i think that… approximately 100% of the time, parents, teachers, etc… have this misconception that neurodivergent kids & teens don’t know anything about how to handle their neurodivergence.

for years, i suffered through people making suggestions of things that were things i had done, and either weren’t worth the effort or they actually made things worse. i told them this, and if i was still having any issues with the same problem they’d say something about “well if you’re not gonna listen to any suggestions…” when I did. they’re the one who didn’t listen when i told them that doesn’t work for me. They assume that because I didn’t try it in front of them (which is often impossible), I never tried it. I tried doing my homework as soon as I got home. I tried doing my homework at the table, I tried working where I was comfortable. I tried listening to music, I tried working in silence. I tried using a planner, I tried setting reminders on my phone, I tried. I tell people that I have executive functioning issues and they say that I have to work on it like I haven’t been doing that as long as I’ve had to do things and it’s so much better than it was before. I’m as able as I am now because I’ve spent 18 years working on it.

One of my friends has ADHD, and at one point when her grades dropped her parents took her phone, despite her telling them that the only way she can focus on her homework is to listen to music, for which she needs her phone.

I was in a study hall with another friend, who also has ADHD. Sometimes, they would be able to focus and do their work. Others, they would end up being entirely unable to and would do other stuff. The “instructional support” person would start bothering them about it, insist that they try. As if they hadn’t already done so.

I am tired of watching people assume that neurodivergent people aren’t trying, or we haven’t tried. We’re always trying.

I just want to belabor this point for a moment.

These images are not explicit. These pictures show two adults, engaging in consensual kissing. That’s it. It isn’t violent, it isn’t pornographic. It’s literally just two adult humans sharing a kiss.

It’s ludicrous and insulting that – especially in 2018 – this is flagged, either by some sort of badly-designed algorithm, or by shitty homophobic people.

I am so lucky. I am so massively lucky and privileged. I’m rich, I’m white, I’m a CIS male in a heterosexual relationship. I can look just about anywhere in the world and see myself represented in art and media. My experience has been normalized to the exclusion and oppression of people who don’t share that experience.

That. Must. Change.

I can only imagine what it must feel like to fight every second of ever day just to exist in a world that is filled with people who share my demographic (but not my values) using their wealth and power and privilege to attack you, simply for being who you are, for existing. I can only imagine how terrible and suffocating and exhausting that must be. 

According to marginalized and vulnerable people, this change in policy will directly hurt them, and that’s indefensible. 

The ridiculousness of this policy change can be simply illustrated by the image here being flagged. Why was it flagged? Because homophobia is rampant and too many people who should stand up against it are cowards who don’t want to risk their own wealth and privilege in the service of people who can’t defend themselves.

I applaud and admire and respect the hell out of everyone in the LGBTQ community here who have formed networks and friendships and relationships and support structures for each other. You have worked so hard to create and maintain a safe space for each other, and I’m embarrassed, appalled, and furious that people who look like me are making your lives – hell, your very existence – so hard. 

I’m just one person, and maybe it won’t matter or make a difference, but I stand with you, not just on this website, but in our entire universe. I see you. I love you. I value you. 

peter parker, expressing his affection as any teen would: thor i would die for you :)

thor, gripping his shoulders with the intensity of ten thousand burning suns: i would never let that happen

peter parker, later that week: i would die for you loki

loki, looking him dead in the eye: you will.

drax: [really bad joke]

peter parker: mr. drax? I would die for you

drax, with a pause spent determining that peter is probably joking and then a hearty guffaw: but my muscles and fighting power is several times your own! your death would be meaningless!

peter parker, in the middle of battle with no regard for his own safety: i would die for you

t'challa, who has lived with shuri long enough to know exactly what answer peter is looking for: then perish

Peter parker, jumping in front of steve: i would die for you mr. rodgers

Steven Grant Rodgers, a known idiot, somersaulting over peter: not if i die for you first 

Peter Parker, one night over dinner: I would die for you aunt may 

Aunt May, a worried mess and 100% done with this shit: not if you’re grounded for life you won’t

Peter Parker, out of the blue: I would die for you

Bucky, tired: oh not this again

It got so, so much better.

you learn to take the little victories

I always got very excited when it would spell out ACDC

OMG SAME FOR BOTH

I always got very afraid when it was the same letter 4 times in a row

when I was 4 or 5, my mom was a prof at a college and she used to hand me the scantron sheet before she wrote the exam and let me colour whatever lettered bubble i wanted for each answer. if i coloured two by accident, she made an ‘all of the above’ option. one time she gave me it and i coloured the ‘a’ bubble for each of the 130 questions except for the second last one and she just went with it later on, she told me that it was the most entertaining exam she had ever watched her students take

last night I was denouncing some forgettable shitbag to my girlfriend and said “even the ground wouldn’t want him to rot in it” and was instantly projected into the body of a gnarled old irish woman 200 years ago, spinning thread and spitting on the ground as I bitch and look out to sea.

