanta

-the amazons: penthesilea! hippolyta! literally any of them! you're telling me there is a whole society of female warriors and so called feminist writers aren't jumping at the opportunity??

-hecuba: such a tragic and interesting figure, being the queen of troy, she lost her whole family in the war, i wish more people explored her relationship with her children (especially paris) and apollo

-andromache: i'm shocked andromache isn't more popular with the "tragic female characters" people, she literally lost everything basically because of men

-cassandra: i know cassandra is fairly popular, but i love her so much and i want more people to explore her relationship with her family, every dynamic has the possibility to be SO interesting

-electra: this whole family is a MESS and yet i see people mainly focusing on clytemnestra (with iphigenia), but not exploring the relationship between electra and clytemnestra is such a missed opportunity

-helen: i just want the focus of her story to be shifted from paris to the other people in her life, like her daughter hermione! how did they rebuild their relationship after troy? or her sister clytemnestra! what happened to her bond after the murder of agamemnon? or her brothers, castor and pollux! there is so much untapped potential

-demeter: there is a story about a mother's grief for her daughter, her journey looking for her, her anger, and yet every retelling of the homeric hymn to DEMETER focuses HADES to make him a dark romance mafia boss?? come on

and more!

conclusion: i'm tired of seeing the same stories being retold over and over again when there are so many characters to explore

[black-quadrant]

ADHD affects how I experience time, not how I experience attachment. I love you. I miss you. I just don't realize how long it’s been since I last said that, let alone messaged.

I understand that most normal functioning brains need regular engagement to maintain a bond. Absence doesn’t diminish my affection. My silence isn’t neglect or disinterest. It’s time blindness and object impermanence. The contact gap is purely neurological, not emotional. Thank you for being patient with my inconsistency and holding a seat in your heart for me.

[socialistexan]

French-Iranian author Marjane Satrapi, author of 'Persepolis', dies of 'sadness' at 56

French-Iranian author and illustrator Marjane Satrapi, best known for the book and film “Persopolis”, has died of "sadness", members of her

This one hurt, her work had such a profound effect on my life, thoughts, and politics.

May her memory be a blessing

[amnhnyc]

Meow! It’s Caturday. Meet Geoffrey’s cat (Leopardus geoffroyi). This small wild cat can be spotted throughout parts of South America, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay. It lives in an assortment of habitats like grasslands, wetlands, and savannas. On average, the feline weighs about 9.5 lbs (4.3 kg). Its diet includes small mammals, birds, and fish.

Photo: Arjan Haverkamp, CC BY-SA 2.0, flickr 

[wizardarchetypes]

i think avoidance is such a little-recognized ocd compulsion. all the time i talk to people with ocd who are like "i was always having intrusive thoughts about using kitchen knives and harming myself or others but i'm okay now because i just stopped using knives ever 👍 so i'm good now"

and i'm like unfortunately i have bad news.

[wizardarchetypes]

if you don't know why this doesn't work, the issue is that ocd never stops when you implement a compulsion. it evolves. today you've "solved" it by never using a knife again (and losing access to an important cooking tool, thus limiting an aspect of your life) but in a few months or a year it'll be that forks are dangerous too. and hey, isn't it risky to use the stove? avoidance will even begin to manifest in places you might not recognize.

the point is that OCD compulsions are never solutions, they're actually the problems. the intrusive thoughts SEEM like the problem and the compulsions FEEL like the solution. and that's how it getsya.

[wizardarchetypes]

i once saw a serial killer on the news wearing green and became fixated on the obsession that if i wore green it would like. hypnotize me into serial killing in my sleep (???) so i didn't wear the color green for an entire year. and of course being OCD i knew how "stupid" that was and that i wouldn't actually be effected by green clothes. i didn't actually believe that! but the fear didn't need to be real; the distress was real.

looking back it's so funny. like. dude my eyes are green. i was never safe hahahaaaa

[wizardarchetypes]

someone in the tags said that a lot of the distress-tolerance training for people with OCD is similar to the distress-tolerance training they're learning for their reactive dog and i love that because yeah. we really are just mammals huh.

[theoneofwhomisblue]

[blossposs]

[crispylilworm]

[theoneofwhomisblue]

[theoneofwhomisblue]

[wizardarchetypes]

anyway every time i post about ocd people start tagging the post like "wait this isn't normal?" and i always like to remind people that intrusive thoughts are normal. pretty much everyone experiences them. "what if i jumped off this balcony?" "what if i crashed my car right now for no reason?" "what if i yelled a curse word in the middle of this wedding?" everyone thinks these things from time to time. it's disordered thinking when the distress starts becoming intolerable.

"am i normal" is not as helpful question to ask as "are intrusive thoughts causing me frequent distress?" and "would my life be better if i could find a way to feel less distress/learn to tolerate the distress?"

millions and millions of people have ocd. having ocd is normal. you're normal. but what if you could feel better? what if living everyday in your own mind and body could be tolerable? is that something you want? need? these are questions to ask.

[1-jar-of-stars]

i fear tumblr has this issue where they think being queer or neurodivergent cancels out being racist

[nicomrade]

[thalassarche]

Common Raven (Corvus corax) teasing a gull (Larus spp) - series by Sandra Gilchrist

According to the photographer, the raven eventually left and the gull seemed no worse for wear after the interaction. 

[rslashrats]

[bemusedlybespectacled]

[mothman-etd]

[xrd]

I need to edit this so the cat also has a beer hold on

[xrd]

[princesswookiee-deactivated2014]

[inkskinned]

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[inkskinned]

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.