The Caged Bird Swears

[scoobydoomistakes]

Perception is a funny thing.

Can't tell you how many times over the years I must have seen this episode...

...yet somehow I never once noticed...

...cutting from one background to the same dang background.

And okay okay, it was kind of a lie, but it's only an estimate. 3 or 4 times. Hey, not like it was that Batman crossover with the green fountain that spooked me out on VHS.

[enmesheddaughterparentified]

Are you normal or do you have hypervigilence problems because you always had to be aware of your family members moods growing up in order to deescalate situations before the arose

[youareunbearable]

Since in canon hobbits are good at hinding and finding things, and their home is generally considered a paradise to other races for its peace and prosperity, I think it would be a fun little thing if for some reason Maglor ended up just being hidden in the Shire and accepted there despite being Unfortunately Tall and allowed to heal

Like maybe, when the Shire was being settled a group of Hobbits continued westward just to scope out how safe their land would be, and happen upon the shores enjoying the sound of distant singing. They set up camp and unfortunately didn't realize the tide was coming in until it was too late and are all scrambling and crying out for help as one of their party gets washed away to sea.

Maglor, who was nearby but didn't notice these tiny sneaks until the screaming started, rushes up and in a panic and sees what he thinks are a group of children (with pointed ears, he can't see their large feet under the water and sand, and thinks they're Elven) alone and Drowning and thinks "not again" and dives in to save them

Which he does, but he's had 4 thousand years of malnutrition, lack of care for his body and mind, and has his wounded hand that is black and scarred, which he had to use to pull these young ones to shore. Once everyone is saved he collapses to the ground, exhausted and unconscious.

The Hobbits, of course, can't just let their savior stay on the beach like this where he could also drown or be swept off to sea, and they MUST thank him for the life debt, so they carry him to their pony cart and head back to the Shire where they can give him a proper thank you

Maglor is out cold for weeks though, long enough to be brought back to the Shire and situated in one of the guest rooms in the newly built Great Smial of the Took Clan. They clean him, bandage and heal his wounds, put him in some hastily made Tall Folk clothes made out of bedsheets, and wait for him to wake.

When he does, he's in a panic and then confused, for he's never seen hobbits before, and under the fear and dread he's a little amused. All throughout the First and Second ages he's managed to avoid others and has never been kidnapped, yet here he is, at the mercy of folk that look like children.

Some things get lost in translation between Hobbitish, Westeron, and Sindarin, and Maglor thinks that he's now a prisoner to these small people, and the Hobbits think that they are going to care for him and have him be a guest of theirs for as long as he likes. Maglor, who hasnt had great mental health for the past 2 ages, agrees to be their prisoner, for honestly, he believes he deserves it.

So he heals, and once he heals (minus the blackened hand which gets medicated and wrapped and secured under a leather glove which reminds him of his eldest brother and he grieves) they put him to work. Or well, they allow him to help in their gardens, to sing songs of the sun, of joy and family and all things Hobbit. They let him help in the kitchen, where he shares recipes long since lost to the sands of time, and he helps them build a forge and how to do basic metal working, for even if his craft is one of voice and song, he is still his father's son and a Prince of the Noldor- he knows how to use a forge.

And time moves on. They build him his own smial, one that suits his height, and Maglor heals, both in mind and in body, and he goes from not wanting to escape his captors because he deserves enslavement to finding a second family amongst these folk. He gets adopted into the Took Clan, and the Hobbits all affectionately call him "Old Maggie Took" or "Songbird" or if his singing is particularly a little to loud a little too early in the morning "that damned Rooster"

He helped protect the Hobbits, weaving Songs of illusion around their home, fighting Goblins and Orcs off with Bandobras Took, making daggers and leather gear for Belladonna Took as she travels the world, and trying his best to fight off the wolves during the Fell Winter. Not as many Hobbits die to fang and claw that winter, but they did to cold and starvation and sickness.

