I have a friend who has a child, and their child is always sick. Always crying. Just generally, not a very happy wee lamb. Every other day she’ll come to me, complaining how awful it is to have a Difficult Child. And at first I made all the right sympathetic noises, I consoled her, I asked how I could help.
And then her kid gets allergy testing done, and several allergies are confirmed, and I think great! This is likely why they are always upset and ill! Maybe now they can get better!
And my friend… does not stop exposing them to the allergies.
“But they’re allergic to wheat,” I say, “and milk, and you’re still giving them those things.”
“Oh but they’re only minor allergies, not like, anything dangerous.”
“But that’s not… that’s not how that works,” I say, trying to be helpful, as I explain that even low level inflammation can be extremely detrimental in the long term, and extremely painful to deal with and how exposure therapy doesn’t always work. So of course he’s always sick and always crying. Of course he is.
And she rolls her eyes and says, “Look, I know you think you know a lot about health. But you’re not a parent, so I can’t expect you to understand.”
Because apparently upon the benediction of motherhood, the sacred knowledge of the universe is imparted to you the moment the umbilical cord is cut. Because apparently someone who is sick all the time, wouldn’t be able to understand. Except of course I don’t understand her. I understand her child. And what it’s like to be ignored, and hurt, and abused. And sick.
And suddenly you realize, maybe your friend is not your friend in the way you thought they were. And maybe, likely, probably, they shouldn’t be a parent.
Oh my God. How the hell does anyone do this? Your kid is always sick, you find out they have allergies… you don’t immediately cut that food out of their diet?
Okay, so I’ve seen some of the tags on this, and a lot of it is making fun of this dude for thinking he was straight when it was so clear he wasn’t.
But ya’ll don’t get it. This is EXACTLY what it’s like to be bi. If you grew up in any sort of environment where LGBT was Not Accepted, and you had any inclination toward the opposite sex, you just ran with that, because that’s all you were ever taught to look towards. And because for the longest time even the media was all ‘you’re either gay or straight’, forgetting that the B in LGBT has been there for quite a fucking while, you had no outside stories or icons you could turn to for guidance.
No one teaches you what being in a same sex relationship is supposed to be like or feel like, and what’s worse, most likely all you know is a caricature of what a homosexual relationship and/or person is, so your own experiences really won’t match up. So none of what’s happening to you makes sense with what you know.
So I can 100% fully believe my dude here thought he was straight. Until society teaches what it also means to be bi, this will neither be the last nor weirdest story you ever hear about a bisexual awakening.
Give the dude a chance.
I think the story is cute and it wasn’t forced or had a label put on it and they just fell in love. The dude just battle with thoughts of confusion but who hasn’t had that happen before with feeling things like what happened in the story?
fuck all philosophy except for whatever the hell Diogenes was trying to teach
direct action
Diogenes of Sinope was on some real shit i tell you what.
-He lived in a tub in the market place cause fuck houses. There he would regularly masturbate in public and didn’t give two shits.
-He would walk around with a lantern during the day and tell people he was looking for an honest man.
-Alexander the Great was a big fan of Diogenes. He asked Diogenes if he could do any favor, and Diogenes told him that he was standing in his light and to move. Alexander was impressed but the balls of this guy, and then said ‘
But truly, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes”. Diogenes replied, “If I were not Diogenes, I should also wish to be Diogenes.
“
-He would Pee on people who insulted him.
-When Plato defined a man as a ‘featherless biped’, Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it to him, declaring ‘BEHOLD! PLATOS MAN!’
-The face spitting came from an instance where a man invited Diogenes to his splendid manor, and told him not to spit anywhere. So Diogenes spit in his face.
-For a while his only possession was a bowl. When he saw a child drinking water with his hands, he threw away the bowl because why bother with it when he can just use his hands?
-One theory of how he died is that he just got tired of living, held his breath, and then died. He specified in his will he wanted his body thrown out of the city so wild animals can eat it.
Seriously people should read up on this guy. He was next level shit.
– he invented BDE
Alexander the Great: Diogenes, I want to be you when I grow up
People really need to stop with this: “If you’re questioning being trans, you probably are. Cis people don’t question being trans”! This is so untrue and misinformed. Of course cis people question themselves with gender. Affirming someone that they are trans simply because they are gender non-conforming and questioning themselves, confuses people further.
To add, questioning is normal and loads of people do it, cis or trans. It’s how we learn about ourselves and others!
Really specifically: “all men are disgusting abusive sex-crazed monsters” was a belief used to bolster heteropatriarchy in my old church by positioning women as a necessary gatekeeping & moderating force. Women could aid men in the struggle to keep their Beastly Instincts under control by dressing modestly and eventually entering into a marriage where their love and support and constant sexual availability (and I use that term extremely deliberately here) would help keep that man a productive member of society. This kept men blameless (any abuse or sexual misconduct is just in their nature as men!) while allowing the church to constantly victim-blame women – because if you got hurt, it’s because you obviously weren’t doing Enough to keep whatever man hurt you reigned in.
