#if anyone is mean to me about this ill kill you

[zombiesinflannels]

I agree with you 100%, but also even a purely literal reading of The Metamorphosis very clearly communicates the horror and tragedy of how quickly people can detach from, dehumanize, and demonize things that they personally don't like, can't relate to/understand, or just otherwise deem Unpleasant.

EVEN IF YOU INTERPRET IT AS A GUY LITERALLY TRANSFORMING INTO A LITERAL BUG, that core theme remains totally unchanged. The reason English teachers + professors love it is because it is such an incredibly strong but simple core theme that it in fact CANNOT be "so open to interpretation that it could literally mean just about anything" to any good faith reader, but still supports a wide variety of complex deeper meanings, allusions, and parallels (such as the metaphor for disability, the inherently dehumanizing nature of capitalistic social values, the tragedy and horror and shame attached to the loss of one's ability to fulfill their own most basic needs and function independently [this of course ties strongly into the metaphor for disability/illness], the narrative's deliberate perversion of the more standard [and generally positive] caterpillar-into-butterfly transformation, dear God I fucking love analyzing this story, I could go on forever).

I really cannot relate to people who consume media in the way that that Goodreads user does because with something like The Metamorphosis, you don't actually have to be a skilled close reader, all you have to do is put yourself in Gregor's shoes. Imagine that you woke up in the body of a human-sized bug but in every other way were still you, except you could no longer communicate and you could no longer follow even the most basic routines/desires you'd dedicated your whole life to and you could no longer function on any level as an independent being, and everyone you loved and valued and worked so hard/sacrificed so much of yourself for took one look at you and went, "Ew! Gross! You should just kill yourself tbh because having to acknowledge that you exist as you now are makes us uncomfortable and your whole existence is now a burden to us."

It is absolutely unfathomable to me how anyone could read it and just go, "What a pointless and unnecessarily depressing story about some lame dude randomly turning into an icky bug and then dying."

goodreads reviewers aren't human

[nqueso-emergency]

That ask that you guys are so excited about said that if they were the OP they would kill themselves. It's interesting what kinds of post you guys celebrate. If the girl does end up committing SI will this still be a victory? I mean in your words she fucked around and found out.

Uhm. No. Do not even come here with that shit. I said people need to stop interacting and OP should delete the tweet.

I never shared that tweet about OP harming herself and it's really fucking disgusting for you or anyone else to even write something like this.

I wish no ill will to OP. I do hope she learned from the experience but that is not what you're implying at all!

God this shit right here pisses me tf off. Call me whatever, say shit about me, idc, but we really need to stop discussing suicide as if it's as casual as the damn weather!

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

As we’re facing the next COVID surge (brought on by holiday travel), I thought I might try a different kind of COVID post. You can skip to here for some easy to do tips and tricks you might have missed, or you can read down for my discussion of why this is important.

I have recently been writing and thinking a lot about why so many of my friends and family’s actions on COVID are so different from mine. Namely why so many people I know no longer seem very interested in either preventing themselves from being sick or, importantly, not spreading sickness to anyone else.

In my own case, the experience of staying home to stop the spread in 2020 forced me to strongly reconsider my behavior up to that point. Why had I ever thought it was OK to go to work or ride the subway with the flu, unmasked and taking no precautions, knowing that the flu certainly hospitalizes and kills people each year? Even if the flu was no big deal for my body, my behavior had limited other people—particularly disabled people—from comfortably being in public during flu season. I had knowingly spread around an illness. I radically reconsidered a lot of my behavior, and in particular, 2020 pushed me to focus more specifically on disability justice in my activism. A disability justice framework pushes us beyond thinking about individual access to consider how ableism limits us all from liberation.

Getting back to why this reconsideration didn’t happen on a mass level, understanding disability justice also means understanding that ableism is the current social order. And if it’s the order of the day, like other oppressive ideologies, that means we are all drenched in it and it is impossible to avoid ever doing something ableist. Furthermore, most people are going to act in ableist ways, most of the time. None of this are exempt from this, but not even trying is definitely worse!

