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there’s wip (active development) and wip (stuck in development hell) and wip (oh you’re not even getting funding for this one)

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"I asked ChatGPT-" Well I asked the immortal Dragon that Uther chained in the caves beneath Camelot and HE told me to commit treason

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i hope they never stop using floppy disk icons to indicate saving your file. doesn't matter how obsolete they are it's like honouring someone with a portrait on your currency

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sometimes i have a thought and go “this would do numbers on tumblr dot com” and oh boy the numbers! 0. absolutely fucking nothing. maybe 1 if i’m lucky.

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In my first year university course there was a class I remember as being mandatory (at least for English majors) about fallacies and biases in writing. And this prof was all about reading the whole article before you formed your argument. That was his whole thing. You know measure twice cut once he was read twice respond once. He stressed this so much that on our final exam (which was two long form essay questions and a few short answer questions) that I decided to read the WHOLE exam booklet before I grabbed my pen.

Turns out that is what he wanted. The final page, the final question, informed the student that if they wrote 1. Their name, 2. Their student number 3. Their favourite fallacy, and wait for 30 minutes so they don't arouse suspicion, you will literally be given 100 percent for the exam WORTH 40 PERCENT OF YOUR GRADE.

I think about it to this day. The prof literally saw the "reading comprehension on this site is piss poor" and said I can fix them

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My stage career began when I was a little under two months old, when I took the spotlight as Baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant. I’m told that I did a wonderful job and slept calmly through the whole thing, which can only speak to my talents as an actress, because I was 1. the wrong gender 2. a colicky screaming demon of a baby and 3. about as far from divine as it’s possible for an allegedly-human child to be. 

I continued to be actively involved in theater as a kid (and frequently played roles of various small animals, because I was tiny for my age). Around the age of ten, I was cast as the lead character in a musical about cowboys that I no longer remember the name of. It was my first real lead role, and I took it very, very seriously. And because I am myself, that means I maaaaybe went…a little overboard.

My character’s introduction was early in the play, accompanied by the crack of a bullwhip. This was more-or-less pre internet (or, at least, our director was not tech-savvy enough to find sound effects online) and we didn’t have a sound effect track for that noise. There were plans to acquire the appropriate sound effect before opening night, but I rapidly tired of making my entrance during rehearsals to the sound of someone yelling “BULLWHIP NOISE!”

This, I thought to myself, is a problem I can solve.

I learned early in life that it’s good to be friends with people who have skills; they always come in handy eventually.  After rehearsals one day, I put on my cowboy boots and biked a couple miles over to my friend Grace’s house. I went down to their basement and knocked on her older brother’s door.

“Hello,” I said. “I need to learn how to use a bullwhip.”

“….Okay,” he said. It did not seem to occur to him that he might ask further questions about why I, a tiny horrible munchkin composed exclusively of rage and pointy elbows, needed to be weaponized any further. Clearly, I had come to the right person.

My friend’s older brother would have been an SCA nerd, if SCA was a thing where we were. Instead, he was one of those unsupervised 4H kids with weird hobbies, largely oriented around ancient forms of combat. He was somewhere in his late teens at this time, and he liked to make stuff. It was an urge I, even at age ten, could sympathize with. His name was Aron. 

Aron got out his bullwhip (which I had noticed hanging on his wall on a prior visit, and had filed away mentally under a for future use tab) and we went to the backyard. 

“Step one of using a bullwhip,” Aron began, “Swinging the bullwhip.” 

We rapidly discovered that since I was god’s tiniest, angriest creation, a full-size bullwhip was way too long for me to use. Aron’s shins suffered for my attempt. 

“…Step one of using a bullwhip,” Aron said, “Making a bullwhip.”

So we went back inside, found a tanned cowhide (that he just…had? I don’t remember if there was a reason for this.) and some razor blades, and I learned how to cut and braid a bullwhip. It took a few tries, and I wound up coming back for a while, because I kept getting frustrated with the bullwhip-braiding process and Aron kept distracting me with bait like: “Hey kid, wanna learn to make some chainmail?” and “Hey kid, wanna fletch some arrows?” and “Hey kid, wanna try doing horseback archery?”