After Belladonna and her husband died that winter, her young son Bilbo often spent time with him (mostly to escape the well wishers and their looks of pity) and so Maglor taught him things to keep his mind from loss. Taught him Quenya, and Sindarin, all about the Noldor, about Elves and Men of old, what little he knew of Dwarves from Maedhros and Caranthir, and when Bilbo asks in a quite voice, how it feels to be the only one of his family members left

He, and the whole of the Shire really, also play a very fun game of Keep Away with Gandalf whenever he visits, and while he knows Something Is Up with the Shire, he never found out about Maglor (even though he has heard about Maggie Took, and all her apparent namesakes)

While Maglor wasn't there to see Bilbo off on his own adventure he was able to make sure that when he came home it was to a home at all, even if some silverware did go missing. And when he sensed something fowl lingering in Bagend after his return, Maglor just brushed it off as something tainted from a dragon horde (later he weeps for how wrong he was and all the lives lost that he could have prevented if he investigated more)

And when Bilbo goes off to Rivendell, old and grey, all those years later guided by his dwarves, he has a silent, nervous, elven companion with him.

And its not the first or last time Elrond was grateful for the nature of Hobbits, but he wept tears of joy as he hugged his father nonetheless

[nimblermortal]

Crack take on this: Hobbits are so good at finding that everything that other people lose or throw away winds up there sooner or later.

Blue wizards? Check.

Silmaril? Yup, sitting in that one mathom house.

Palantir? Got a couple of ‘em in the garden out back, they look pretty on their little stands.

Hobbits are resistant to the wiles of evil magic by dint of constant, low-grade exposure. Their picturesque little idyll of a Shire is MIddle-Earth’s trash heap. Gandalf is not charmed by their rustique but morbidly fascinated by how they survive... that. The odds of Maggie Took being a hobbit housewife or a fearsome relic of the last god-war are about 1 in 2. Gandalf does not ask questions anymore.

[youareunbearable]

Listen the hobbits just having the Blue Wizards is so funny to me like imagine the fury Gandalf would have if he found out??

"What are you two doing here??? I thought you went East??!"

"Well, we did, then we found these delightful little people and went back west with them"

"So you've been here for 4 thousand years??? Why didn't you say anything??? We could have used your help!"

"Well, we thought we were helping? Keeping this little pocket of paradise safe. You won't believe the amount of things that pop up here, have you seen their mathom museum??? They needed us and its not like you ever asked to speak with us either. We lived with the Brandybucks, its not like we were hiding."

"They needed you?? What on Arda could the peaceful folk of the Shire need with Two of Estë's Maiar for???"

They show him the two palinter that were thought to be lost the northern sea, a fallen star that suspiciously shines with the light of the Two Trees, a helm that has a dragon figure down the middle, a sword as black as night that makes the very air around it feel cursed, and a few Dwarven Rings Of Power

"Is that it! Have these good people been hiding anything else of value that has been lost that I should know about??"

Maglor just sheepishly waves his burnt hand and Gandalf just

[unexplained-events]

Fata Morgna

A Superior Mirage that comes from the Italian term named after the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, from a belief that these mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina, were fairy castles in the air or false land created by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their deaths. It’s also believed that this illusion caused the myth of The Flying Dutchman to emerge.

[wizardarchetypes]

(wakes up still angry about nurses & doctors throwing around the term ‘drug seeking’ at ppl with chronic pain) and another thing ☝️ people with history of substance use disorders also deserve pain management. substance use disorder is a disability & denying pain management to addicts is ableism. addiction and chronic pain often overlap. if you have chronic pain but are not an addict you need to understand that trying to prove to medical professionals that you’re not an addict will get you nowhere bc they’ll decide you ‘seem like one’ arbitrarily based on their unchecked biases. instead we need to fight for a system that treats addicts with humanity and as deserving of pain management & care. if addicts weren’t so medically marginalized, no one else would be mistreated for being mistaken for an addict.

[kazieka]

was outside earlier and a bird Came Up, squatted down, fluttered it’s wings at me and opened its mouth like a hatchling begging for food (it was a grown female) so I went and checked the seed cube in the feeder and the thing was completely covered in mold. this is one of the weirdest things that’s ever happened to me. how did she know im the one in charge of the birdseed. How Did She Know To Pantomime Hunger At Me. Hello.

