#not children

[penvision]

Every time lego releases a new Harry Potter set my heart breaks a little

[fermyne]

Man, I know I was laughing because the anime really made Wilfried's day as the High Bishop laughable, but all become disgusting when Wilfried was not going to be given food. I stopped laughing at once. That is utterly disgusting and the saying "don't work, don't eat" comes from the Christian Bible, by Apostle Paul and he didn't mean it to starve children, he uses "men" as in grown men, recently I was in a Bible study and interpreted that verse differently to how misinterpreted it is, using it around as an exuse for starvation is not only gross, but abusive. In my country that "punishment" given to children is now punished with long years in prison and I agree, there is no excuse whatsover to let a child die of hunger. That moment, I stopped laughing. I won't laugh out abuse.

The whole episode is funny yes, but not that part. That was too far.

[katarinanavane]

So I'm mostly a visual artist, but this little horror story appeared nearly fully formed in my dream last night so all I had to do was write it down and fill in a few gaps. Hope you like it.

Transcript of text found in a bottle adrift in the Pacific

It seems I have become a castaway, and as I have managed to dry these few paper scraps from the detritus of the ship, I will endeavor to convey my predicament as thoroughly as I can in so small a space, so there is at least a record of what I have found here if I am unable to tell it myself after some future deliverance.

I will spare you my account of the shipwreck and my marooning itself as many such tellings already clutter nautical records, and begin my tale with my spotting a small child also walking about the beach.

The first child I tried to care for, despite a lack of any parental instincts to speak of (as I imagine is common in those of us who take well to the seafaring life). He was blond, and as best as I can tell between the ages of five and seven. He seemed to have been wandering aimlessly about the beach, and despite the tattered state of his fine clothes, he couldn’t have been on the island long as his pale skin lacked the sunburn I was already developing after a mere several hours. I tried to offer him some of the water that remained in my canteen, but he merely stared at me with a vacant expression, seemingly uncomprehending of the gesture, or of any form of language I attempted to communicate with.

By this point I had attempted to rationalize the child’s appearance. Perhaps unbeknownst to me one of the passengers on my own ship had been accompanied by their young one, and his strange behaviour was merely the result of being traumatized by the very same wreck I had experienced. When a second child wandered toward me, identical as far as I could discern in every way to the first, excepting somewhat less wear on the clothing, I admit these rationalizations became a bit frantic. Evidently there had somehow been identical twins on board without my knowledge. The second was no more communicative than the first and I was at a loss for what to do.

By the time the third child appeared, I grew frightened. Barring the extreme unlikelihood of identical triplets in general, there was no way I would have failed to see or hear some evidence of such an anomaly if they had been present on board prior to the storm. At this point all three had ceased their meandering and stared at me with vacant eyes, I began to wonder how I had ever thought the first an ordinary child. When I spotted a fourth approaching, my trepidation escalated to panic and I began to back up quickly.

“What are you?” I managed to sputter. Four sets of blue eyes met mine, and although I would swear none of their mouths opened, a voice no child could have produced emanated seemingly from all at once.

“Ego ex nihilo”

At this inhuman display, despite my hesitation to let the creatures out of my sight, I confess, I turned and ran, and only when I had reached a high vantage point overlooking the beach did I look back. Much to my relief, the creatures seemed to have lost interest in me and returned to their wandering, but I could not breathe a sigh of relief without more information.

I spent the remainder of my first day and much of my first night on the island in sleepless observation from the relative safety of the cliffside. I have seen a total of seven of these “children” that I have already begun to think of instead as “creatures”. In the time I observed, they did not seem to eat or sleep, or even pause their pacing about the beach as far as I saw, and all are identical excepting the amount of wear on their clothing. One seemed worn to rags, while another might appear nearly new. The patterns of their walking seemed without logic, except that they seemed to turn and choose another direction whenever they met either the ocean or the small plants marking the edge of the sandy beach.

Only when I was fairly confident they showed no signs of venturing off the sand, in my direction or otherwise, did I begin to contemplate what they said. I fear my Latin studies have been entirely neglected since my schoolboy days, but to the best of my limited translation ability, their only attempt at communication meant something along the lines of “I come from nothing.” I however doubt my translation as I can’t make any sense of what this could mean. At some point I must have drifted into an uneasy sleep as I awakened disoriented some time later. Despite my desire to continue observing, I realized I needed to prioritize the needs of the body for a time and resigned myself to explore and learn more as time would allow.

It has been another few days since I wrote the initial account above, but I have made a rather concerning discovery regarding the creatures. After exploring to the leeward side of the island, I found a sheltered beach area where the wind and tide don’t erase footprints as easily as the storm-swept windward beach where I arrived. One area had some long-dry mud from what appeared to have been a creek bed at some point months or years past. Even a cursory examination showed such numerously layered child-size footprints that I developed two equally concerning hypotheses: either the seven child-creatures I have so far identified have been wandering this island much, much longer than I initially guessed, or at one point there had been many, many more of them. I do not know what to do with this information, but my continued explorations will be decidedly inland.