Obviously the answer to these questions was “BOY, WOULD I EVER!” Some delays are necessary to the artistic process.

(At one point my mom asked me “Hellen, what are you doing over at Grace’s house all the time?” And I, perfectly innocent, said, “Making weapons!” and my mother, who never understood why I was like this, but accepted that a girl has needs and those needs occasionally involve stocking a personal armory, said “Okay! Have fun!”)

Soon, the bullwhip, size extra small, was finished. The lessons on actual bullwhip use commenced. 

It should be noted that Aron was self-taught, and really had no idea what to do, so this was mostly an exercise in the two of us standing twenty feet apart and flailing wildly with our respective whips until snapping noises happened. And then we figured out what we’d done to make the snapping noises. And then we kept doing that. Extremely vigorously. So vigorously that at one point one of the bullwhips launched into the air and caught on a tree branch and we hand to drag the trampoline over so Aron could bounce me high enough to grab it. But we persisted!

Eventually we reached a point where we could line up pop cans on a fence rail and hit them off three times out of five.

Feeling extremely accomplished and like I finally understood method acting, I packed my bullwhip into my backpack for the next play rehearsal. Soon enough, it was time for me to make my entrance. 

I leaped on stage in my cowboy boots and cracked the bullwhip as hard as I could, immediately launching into the song despite the fact that the sound of five feet of braided leather breaking sound barrier had startled the accompanist so badly she’d keysmashed on the piano.

The director shouted something she probably shouldn’t have shouted in a room full of small children, and then demanded, “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT!”

“I made it!” I declared proudly. “I’m a cowgirl! I can make my own bullwhip noise!”

“You…made it?” 

“Yes! Because we needed a bullwhip sound effect. And bullwhips are where bullwhip sound effects come from!”

This was, of course, impeccable logic.

It is apparently difficult to argue with a gleeful ten year old who happens to be armed with a bullwhip longer than she is tall. After some negotiation, the director agreed that I could use my bullwhip for my opening song, provided that I didn’t pop it while anyone was anywhere near me on stage and I didn’t let anyone else play with it. These terms were acceptable to me. 

Somehow, no one was injured and the play went off without a hitch. We can only chalk up these things to the magic of the theatre. 

Nearly a decade later, an unsuspecting college classmate asked me, “Hellen, wanna take a class on bullwhip combat with me?”

And obviously I answered, “BOY, WOULD I EVER!”

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Alright kids say it with me

My thoughts don’t make me a bad person

My feelings don’t make me a bad person

My thoughts, feelings, and impulses only exist inside my head, and none of it matters unless I act on it

Nobody can see my thoughts or emotions

The only things anyone can see and judge me on are my actions

There’s no such thing as a thought crime

thank u

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If you put a dish in a dishwasher, it gets washed. If you put a shirt in a dishwasher, it gets shredded and breaks the machine.

If you put a shirt in a washing machine, it gets washed. If you put a dish in a washing machine, it gets shattered and breaks the machine.

Maybe you are not weak. They just put you into the wrong washer.

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It’s me. I’m the problem hehe

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No, no, you misunderstood me. The best trope isn't the villain gets the girl, the best trope is the girl gets the villain.

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You know what I think is really cool about language (English in this case)? It’s the way you can express “I don’t know” without opening your mouth. All you have to do is hum a low note, a high note, then another lower note. The same goes for yes and no. Does anyone know what this is called?

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i just can't convey the frustration and sorrow that it's been to grow up at first without the internet and then watching it bloom into this useful, fun, connecting force you sometimes spent time on, only for it to degrade into this constant oppressive waste of time and energy where people are constantly pumping out algorithmically designed content for max algorithmic appeal and even the most simple search generates either no results or an infinite abyss of ai generated slop none of which is usable or correct. we briefly had a library of alexandria and then fed it into a paper shredder so advertisers could sell a random mash of pulp back to us at a premium.

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“Lena is a very real hero because things are hard and she keeps going. And I think that’s a very important character point”.  Katie McGrath on Lena Luthor in Supergirl S6

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i wish you guys could read the amazing fic i haven't written and probably will never write, it's fire

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Supergirl textposts… part TWO!!<3

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do you ever start writing a comment on the internet and then think “oh what the fuck am i going on about” and delete it