[kazieka]

i have spent my afternoon confusedly getting dressed, driving to the store, purchasing a new seed block, driving home, washing the cage, and getting the feeder set back up. i don’t take this much care for my Own nutrition. ive been bullied into a grocery store run by a tufted titmouse. i feel so loved

[azurele]

*packing my suitcase for a 3 day trip* hm, but what if I need my terracotta warriors..

[bugwars]

girl it’s just a 3 day trip, you do not need to bring your terracotta warriors 🙄

[winderlylandchime]

I’m seeing a bunch of posts that make me think most USAmericans don’t know about The No Surprises Act.

It was passed in 2021 (thank you Biden) and essentially states that if you don’t have insurance or your insurance doesn’t cover a service you need (or want) you are entitled to a Good Faith Estimate of the cost of care. (If your insurance does cover the service, you should be able to estimate the cost of care based on your deductible and co-pay.)

As a healthcare provider who does not accept any insurance, I am very careful to not violate The No Surprises Act. Why? Because for every penny more than $400 that the Good Faith Estimate was “off” (or if it wasn’t provided), you are entitled to a refund for that amount.

Y’all. Ask for a Good Faith Estimate. Get it in writing. Compare it to what you are paying. If you are not provided an estimate or if it’s wrong by more than $400, demand a refund.

[whimsyandmayhem]

I’m reforging this for the second time in five minutes because I needed to add that part of this is also about what your health insurance provider is required to do. They’re required to tell you what your out of pocket cost will be. If you contact them and they say actually they don’t know but your copay is X%, you can ask them to call the provider and get the codes they plan to use to bill for your services. If the provider is in network they’ll have negotiated rates in place so the insurer will know exactly how much you can be charged for that service and then they have to tell you. No surprise huge medical bills even if you are insured.

[colesabi]

Adding onto this. If you have a surgical procedure that involves anesthesia, the No Surprises Act also accounts here. Most anesthesia companies/providers are OON (out of network) with most, if not all insurances. If your service is performed in an in-network facility, they are REQUIRED to bill as in-network due to this law.

[breelandwalker]

This alongside demanding an itemized bill for any and all hospital stays, surgeries, and procedures, including the outpatient ones.

[kelpforestdwellers]

i deserve to be an eel. in a crevice with a bunch of other eels. opening and closing our mouths over and over

[kelpforestdwellers]

everyone who reblogged this has joined me in the eel crevice. its a pretty big crevice

[kelpforestdwellers]

oooo we eelin

[decladams]

when the clock is at :45 it’s like. oh i have a whole quarter of the hour left i have so much time this is great and then it hits :47 and you’re like it’s basically :50 which is basically the top of the hour and all my time is wasted forever and ever

[thinkingofausername]

1:45 -> oh neat there's 15 minutes left

1:47 -> yeah no it's 2pm

[cantanopeshitthatwastaken]

It’s interesting how diseases rip through schools at incredible speeds despite being in an arguably modern, clean(ish) environment. I wonder if it has something to do with the whole “you need a doctor’s note to excuse your absence of even one day” combined with the average price of going to a doctor, the lack of education on things like “you’re still contagious even after the fever goes away”, and the overwhelming message of “if you don’t struggle through it, you’re a failure!”

[thatgiraffebutt]

On my campus there tends to be a problem where even I you have the doctors note professors will still take points off of your final grade regardless of how sick you are. I’ve seen people show up to class with the stomach flu, pneumonia, respiratory infections and all sorts of other contagious ailments.

[literallyaflame]

Here’s a fun story:

The school system I grew up in put an absolutely ungodly amount of pressure on kids to Show Up Every Day No Matter What. Many schools are like this, but looking back, my town’s was borderline fucking dystopian. They asked me why I didn’t just “postpone” a surgery at one point— when I was fifteen— to give you an idea of how monumentally obtuse these people were.

So, in elementary school, I started having chicken pox symptoms, right? They were mild because I was vaccinated (yay!) but my mom recognized them quickly and took me to the doctor, because my mom is a reasonable human being with standards. The doctor said “yup, you’ve got those pox, it may seem mild but please for the love of god DO NOT take her to school, she is very contagious even though she may FEEL okay.”

