“Dogs don’t know what they look like. Dogs don’t even know what size they are. No doubt it’s our fault, for breeding them into such weird shapes and sizes. My brother’s dachshund, standing tall at eight inches, would attack a Great Dane in the full conviction that she could tear it apart. When a little dog is assaulting its ankles the big dog often stands there looking confused — “Should I eat it? Will it eat me? I am bigger than it, aren’t I?” But then the Great Dane will come and try to sit in your lap and mash you flat, under the impression that it is a Peke-a-poo… Cats know exactly where they begin and end. When they walk slowly out the door that you are holding open for them, and pause, leaving their tail just an inch or two inside the door, they know it. They know you have to keep holding the door open. That is why their tail is there. It is a cat’s way of maintaining a relationship. Housecats know that they are small, and that it matters. When a cat meets a threatening dog and can’t make either a horizontal or a vertical escape, it’ll suddenly triple its size, inflating itself into a sort of weird fur blowfish, and it may work, because the dog gets confused again — “I thought that was a cat. Aren’t I bigger than cats? Will it eat me?” … A lot of us humans are like dogs: we really don’t know what size we are, how we’re shaped, what we look like. The most extreme example of this ignorance must be the people who design the seats on airplanes. At the other extreme, the people who have the most accurate, vivid sense of their own appearance may be dancers. What dancers look like is, after all, what they do.”
— Ursula Le Guin, in The Wave in the Mind (via fortooate)
This paragraph went in so many different directions before it ended. What the fuck Ursula
current fan creation landscape is kinda like if you went to a party with a homemade cake and everyone takes a slice and silently thumbs up at you with no attempt to start a conversation except for occasionally some guy sits in the corner with a tape recorder critiquing the cake as though he was a restaurant critic and another guy is handing the cake to an uber driver like “yeah i need you to find a restaurant that makes cake like this so i can have more of it” and the only person that’s talked to you in 30 minutes is a very sweet little guy who was like “hey i liked your cake” and then ran away apologizing for bothering you the moment you said thank you.
someone brought a cake analysis robot to feed the cake into to determine the exact ingredients and supposedly it can spit out the exact same cake. and if you’re like dude. what. then they’re like well if it bothers you you should have made more cake. i’m hungry and i deserve cake. and you’re like dude we’re at a party.
Three months later you find out that fifty people locked themselves in a room to discuss how much they loved your cake and how they wished you made more. None of them ever told you.
so for the love of god. please tell people you liked their cake and don’t feel embarrassed about it. because then they will make more cake.
Story time: In which my coworkers thought I was cheating on my partner…with my partner
Ok so B and I are very tactile people. We mostly work from home, spend 90% of our days together, and touch each other all the time in a deeply habitual way.
We also work in the same industry, which means sometimes we go to the same in-person trainings/conferences/events.
We were at one such event yesterday and while a couple folks in attendance knew we were married to each other, most did not. Though, importantly, they did know that we each were married. We both wear rings. We regularly mention our spouses.
So, we arrived together and walked holding hands through the parking lot and, yes, had a smooch while alone in the elevator before we had to be on our professional best behavior (he was wearing a suit, kissing was unavoidable).
When the doors opened we were still a bit close together and got some looks. But I didn’t really clock them until later. We also checked in with each other a couple times through the evening and stepped out for a quiet moment here and there, which some people likely noticed.
So toward the end of the night, I was chatting with some peers and B came to stand next to me with some of his peers and without thinking I reached over to pull a bit of debris out of his hair and without pausing in his conversation, he reached over to squeeze the back of my neck and run his knuckles down my shoulder/arm in thanks.
There was a sudden lull in the conversation and I realized multiple people were looking at us with obvious discomfort. I rewound the last few seconds, considered some earlier indicators, and then hastily said, “we’re married! To each other! He’s my partner!”
And everyone let out a relieved exhale, had a laugh about it, and we continued on.
Whoops.
My parents worked in the same building but different divisions of a major tech firm back in the day. This exact scenario happened to them at least twice a year.
The REALLY funny one was that my mom decided to take illustration classes with me at the Denver Botanical Gardens while I was getting my master’s of illustration there.
Now, I look more like my Dad’s side of the family but despite having the same surname, arriving and leaving together, sitting next to each other, and me calling her “Mom” multiple times per class, it somehow took one of my professors three years and seeing us share a plate of fries to realize we might be related.