This system dehumanized everyone in it, but it most specifically used the idea that men are inherently Bad to prop up patriarchy, and that’s why I can’t fucking stand to see the same base ideas crop up in supposedly feminist spaces.
Yuuuup. “Women are the basis of civilization. That’s why they need to be kept barefoot and pregnant and constantly sexually available (and it’s her fault if he cheats, she wasn’t sexy and available enough) yet covered up to not tempt strange men into uncontrollable lust.”
Radfems are far too close to Fundamentalist Christianity.
Radical feminism: “abolishing gender” by asserting traditional gender roles since 1960!
And the whole “you can’t express yourself sexually via fiction bc bad people might conceivably use it instead of something else” is the same thing as “you have to dress modestly or it might give a man impure thoughts.” It’s the other person’s problem what they do with stuff, and following the purity rules at best does nothing and quite possibly makes things worse.
It also reinforces the idea that any time a woman expresses a sexual fantasy that isn’t morally correct or in any way amenable to soft monogamous civilized gatekeeping, she herself becomes the problem. If women are as “bad” as men (”bad” defined here by having a wild sexual imagination – nothing to do with actual ACTS necessarily, just enjoying the idea of “taboo” things in art or fiction) then society will fall apart, since the whole false equation of “good” women with sexual purity is ruined. And of course, a sexually impure woman is far worse than a man with the same fantasies. Because women “shouldn’t be like that.”
This is primarily a heteronormative notion of course but it’s proving unpleasantly easy to echo in largely LGBTQ+ spaces as well.
what the “do not disturb” status probably means: i just dont like the bleeping noise. i will respond when i see your message though how i interpret the ominousness of the little red dot: talk to me and i will rip your fucking nuts off
my professor (lovely man, married to our TA, 5’2", about as intimidating as a muffin) is a dendrologist by trade, so he studies trees. it was about three hours into our social sciences course, last lecture before exams, everyone was frazzled and exhausted, so he told us about his most exciting/in-depth research to date to cheer us up.
(the few of us who actually showed up were like “ok sir im sure its fascinating” but in our minds we were totally like its trees what. is. exciting. about trees. You might be wondering the same thing – the acorns? the leaves? the roots? BUT NO. IMMA FUCKIN TELL YA.)
ANYWAY we settle in, he had a few pictures loaded up from his field work (we were chuckling at this point…. ‘hehehe field work’ i giggled to my frend. its trees.) and began to tell his tale. it’s long, imma warn you, but……. god. just read it.
theres an species of tree called the cucumber tree (Magnolia acuminata, if ya wanna get all Latin-y). its super endangered, in our region there’s only ~280 that are registered by the government, yadda yadda yadda. my prof thought that was tragic (i know) but also strange, because when he was writing his thesis about local trees years ago, he kept coming across cucumber trees in really random places. we’re talking like backyards, independently-owned nurseries, etc. WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE because, according to tree law (i know) it is very strictly protected by the government, and thus super “illegal to possess, transport, collect, buy or sell any part of a living or dead member of a listed species if it originates from wild sources.” essentially, the govt takes control over growing the trees and anyone who independently raises them is breaking the law (i know)
so he’d ask people “do you have a permit for these trees?” and they were like “uh no, it’s just a tree someone sold me, i think it looks nice, are you gonna arrest me?” so he’d be like “nah nah nah just tell me who sold it to you”
eventually, months/years later, someone did, and turns out it was like this underground sort-of illegal tree dealing club (i know). so my prof went, got a bit of funding from the government, who were getting pissed at independent cucumber tree numbers, and THIS IS WHERE IT GETS INTO THE GOOD SHIT I STG.
he infiltrates the tree trafficking organization. he buys a cucumber tree from an independent nursery, raises it for months, ensures he gets noticed by the traffickers, and then INFILTRATES it and convinces its leader to LET HIM JOIN. he has to pay like a steep entrance fee, which he does (and it blows my mind that the government of my country paid money to illegal tree dealers), but then he is given full access to records and maps because they think he’s one of them, not a SECRET AGENT.
now this part blows my mind because the tree lords don’t even have to try very hard to find cucumber trees because government agents MARK THE TREES AND DISTINCTLY TAG THEM SAYING THIS IS ENDANGERED DO NOT TOUCH. so, ya know…………. it’s a bit obvious. my prof hangs out with the members so much that he figures out their “hit spots”. these are where the trees are relatively secluded and unguarded. (he writes all this shit and numbers down for his research.)