So I had to stay home from school until I got clearance from my doctor to go back. I was an angry little gremlin the whole time, because I wanted to go to the school library and read books about the human skull, but my mother said, “no, you cannot leave this house, and do not scratch the bumps please.” So I sat at home and tried not to scratch the bumps, like a good little gremlin.

A few days into my Chicken Pox Related House Arrest, we got a letter from the school. I was far from the only person with chicken pox, as it so happened. Like… a tenth of my second grade class had Confirmed Pox. We all fell ill within DAYS of each other.

So how did this happen, you ask? Well, a kid had chicken pox, and he came to school anyway. “Ah, well perhaps they didn’t know,” you may very well say. “Maybe his parents didn’t notice!” No. No, they noticed. In fact they KNEW it was CHICKEN POX. They sent him to school anyway.

The kid’s parents…….. were, in fact, teachers at the school. And they KNOWINGLY made him go to school sick, because they didn’t want to risk hurting his precious “perfect attendance” record. They figured that since he wasn’t, like, Literally Dying, it was better for him not to miss school. Never mind the fact that they were actively endangering hundreds of little kids.

Fast forward to my freshman year of college. A kid came to class with mumps because he ‘couldn’t afford to miss’. Guess what happened? Mumps outbreak! Diseases are, as it turns out, good at being diseases! Vaccinations are phenomenal, but they can only do so much, and some people rely on herd immunity to not be killed by preventable illness.

This entire attitude needs to die. It’s dangerous. Food service workers are forced to show up sick, little kids are forced to show up sick, college students show up sick because they’re afraid of flunking out.

And on top of it all, misinformation campaigns are encouraging people not to get vaccinations! It’s 2019 and we’re flirting with the plague! Next thing you know some blogger is gonna be like “actually we should all be fucking rats and eating our meat raw, death to all science and god bless america”

[madd-catter]

Many kids at my school will show up really sick because we only get like three days of excused absences without a doctor’s note.

[gen-is-gone]

this is what those in literary academia call “foreshadowing”

(note the dates)

[anarchistmemedistro]

this post aged like an ice cube in an oven

[deathcomes4u]

worst part is! IT’S STILL HAPPENING! SCHOOLS AND WORKPLACES ARE STILL LIKE THIS!!! THEY LEARNED NOTHING!!!!!!!

[mod2amaryllis]

[thotsoflore]

Literally looking like the kind of note you find in a post apocalyptic horror game jesus

[teunvolkarin]

As someone from a country with insurance and schools not requiring a doctor’s note, just a call from a parent: kids still go to school sick because parents can’t take the day off of work to take care of them. So the kids will just be dumped at school, sometimes with an apology from the parent, in the hopes that they can make it through the schoolday without too much trouble. The whole capitalist system needs to change before sick kids and adults can stay home when they’re sick.

[sillybillytime]

Bucky is a huge massive fucking nerd and Steve is the punk rock radical, not the other way around.

Steve’s identity revolves entirely around fighting. Fighting for the oppressed, fighting against oppressors, fighting just because. He actively wants to die fighting, that’s why he does what he does. He’s polite, sure, but never confuse that for being nice or civil. There’s a big difference. Steve was probably applying for the draft BEFORE Pearl Harbor, he’s very politically engaged, even before he became Captain America. He might wear old clothes, but rest assured he would be an actual punk if he was born today.

Bucky, on the other hand, somehow got a hold of a copy of The Hobbit when it first came out in ENGLAND. That’s an insane feat. You couldn’t even really special order it that fast. He would have had to be aware of JRR Tolkien (likely finding him through CS Lewis and short stories in nerdy fandom spaces) to have heard about it in the first place, then got a copy sent to him by mail from someone he knew in England. That’s levels of dorkery that we don’t even have the technology for anymore. Closest thing would be traveling to a different country to collect a specific unknown book. Then, he chose to go to the World’s Fair on his last night in Brooklyn. Sure, post Winter Soldier, he likes to wear black, but he listens to like. Swing music from the 40s. He’s not cool. He just doesn’t talk enough for everyone (but Steve and Sam) to discover what a huge dork he is. If he was born today, he’d be into comics and d&d

