#they LISTEN.

[moomeecore]

on that subject, obsessed with today when i was like "hey guys, can you two stop playing the jumping game for now because it's giving caden a headache" and my 6 yr old cousin is like "you mean 'me'. it's giving 'me' a headache, because your caden". it's like yeah man ur right. my bad . and then they stopped jumping. it was awesome

[word-count-bullet-count]

I've been seeing a lot of knight posts recently. pretty great

[jackyjackdraws]

I got this idea at 3am.

No, I won't elaborate further

[chilewithcarnage]

'you still listen to music from 10 years ago 🤨?' bitch if prehistoric humans had audio recording technology id be sat up here listening to grog and unga bunga's greatest hits don't play with me

[kidrat]

U can watch Star Wars so many times and it doesn’t prepare u for how dumb Star Wars is. For one thing I think we gloss over how kenobi (who has definitely been at the club. Please.) describes the mos eisley cantina as the worst most villainous place ever and then u get inside and it’s a pack of muppets vaping

[omatoxin]

fish song

[sca-nerd]

My friends who have never experienced flooding, and who are about to deal with it from this storm, please remember:

1. NO. YOU CANNOT MAKE IT THROUGH THAT WATER ON THE ROAD. I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'RE DRIVING. TURN. AROUND.

2. DO NOT GO WADING THROUGH THE WATER. EVEN IF YOU JUST WANT TO SEE HOW DEEP IT IS. THAT. WATER. IS. CONTAMINATED.

3. IT IS CALLED FLASH FLOODING FOR A REASON. THE WATER RISES AND SURGES IN A FLASH. STAY. HOME.

4. If you're at risk of flooding, raise up any of your belongings now. Put the legs of tall things in buckets. Know where your important documents are.

5. Stay safe.

[scribefindegil]

being a writer leads to a genuinely helpful but also very stupid kind of mindfulness where you'll be having a sobbing breakdown or the worst anxiety attack of your life and think "okay, I really need to pay attention to how this feels. so I can incorporate it into my fanfiction."

[scapegods]

what if this scene was worse

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

the curse of summer is buying and eating an inadvisable amount of fruit in single sittings.

[moodsandtenses]

There's something hilarious about how so much subsequent media has positioned Vampires and Werewolves as, like, binary opposite entities, and then you read Dracula (1897) and realize that wolves are that guy's preferred solution to every problem. You'd say something to Dracula about "ah yes, werewolves, vampires' great eternal enemies," and he'd just be like "you mean my subcontractors?"

[holographings]

someone on twitter said Imagine what s2 jayce would give to talk to s1 viktor just one more time. and someone had a time travel alternate dimension fic ready to go. and i read it. and now my face is being eaten by 3750 feral dogs i think

[needtotalkilllisten]

[deimosatellite]

AMAZON IS STRIKING LETS FUCKING GO!!!!!! LETS GO!@!

as someone who has worked in amazon warehouses for many years, this is crazy like. oh my god. DURING PEAK SEASON?? LETS GOOOO

media and companies are already trying to say "DONT LET THE UNIONS MISLEAD YOU WE PROMISE WE TREAT OUR WORKERS WELL!!!" well hey ive worked there for YEARS. they do not ! dont listen to their bullshit. it might be difficult to not get frustrated if packages are late at the most important time of the year but thats the whole point -- strikes happening when the workers are most necessary is a massive blow to showing just how essential the workers are . anyways stand with amazon workers this holiday season god fucking bless

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.