I am also well aware that good COVID information is hard to come by, especially if you are not on the regular lookout for it. And if you do go looking for it, it can quickly get overwhelming. So I’d like to offer here a very short, distilled list of things people might have missed since 2020. (I’ve not taken the time to track down citations for all of these things; you’ll have to trust me that I got them from trustworthy sources or you can verify on your own. I’m happy to give more info on any of these too.)

Some of these things are easy enough to do. I’m offering this list because from a “stop the spread” mindset, each specific thing you do is helpful. This list is not meant to be comprehensive, and it’s hopefully not overwhelming. You don’t have to be perfect or avoid COVID 100% of the time or make this part of your identity, but I’d like to ask everyone reading this to take one step up in your mitigations for the holiday season, since this is reliably a time with huge increases in virus transmission. With around a thousand people still dying every week from COVID in the US, you don’t know whose life you may save by being a little more careful.

Masking This is the biggest bang for your buck, precaution-wise. If it’s hard for you to mask all the time in public, consider masking in places that disabled people really can’t avoid, like the pharmacy, the grocery store, and on public transportation.

I’d also suggest that if masks are uncomfortable, try different kinds of masks! The Aura is my favorite mask – it’s tight to my face so my glasses don’t fog and head straps don’t hurt my ears like ear straps do. Wellbefore sells masks in different sizes and colors, and Armbrust has sampler packs. Just try a bunch and see what works for you!

Finally, know that if at all possible, you should wear an N95 or KN95 mask. This is a change since spring 2020 because the current variants of COVID are more contagious.

Mouthwash Washing your mouth out with a mouthwash containing CPC (cetylpyridinium chloride) before or after seeing people, or just regularly, will kill some of the virus in your mouth and keep you below the threshold to get sick and/or shed the virus to others. This is a really easy one; CVS brand mouthwash has CPC.

Sip mask These valves will allow you to drink without breaking the seal of your mask. This is great for airplane travel, crowded conferences, or other risky spaces that you need to be in for an extended amount of time.

Airplane The most dangerous time on an airplane from a virus transmission standpoint is the time sitting on the runway (because of the way they circulate and filter the air onboard). Even if you don’t mask up during the flight, this is the best time to mask. (And if you do mask, this is the worst time to have a snack or drink – try to keep your mask on for all of this period.)

Space out risky or crowded events Don’t go to a wedding and a concert in the same weekend! Illness takes 3-5 days to develop after exposure, so give yourself time to know if you got sick from the last thing before potentially spreading that to the next thing.

Air purifiers work! This is a great one for places that you can’t avoid, like school, work, or daycare. You can make your own Corsi-Rosenthal box, but there’s also a variety of high quality air purifiers you can get for $70-100. You want to make sure it has a HEPA or Merv13+ filter on it, and check how quickly it changes out the air in a room. Since COVID is airborne, there can be COVID in a space even after the person has left it. Setting up air purifiers and/or opening windows until enough air has circulated before you remove your mask is a great way to make a space COVID safer

Test before going to events, even if you don’t feel sick Rapid tests (the kind you’re used to getting from the government and at the drug store) False negatives from these are rampant but a positive test reliably means you have COVID. The accuracy of these tests also increases a LOT if you take two of them 48 hours apart.

Better home tests are now available Metrix and Pluslife are both testers you can buy that offer a similar level of accuracy to a PCR test (that is, very accurate!). These devices are expensive, but so is another COVID infection: think of the missed work, cost of Paxlovid, and potential for Long COVID to keep you down even longer.

It’s a good idea to get an updated vaccine 2x a year too; like the flu shot, these vaccines are updated to try to fend off the particular variants that are circling. Be mindful though that vaccination will not necessarily stop transmission, especially of asymptomatic cases. Handwashing is also good for general prevention, but it doesn’t really stop COVID transmission. In the early days of COVID, researchers guessed that it was spread by physical droplets. That’s why we were instructed to wash our hands and groceries. But now we know that COVID is airborne; it spreads more like cigarette smoke than spit!