As to what my explorations have revealed of the island itself, it seems almost eager for me to survive. The regular storms that were our ship’s undoing have proved a blessing on the island itself as fresh water has been abundant and easy to collect. Many of the trees seem to bear fruit, the jungle teems with feral chickens (or at least birds so similar to chickens that my untrained eye can tell little difference). The beach is also thick with seaweed and crabs, but I find myself less and less willing to venture near there as the days go on. The creatures resembling children do not seem to leave the beach in their otherwise aimless wanderings, so I have begun to think of it as their territory, and I keep to mine just as zealously.

The days and weeks continue to pass in uneasy cohabitation, and my repeated observations of the creatures have yielded no further information. The few times I have taken a few uneasy steps onto the sand, any child-creatures within sight have always turned to stare in my direction, and I have quickly retreated. I have made no more attempts to communicate with them, and find myself grateful that they show no interest in me as long as I continue to avoid the beach.

I fear I can offer no solace of explanation for what I have found here. I have pondered the only words they have given me for many hours of many days now, and remain no more enlightened than when I began. My blasphemous mind postulates this island as an experimental proving ground for the Almighty where perhaps an early attempt at Man was abandoned when void demonstrated itself to be an unsuitable building material compared to the solidity of dust. Or perhaps these creatures sprung from nothing without any hand taking part in their creation. I can not explain why I have this sense, but I cannot help but feel they are old. Perhaps very old. But I fear my paper is running out and I can not waste any more in idle contemplation.

I have attached to this account a map and coordinates to the island to the best of my navigational abilities. Selfishly I hope this finds its way quickly into hands that can offer me rescue, but I fear it may be in the better interests of whoever finds this (and perhaps of mankind at large) if instead the location is thoroughly shunned. I leave the decision in your hands, whoever you are, whether one life is a fair trade to continue the isolation of whatever else lives here. Should you choose to avoid this place, know I understand and forgive as I would likely do the same in your position. But kindly pray for me.

[incorrectthemummyquotes]

Evelyn Carnahan: I will find us a car - if you two can manage not to kill each other while I'm gone!

Ardeth Bay: Oh, please. We're not children.

[Moments later.]

Rick O’Connell: Eat shit and die-

Ardeth Bay: Yes, fuck you.

[Both chuckle.]

[sparrowposting]

the next person to sexualize any of the bnha kids can come and catch these hands

THEY’RE BABIES 

THE ONLY THING THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING WITH EACH OTHER IS MAYBE HOLDING HANDS

mmmmm never going thru character tags on tumblr or ao3 ever again MY POOR EYEBALLS i just wanted angsty todorki fic bc i have to project my issues NOT THAT

[nerdwingblogs]

Something I noticed a while ago

every single character in Psychonauts either loses their mind (metaphorically) or loses their mind (literally) at some point, except Lilli,  and the only character that does both is Oleander.

[betterbemeta]

I think one of the reasons that hearing “trans people make everything about gender!” is so common is because our societies make so much about gender. It’s one of the primary ways it sorts human beings. Every aspect of life is impacted by gender; what jobs you have, how people interact with you. Everything that is considered your personal objective or worthy of social reward is influenced by your gender. Even if great strides have been taken to legitimize same-sex marriages, the most common socioeconomic unit of wealth (the household) is constructed around primary assumptions of heterosexuality and thus gender, and its method of replicating itself is deeply tied to biological essentialism.

To someone who uncritically accepts all of this, the existence of trans people has implications about every aspect of their lives. What their life milestones ought to be. How much money they make. Where and how they live. What they feel is good about themselves. What a 'family' is. What they're permitted to do or desire for themselves. What they wear and how they act. How people mentally sort other people when they walk down the street. The amount of interpersonal burden that society handles automatically for them. What can be expected from them, or their bodies. What things they buy. What friends they make.

A trans person doesn't have to say a single word for cis people to feel like 'everything' has been disturbed by how they express gender. It doesn't even have to be a binary gender. Everything is already 'about' the gender binary that our society weaves into all parts of our lives. Weakly prodding it tugs on all the strings it's connected to and for some, reality shudders like a spiderweb.

A similar phenomenon can be seen when a lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, etc. person rejects some aspect of heterosexual norms. However they might manage to do so, in diverse ways, the outcome is the same. Straight people are threatened and intimidated. They feel like this one single action has broad-reaching implications for all of their desires, prior encounters, and future behaviors. This is what is meant when homophobes say that "gay culture is destroying our way of life."

In that statement, "way of life" is the same as the "everything" that supposedly is about gender when trans people are around. What they are saying is that their model of gender is so essential to them that even the unsaid suggestion that it's just a model consumes their entire world.