#but sometimes in a good way

[thesecondface]

year 3 phd here we go baby

on the other. just came back from the lake district (field trip with the undergrads) and the lecturers leading the trip all brought me back samples of lamprophyre while I was traipsing round and sliding off hills in the rain (i love nature... nature does not love me. lamprophyres in a space both entirely accessible yet uniquely deadly for the likes of me). absolutely devastated by this sweetness. what good eggs

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

[inkskinned]

probably time for this story i guess but when i was a kid there was a summer that my brother was really into making smoothies and milkshakes. part of this was that we didn't have AC and couldn't afford to run fans all day so it was kind of important to get good at making Cool Down Concoctions.

we also had a patch of mint, and he had two impressionable little sisters who had the attitude of "fuck it, might as well."

at one point, for fun, this 16 year old boy with a dream in his eye and scientific fervor in heart just wanted to see how far one could push the idea of "vanilla mint smoothie". how much vanilla extract and how much mint can go into a blender before it truly is inedible.

the answer is 3 cups of vanilla extract, 1/2 cup milk alternative, and about 50 sprigs (not leaves, whole spring) of mint. add ice and the courage of a child. idk, it was summer and we were bored.

the word i would use to describe the feeling of drinking it would maybe be "violent" or perhaps, like. "triangular." my nose felt pristine. inhaling following the first sip was like trying to sculpt a new face. i was ensconced in a mesh of horror. it was something beyond taste. for years after, i assumed those commercials that said "this is how it feels to chew five gum" were referencing the exact experience of this singular viscous smoothie.

what's worse is that we knew our mother would hate that we wasted so much vanilla extract. so we had to make it worth it. we had to actually finish the drink. it wasn't "wasting" it if we actually drank it, right? we huddled around outside in the blistering sun, gagging and passing around a single green potion, shivering with disgust. each sip was transcendent, but in a sort of non-euclidean way. i think this is where i lost my binary gender. it eroded certain parts of me in an acidic gut ecology collapse.

here's the thing about love and trust: the next day my brother made a different shake, and i drank it without complaint. it's been like 15 years. he's now a genuinely skilled cook. sometimes one of the three of us will fuck up in the kitchen or find something horrible or make a terrible smoothie mistake and then we pass it to each other, single potion bottle, and we say try it it's delicious. it always smells disgusting. and then, cerimonious, we drink it together. because that's what family does.

[hinamie]

sry i have chronic only draws megumi disorder the doctor said it's terminal :/

[ale-arro]

been going a little bit insane about this sentence from Ace by Angela Chen for the past week

[louferrignojrofficial]

this moment has had me in a chokehold for hours

[winkle-pickers]

Covenant

[mcdevinpants]

I was going to make a joke about my instinctual need for pizza, except then I remembered that sometimes a craving for a food means your body needs something in that food. Like how if you really want pickles you might actually be dehydrated (not always though, sometimes you just want pickles, or maybe it's both). Or so I've been told and anecdotally that's seemed to have borne out for me.

It's strange to me how some people seem to consider animal instincts as something that compels them to work like machines, like an automation, instead of an emotional whim that they lack the capacity to pause and wonder about. Like the things we consider human instincts, a random "hmm, I want to do this for some reason", and then go about doing it. An emotional whim that overtakes them, instead of a scripted, coded command.

Maybe migrating birds just start to feel like going south. Building a nest just for fun seems like a good idea. Being overcome with the sudden urge to sing, and - immediately afterwards - the desire to beat the shit out of this other asshole who is trying to sing on your goddamn turf. The fact that they are things that need to happen to ensure the survival of the species doesn't mean they aren't also things that they want to do. Birds only do things that they want to do, they spend all their time doing whatever the fuck they feel like doing at that exact moment.

Human instincts aren't involuntary compulsions, either. They are urges to do something, whether or not you know or understand where these desires stem from. The idea that humans are free of instinctive behaviours because of ~power of intelligent reason~ is just as goddamn absurd as the idea that we, too, are slaves to them. No, what makes the difference is having the capacity wonder why, how, and where the instinctive desire comes from.

An animal who instinctively reacts to an unnatural situation in a way that doesn't serve the survival of this individual or the species as a whole isn't broken, it's just doing something that feels right. I don't think that a shark who bites an electric cable doesn't understand it doesn't have any nutritional value, it just goes "ooh, this looks like something that would be fun to bite."

What makes us human is being able to look at a softly shining, bright-coloured, soft and deliciously scented pod of laundry detergent, being aware of the instinctive desire to take a bite out of a delicious, fragrant, ripe fresh fruit, and being consciously aware that in this particular situation, it would absolutely not be fun.

[emotoangel]

you know sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat remembering the phrase ‘more than just romantic’ and feeling like I’ve been knocked down a hill by the reminder that Dan and Phil are like ,, actually together. it’s not just a weird online shipping two twinks thing they’re actual soulmates, companions through life, 4000 year old tortoises, RANCH, like a piece of furniture, like a normal gay couple ,,, what the fuck

[niightcravvler]

Been playing dragon age again. I dont think her clothing texture is supposed to do that probably

[ohrackham]

It is not what you do for me that makes me love you. It's your kindness. Your empathy. How much you care. Just being you is enough, Colin. I do not need you to save me. I just need you to stand by me. To hold me. To kiss me.

[meamiki]

silly comic based on a time i struggled to read live on stream :thumbsup:

context clip compilation below ASDASDFASA

(cw for brief mention of hospitals/strokes)

[viimsical]

comforting hug

[inkskinned]

sure i find you in my hair and under my pillow and in the car. but i know in my heart you are picking me out of your teeth. i know i am burning through your sundays, sticking to your ceiling.

i hope i'm in every bitter cup of coffee and every candle wick and every bath. i hope my shadow flickers under your door so the empty hallway i have left behind is a swift dart of nothing more. i hope you find me in notebooks and stop signs and fleetwood mac - like i am marginalia on your life, i want my fingerprints burned into your days like acid.

i loved you, and you know i loved you, and for the rest of your life i will be the person you broke. for the rest of your life i hope the shame of that runs like a cattle dog, bites at your heels. i hope every time your cup is full or the moon is a toenail or a cat is purring or a laugh is in your belly or the sky turns pink while the sun is setting - i hope you remember that someone loved you, and you crushed them in your palms. you extinguished every future i lit. i hope that haunts you.

i hope you never fucking forget it.

[chloesimaginationthings]

THE WILLIAMS ❤️❤️❤️🤤🤤

They look so good on your style OMGG ❤️❤️

I’m glad yall liked the Williams comic!!!

[flying-cat]

I just thought of Izuku immediately shooting up in the hero rankings like a week after he becomes an active pro-hero again because everyone is so happy that he's back and Katsuki wants to be annoyed that Izuku ranked higher than him so quickly like he would've been, once upon a time, but he really can't be because this is what he worked eight years to see, and now he can finally compete with him again. So he sits in his apartment, TV on, watching Izuku try not to stutter his way through his first returning interview with fondness and pride, and thinks it's finally time to put some actual effort into climbing higher on the hero rankings.

(Not that being #1 is his priority anymore. He's just happy that he gets to fight alongside Izuku again, that they can compete with one another as equals, and that they can complete one another like two sides of the same coin. For the rest of their lives.)