[wizardarchetypes]

speaking of peeing the bed it's been long enough that i can tell this story publicly. in high school i went to a party at some house with no adults, as you sometimes would, and at the end of the night like 10 people all clonked out together in the same bed. fully clothed, one of those teenage moments where you're like wow heehee how rule-breaking, because sure a lot of our parents wouldn't like us sleeping in a bed with a bunch of other teenagers and no adult supervision blah blah. fond memories. anyway.

i'm an extremely light sleeper, so i barely slept, and sometime around 6 am, i woke up to a girl totally panicking, very quietly, because she peed the bed in her sleep. and listen. this wasn't a group of mean kids by any measure. but there's no level of kindness or understanding in the world that will make peeing the bed when you're 17, surrounded by people you only sort of know, a gentle blow.

so i sat up and she was like "oh my god" and I signaled at her to be absolutely silent and I said I'd be right back. And I crawled over everyone and out of the bed like a stupid cat.

and the thing is, by senior year i wasn't getting bullied much anymore. i was generally pretty well liked by my peers, but, if this makes sense, people still didn't always expect very much from me. i was still figuring out how to mask (autistic) and i still often said or did something that made everyone remember i'm weird and they'd just be like "well. that's story for you. i guess." and for the most part i'd become pretty secure in that.

so what i'm saying is i had nothing to lose and this girl had everything to lose.

so i went downstairs and i made tomato soup. and by "made" i mean i put a whole can of tomato soup in a too-small mug and microwaved it until it was lukewarm so as to be convincingly "made" but not so hot to burn someone.

and then i walked back upstairs, and no longer like a cat, i clumsily "attempted" to crawl back into bed, loudly lost my balance, and spilled tomato soup all over the girl and her lap and several other people's laps and heads and the mattress.

everyone woke up confused and anguished and i was like, "oh my god, I'm so sorry. I just got really hungry and it's all i could find."

and everyone immediately accepted with absolutely no further questions that I would go downstairs, make tomato soup at 6 am,and bring it back to bed. everyone just begrudgingly climbed onto the floor and went back to sleep while I put the bedding right into the laundry.

i don't even know this girl's name. i only remembered this story recently because i'm in my hometown for a few months and recently a high school acquaintance said, "hey. do you remember spilling soup on everyone after prom? why did you do that?" and for a moment i genuinely did not and i stared at them completely dumbfounded while the memory loaded and then i started laughing too hard to answer for 2 minutes.

the best part is i can tell this story, and even if it reaches the people who were there, none of them will know which one of them peed the bed. thanks to tomato soup.

[wizardarchetypes]

people keep pointing out how bewildering this must have been from her point of view and it's making me laugh to tears. i never considered it. i had such a solid plan in my head. i went downstairs to find something to dump on the bed and when i saw the tomato soup i knew it was perfect because it has a distinct smell that would cover anything else and a color which would do the same.

i was so focused on my mission that in the 14 years since i've never once considered what it must have been like for her to decide to trust me because she had no other options, sit there in anguish for three minutes, and then watch me walk back into the room and dump soup on everyone.

[emziess]

SPIRITED AWAY 2001 | dir. Hayao Miyazaki

[ladyothelakes]

The Night Shepard

A little comic from last spring I made that hasn’t really had a home anywhere.

I liked the idea of immortality leading to a reverence for life and the world around it, rather than nihilism and wanton destruction. It was also a comforting thought that if immortal beings walked among us, they could see the future of our hope become a reality someday… so it felt relevant again.

[alivehouse]

that post about negotiation with hoas by threatening to set up a ham radio tower bc the fcc would back you up will not work at all even slightly but i will say that the blood feud between hoas and ham radio ppl is real & eternal. like if you want to get around hoa rules a ham radio person will probably have ideas

[alivehouse]

once again thinking about this guys “birdhouse” bc his hoa banned antennas but not “birdhouses”

[chickencourtesan]

One time I was helping a ham radio guy with his email and mentioned how I wanted to get into ham radio, but couldn’t because I lived in an apartment. That guy immediately rattled off like, five different ways I could set up a radio antenna inside my apartment, and seven different ways I could hide/disguise the antenna and still get a decent radio signal. Ham radio enthusiasts are a hybrid between boy scouts and wizards and I love them they play an important role in our ecosystem