BUT THATS NOT ENOUGH BECAUSE THE GOVT SAYS HES WASTING THEIR FUNDING IF HE DOESNT HAVE PROOF and they are willing to take LEGAL ACTION for misuse of funding (my prof doesn’t have the money nore time nor power to take them to court, which would also blow his cover). so my prof literally STAKES OUT a copse of cucumber trees at a recognized wildlife reserve for. DAYS. he camps there, and watches the trees, is about to give up, he’s going off an unreliable rumor from the traffickers that a harvester would be going there within the next week. finally, this guy comes and takes the cucumber tree seeds from the CLEARLY MARKED trees by the government, and my prof takes pictures (we are shown these pictures, most of us are speechless at this point). dozens of candid shots of a man my grandpa’s age with a grocery store bag, garden shears, and a ladder, clipping away the illegal seeds and then going on his merry fucking way.
so my prof has the proof, he’s been undercover for months now at this point, he writes up his report, gives it to the government who is like…….. “oh shit”, helps them draft up a new LESS COMPLETELY FUCKING OBVIOUS way of marking endangered trees (so that way non-tree-lovers wouldn’t damage them further, etc.), and then never returns to the tree traffickers. he’d given them a fake name, address, everything….. he disappears.
…there was a full minute of stunned silence from us students at this point, during which he grew more and more nervous (again, he’s a muffin) and all of us students are just like……. “whoa.” we asked him what happened to the remaining illegal cucumber trees & if he turned the tree dealers in to the government, and that is when he smiles a little bit and shows us the last few pictures. because here’s the kicker… he never turned the smugglers in. he burned all the data he collected, defied the government pressuring him to turn them in, and the only reason he’s not incarcerated is because his work is so prominent in certain circles now & universities love him, that there would be an uproar if he got arrested. he’s like a fucking anti-hero and then he tells us (i’ll never forget, it’s the most inspirational green-thumb thing in the world) “it may be ‘illegal’, but those who risk their liberty to ~save the world~ should never be reprimanded, no matter what those in power say.”
we are all stunned. some of us are considering dendrology as a field we’d now be interested in pursuing. he clicks his slide one final time, before we leave our last lecture and, since he had an asthma attack (lil muffin) he didn’t attend our exam, so i never see him again…………
and there, on the slides, the last picture? THERE HE IS. in his own backyard. with his equally lovely TA wife. both grinning innocently, standing underneath a……. FUCKING. FULL GROWN. ILLEGAL. CUCUMBER TREE.
a long time ago in a land far far away, my dumb ass was a freshman and as a freshman you get last pick on electives. I ended up in this class called app and game development, it was pretty okay but all the projects were just re creating a game that already exists and they were games like pong, no real substance.
the final project for that class was to make your own game (or recreate a retro game we hadn’t already made a knock off of.) , and in coming up for ideas for that and understanding what all I could do, decided it would be a great story telling medium. I came up with a 90s style point and click, that hinged on retrieving the objects needed for a certain puzzle, which were all given Boolean values, the puzzles solved themselves if you had picked up all the items and clicked the right things.
nothing too revolutionary gameplay wise I know but the plot and style of game was (according to my classmates) reminiscent of undertale (a game i know nothing about and have never played). everybody agreed it was the best game produced in the class despite the code being the least complicated code wise. I only ever made the first level, and I forgot to upload the images I had drawn for the game to the drive so it had a bunch of google images,but it met the requirements for the grade and it was the turn in day. Truly I think the game could really be something great and worthwhile.
So now I’m gonna remake it and its gonna be a heck of a lot longer. and its gonna have some nice art.
But wait whats the plot?
well like what I’ve heard about undertale, my game is best walking in blind. So I cant tell you anything about the plot. The game Is called “JANE” and features a colorful cast of characters.
some of my favorite characters from the first level include:
a potted plant
a conversational door
an expecting mother
and you! (sorry this is an old design, doesn’t match up with the cover page)
So why you telling me this? Why not just wait till you finish the game?
You see it simple. I’m an instant gratification monkey, I want some hype and, I need beta testers because the game had issues, and according to my app and game dev class, the puzzles were too hard. I need other people to help me gauge how difficult a puzzle is.
so please submit to my inbox if your interested in beta testing with this information:
name:
age:
gender: (weird requirement I know but its important to know what yall plan on picking once you get the option in game to select a gender.)
experience with point and click adventures (other than hiveswap cause its very easy and not the same kind of abstract bullshit as the ones from the 90s):
Rate yourself on a scale of one to ten how good you are at 90s point and clicks: (ten being the best and one being the worst)
I wont reject anyone based on their answers, I just need to know basic demographics. In fact if you send an app in at all you’ll be a beta tester, and will get a file of the game once I get to the point where beta testing is needed.
what I expect from betas:
faux game review for each major update to the game.
feedback
bug reports
questions
maybe a suggestion
fanart (if you really want to. not a requirement by any means)
so come join me as we travel through the world of JANE
if yalls could help me spread the word by re-blogging that’d be a great help. thank you have a nice day!
SlythKris (tumblr backup babey) 