The very strangest of shrimps

I think so many people are so deeply alienated from themselves that they have no clue how to exercise their free will and autonomy. For some, this alienation runs so deep that they are afraid of their own autonomy and humanity. It is completely understandable why one would have those feelings, but it can be worrisome.

I want to help others who feel this way, so here are small things I have done to exercise my free will:

I don't want to shame anybody for not feeling as though they have free will or that they are exempt from exercising it. However, I wanted to give ideas so that you might read this list and find your own ways to express your intrinsic autonomy and will. You deserve to be a person, to feel alive, not just living. That is what our lives are for.

This is one of the funniest noises I've ever heard in my life

for the love of god unmute

A general reminder—periodic cicadas pose no threat to anyone and their plant damage is limited to nipping off the ends of twigs. Please do not hose them with pesticide. They are slow and clumsy and confused and only want to make friends with other cicadas and eventually die of sexual exhaustion.

Yes, the screaming is a lot, but they’ve been extremely quiet neighbors for thirteen years, cut them some slack as they go through the most fraught time of their lives.

Fellstar Gleam! And Heaven's Pillar!

Baten Kaitos stans, after all these years and big talk I finally offer u tribute.

Gotta love BK's character designs, gotta be my favorite genders of all time.

By Muhammad Iqbal

casting these before getting out of bed like buff spells before a raid boss

🔹 Saying that it's okay to write or read about dark and taboo topics but only when they're portrayed in a certain way is still censorship.

🔹 Wanting to ban or forbid media that you believe portrays a negative topic in a positive light, by glorifying, romanticizing, or fetishizing it is still censorship.

🔹 There is no objective metric to decide if a story is portraying a negative topic the 'right' way.

🔹 Just because a piece of fiction doesn't explicitly condemn or portray an evil action in a bad light in the text doesn't mean the author thinks its good or is trying to persuade the audience that it is good.

🔹 Survivors of trauma will not always write fiction about their trauma in a way that seems 'right' or 'normal' to you.

🔹 Banning fiction because it portrays dark, taboo topics in a way you consider gross or disgusting is still censorship.

[Tags reading, "#I've said it before and I'll say it again #I create art for adults #and as an adult I expect you to already know that hurting people is wrong #I'm not gonna hold you're hand through that like you're a toddler #"hurting people is wrong" is something you should have learned in kindergarten #not at 24 from an m-rated dark romance novel"]

It's finally time to reveal my piece for @palimpsestzine!

This was the first zine I ever participated in and I couldn't have asked for a better experience. A group of amazing and lovely artists coming together for a great project <3

If you haven't yet, go check out the full zine on itch.io! Donations will be open until the end of the month and all funds will go to Librarians and Archivists with Palestine. You'll be able to access some extra content and find out about the creative process behind it, too!

Secret of Mana

i think the reason why the assassination of Julius Caesar is one of the funniest political assassinations is for this very simple reason:

1 guy stabs 1 guy: not funny. that's murder.

2 guys stab 1 guy: even less funny. that's two against one.

60 guys stab 1 guy: uproariously funny. why do you need so many guys.

60 guys say they'll stab 1 guy, but he only ends up with 23 stab wounds: peak comedy and peak relatability for group projects. what can surpass it?

Please be coherent about this and recognise that what this headline means is:

Poor and marginalised people are being kicked out of the houses they worked decades to secure, just at the time in their lives when they are the most vulnerable

And the ones kicking them out aren't of a specific age either. Soulless assholes come in every generation, and the ones born with too much money are the worst of the lot. Right now, a guy your age is authorising an eviction against someone the age of your grandma. Pop culture generations cannot explain that.

This.

whenever i'm trying to talk myself out of buying something i don't need i always hear my old russian professor's voice echoing in my head: "WHAT??? WILL YOU DIE THE RICHEST MAN IN THE GRAVEYARD?" and then i make an unwise financial decision

i'm so glad i happened to see these tags this is the best thing anyone has added to this post so far

As someone who has personally had to take those calls, they do matter. It just doesn’t matter what you say in the call: the only way your calls actually reach the politician is a tally sheet of each call received on different topics. End of the day/week, the politician gets told “you had X many calls about people wanting you to do this, Y many calls about people wanting you to do this, etc.”

Individual calls matter little, but if they get tons of calls on one topic then they take it seriously. The example above was probably during a time where the office was flooded with so many calls at once that they took the phones off the hook, which actually means that calls are working especially well. When the phones are blowing up, everyone in the office notices.

The best call to your representative does not involve you making an impassioned and well-argued case, because you’re probably talking to an intern. The most effective call you can make takes 15 seconds: “I am from [place in your district] and I am very pissed about [topic].”

OI. PEOPLE IN THE THREAD. CAN WE REBLOG THIS VERSION PLEASE. DON'T STOP MAKING CALLS.

But also as another person further up says, don't let your activism start and stop with phone calls either.

DON'T TRUST ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU NOT TO PARTICIPATE

Welcome to Trilobite Tuesday! Have you ever wondered how trilobites are found in the field? Often, as was the case for this 3.1-in- (8-cm-) Thysanopeltis, rock after rock must be cracked by hand and carefully examined. The presence of a thin cross-section of calcite—like the crack still visible running through the middle of this critter’s body—indicates that a complete specimen might be buried within the stone matrix.

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

Might I add:

The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed

The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child

The human who died of radiation poisoning after repairing the spaceship

The adventures of a space roomba

Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)

I don’t know a snappy description but the my nemesis cynthia story certainly lives in my head

hilariously, these are almost all in my fic tag. so, a compiled list from the notes (and some extras):

I am in love with you /p

What about the one with the princess locked in a tower learning to become a wizard? That’s lived in my mind for years and I haven’t seen it in a long time

Oh, love that story, adding it to the list: 20. Princess Talia and adding a few more contenders 21. Thyme 22. The Monster under the Bed 23. A Meaningful Death 24. Humans are unstoppable…until they aren’t 25. The Monster under the Fridge 26. Antler Guy 27. Cleric slamming healing spells

Adding a few more I remembered:  28. The Frog and the Scorpion 29. HSTHETE 30. The First Witch in the World 31. Imagine that Oceans were replaced by Forests  32. A Faerie taking a Name  33. The Dragon on the Farm  34. Synovus & Menace  35. Raising the Anti-Christ  36. Aliens vs. Flora & Fauna of Earth (pretty sure there are even more additions to the original post but I had this one saved)  37. Doctors without Borders…in Space!  38. The Villain-Wrangler  39. The Last Contact  40. The 100 Parent-Point Children  41. And the Heavens Wept  42. The Night Gentleman  43. The Serpent God and their Priestess 

44. No One Showed Up for the Last Storytime

Wow! @writing-prompt-s contributing to like half of these!

I can hardly take any credit for these stories! But I love sharing them. Unfortunately I cannot read all the prompt responses so please tag me if you want me to reblog a story that resonated with you so I can give it a little boost :)

[ID: A screencap of Jason Mendoza from the Good Place holding a Molotov cocktail. Caption reads “be the light you want to see in the world”. End ID]