The way she decided to broach the subject though, was to wait until she and my mom were alone in a quiet corner and gently ask “So how long has [Gallus] been your daughter?”
…Thing is,
I’d come out to my family as Nonbinary to my family earlier that week and gave them permission to bring friends and acquaintances up to speed and my mom was DETERMINED that nobody misgender me so what she replied was “No, [Gallus] isn’t my daughter anymore-”
A few minutes later I came back from the bathroom to find my mom and my professor talking in circles around each other, because my mom was trying to recount the story of how I came out and my professor growing increasingly horrified and confused until my mom gave up and waved me over.
“I’m sorry [Gallus], can you explain the Nonbinary thing? I think I’m messing it up.” She sighs.
“Oh, sure- This is my mother, I am her genetic and legal offspring, but I’m not her daughter because I don’t have a gender. I’m her kid.” I explain.
“OH THANK GOD!” My professor gasped. “I thought you’d been disowned!”
non-writers will never understand the mental illness of writing an entire conversation in your head while doing dishes and then forgetting every word the second you open a blank doc
Romantic Subplots That Don’t Make Me Want to Eat My Laptop
✧ The enemies-to-lovers pipeline is not just “we yelled once” and now we’re making out. Where is the tension? Where is the mutual respect beneath the knives? Where is the unbearable yearning while they patch each other up post-battle, covered in blood and unresolved feelings?
✧ You do not have to pair everyone off like it’s a high school dance and the chaperones are judging. It’s okay for characters to stay single, or in situationships, or be in love with someone who doesn’t love them back (ouch, but delicious).
✧ If they fall in love because they’re “both hot and there,” I am going to demand emotional receipts. What do they see in each other that nobody else does? Give me the specificity. “He brings her tea when her hands shake.” “She doesn’t mock his cursed poetry.” That kind of slop.
✧ Consent is hot. I don’t care if they’re vampires, enemies, rivals, or literal gods at war. “Do you want me to kiss you?” with the voice drop is sexier than 87 pages of unspoken tension ending in a sudden smooch that makes no sense.
✧ A love triangle is not “who is hotter.” It’s “which future does this character want.” One boy represents safety, the other chaos? Great. But we’re picking identities, not abs.
✧ Please stop writing characters who fall in love after knowing each other for twelve seconds and one trauma. That’s not love. That’s a bonding exercise at Emotional Camp and it will implode. At least let them flirt awkwardly first.
i have this unrealistic fantasy in my head where if you calmly and logically explain something to someone perfectly they will understand your position and gain knowledge from the exchange. unfortunately in the real world this does not happen often
I need to admit something to the US Tumblrinas. Philadelphia isn’t a place to me. It’s a cream cheese. You say “philadelphia” or “philly” and I immediately, and exclusively, think of the cream cheese. “Twelve people die in Philadelphia disaster” wow that must’ve been a Molasses Flood style event
No I trust the Americans, the cheese lovers, and the fans of the molasses flood to find this one on their own.
it’s fucking wild because one day you’re like i guess i’m not dying tragically young and you go to the store and you buy dental floss, ingredients for soup, and a bath mat
I went to a conference today and I had one of the fakest sounding experiences of my life. I want to share it but I feel I have to make a shitty comic in ms paint or something because I’m not sure how to recount it in text post format
I’ve spend ¾ of my life living in red states, and I gotta say, the leftists in the blue state where I live now are fucking soft. You only think both parties are the same if you’ve lived safely with Democrat control for decades. Go live somewhere where Republicans have controlled the state legislature for that long and see if you still think there’s no difference.
“I want healthcare and high speed rail so some people need to be okay with not having rights anymore okay:(((”
I hate you so fucking much it is unreal
Good thing the same party is more likely to support minority rights AND access to healthcare.
so im trying to decipher this chart on wikipedia that has common vampire weaknesses in it and
a ‘green/yes’ is a weakness, a ‘red/no’ is something that isnt a weakness, and a ‘?’ is something that has never been addressed but fucking riddle me this
in what lore are vampires weak to getting soggy in milk
i scrolled over to check to see what this could possibly be and
places a hand on me cheek
happy halloween month time for my favourite post of all time
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