Of course, no single thing works perfectly. The best model is still the Swiss cheese model, but that also means each thing you do helps. If you’re reading this, please consider doing *one more thing* to take care of yourselves and others. I love you

[bog-teeth]

the intersection

this is a visual represntation of where my derealization, transness, and cosplay meet.

brief list of characters from top->bottom left->right

column 1: jonny dville, gavin reed, laszlo cravensworth, kay faraday, wegg, harry du bois

column 2: michael walters, sebastian debeste, kris dreemur, captain k. p. hob, spamton, james t kirk

column 3: gabriel reyes, sir damien the pious

column 4: eddie brock, aizawa, boris habit, arthur lester, crowley, jonathan sims

column 5: portia devorak, ron stampler, tracer, miles edgeworth, normal oak, james team rocket

[possamble]

Going back to work after this but

[raybeetle]

i so sad

[willkill4pudding]

Not having a job = misery due to not having an income and being worried about the future

Having a job = misery because all your time is dictated by someone else and you can't always have a schedule that is ideal for you.

[blackvahana]

I'm (mostly) keeping Purple Orange and Gold out of this because I haven't been working with them recently, but like. You have. Deus Ex Machina in the way of The Organic Is Machine And He Will Change You To Change Reality, you have Death and War and natural disasters, you have the One to Whom Soldiers Are Sacrificed In War. I'm looking at selves like...

The parts of myself I keep hidden are. all parts, because these are all ultimately halves of aspects and if you suppress an aspect you suppress the aspect... but I see the way I bleed into people. I see the Violent Mother, the one who will bleed your body out on her altar and who tears apart the bodies of the enemy to protect her hatchlings. Ive tried to stay human, but ultimately... this flesh, this soul flesh, eats human bodies. This takes human sacrifices. This tears apart countries, this drives people into psychosis, this pours revelation into eyes that either adapt to handle it or go mad, literally.

The whole part of Godhood is that you are what you are and you actively are it, you actively Be it. This - Dei - is the mergence of opposites which is in itself both the unification of opposites and the rending of similarities in one. Creation Through Destruction.

I'm constantly sitting here grasping at the shredded fabrics I have left (they're shrinking over time) of humanity and. guys. shh. the humans don't like this stuff. Guys, I'm not dancing and infecting people, I'm trying so hard to be quiet down here

[obnoxiousarcade]

I have a longing to be understood more than anything else i think

[juleteinthrum]

Zasr? Zadr? Zatr? Is it not enough to be a gay little bug

[samwisefamgee]

anyway played more baldurs gate 3 and can confirm it's d&d if you like less options and never having an interesting person in your party ever. and you can't even be fat. fuck off

[zevranunderstander]

okay time for my daily "i stand with john gaius" post but tamsyn muir did not write a bisexual maori man who was a renowned scientist who had dedicated his life to saving the earth and exposing the schemes of the ultra-rich who was then made out to be a terrorist and global threat when his only goal was to help and who ultimately was brought down by his own character flaws and shortcomings while under immense pressure in a situation where everyone he ever loved was being executed in front of him and seconds before death did something he - to our knowledge - could barely control, just for the entire fanbase to go 'yeah he's like a cartoon villain. he's an irredeemably shitty person and everything he does is inherently evil and manipulative'

[lemoncake438]

How do u know if its love or mental illness?

[stardustanddaffodils]

i think i need to stop being a wimp who goes oh well other ppl are doing it so i guess its fine... and maye i should too so they like me! no! youre right to have your boundaries! stop it!

[maleloli]

Okay so the pain IS never ending

[why-rock-look-tasty-if-no-eat]

Because I don't care how or what I eat (moldy grapes/bread, paper, uncooked pasta, ants, undercooked foods, stale cereal, freezer burnt foods, pineapples, burnt foods, suspicious meat, raw potatoes, pinecone (only a bite dw), dandelions, expired foods, foods covered with sand/dirt, grass, marrow) I like to traumatize my friends and family with what I'm willing to eat. Now I get an excuse to traumatize tumblr :D

Frozen milk. Thats the weirdest thing I've had and I'm not willing to so that again. It doesn't really freeze like water so it's really similar to a slushie, but the slushie is frozen. If that makes sense.