When you bitch so hard you astral project intobone of your past lives

the most unrealistic thing about harry potter

is that no teacher ever called him James by accident, or that Ron never was called “Bill-, eh Charl-, no Per-, argh!”

As a younger sister who knows this struggle all too well: THIS IS REAL. Pretty sure 70% of my past teachers still think I’m called what my sister is called in fact.

Imagine Fred being called Percy by McGonagall accidentally and then he gets so offended that he refers to her by “Professor [insert any other name but McGonagall” for the rest of the year, costing Gryffindor a considerable amount of points one at a time.

From then on, she vows to just call them all Mr Weasley.

Until Ginny comes along and she calls her Mr Weasley by accident and Ginny “accidentally’ calls her Sir and it starts again.

It’s lightly off-topic but also slightly relevant but I have long cherished this mental image of Professor Snape saying something snappish to Harry in just the wrong tone of voice and Harry absentmindedly, wearily, and completely accidentally responding with, “Yes, Aunt Petunia.”

you haven’t truly experienced Rarepair Shipping™ until you have to read your own fanfiction because it’s the only content that has ever been created for your otp

revisiting book series from childhood is so weird when you’re significantly older than the protagonist. as an 8 year old kid i was like “wow he’s 13 thats so old and mature” but now im like…..what the fuck kind of cop teams up with a middle school kid to take down a criminal conspiracy. just give him a gun. it’s cool. 

holly, who is a 80 and doesnt fully understand human ages in relation to fairy ones: 13? that seems like a reasonable and legitimate age for a human to do crimes. 

i remember scenes where he travels around the world to meet with smugglers and stuff. imagine being a criminal and meeting with some contact and its fucking young sheldon. 

—

“Tolkien Cliches,” Limyaael

(via mithtransdir)

The whole point of The Lord Of The Rings… like, the WHOLE POINT… is that it is ultimately the hobbits who save the world. The small, vulnerable, ordinary people who aren’t great warriors or heroes.

Specifically, Sam. Sam saves the world. All of it. The ultimate success of the great quest is 100% due to a fat little gardener who likes to cook and never wanted to go on an adventure but who did it because he wasn’t going to let his beloved Frodo go off alone. Frodo is the only one truly able to handle the ring long enough to get it into Mordor - and it nearly kills him and permanently emotionally damages him - but Sam is the one who takes care of Frodo that whole time. Who makes him eat. Who finds him water. Who watches over him while he sleeps.

Sam is the one who fights off Shelob.

Sam is the one who takes the Ring when he thinks Frodo is dead.

Sam is the one who strolls into Orc Central and saves Frodo by sheer determination and killing any orc who crosses him. (SAM THE GARDENER GOES AND KILLS AN ACTUAL ORC TO GET FRODO SOME CLOTHES LET’S JUST THINK ABOUT THAT). And then Sam just takes off the Ring and gives it back which is supposed to be freaking impossible and he barely even hesitates.

Sam literally carries Frodo on the last leg of the journey. On his back. He’s half-starved, dying slowly of dehydration, but he carries Frodo up the goddamn mountain and Gollum may get credit for accidentally destroying the ring but Sam was the one who got them all there.

Sam saved the world.

And let’s not forget Pippin and Merry, who get damselled out of the story (the orcs have carried them off! We must make a Heroic Run To Save Them!) and then rescue themselves, recruit the Terrifying Ancient Powers through being genuinely nice and sincere, and overthrow Saruman before the ‘real’ heroes even get there.

Let’s not forget Pippin single-handedly saving what’s left of Gondor - and Faramir - by understanding that there is a time for obeying orders and a time for realizing that the boss is bugfuck nuts and we need to get help right now.

Let’s not forget Merry sticking his sword into the terrifying, profoundly evil horror that has chased him all over his world because his friend is fighting it and he’s gonna help, dammit and that’s how the most powerful Ringwraith goes down to a suicidally depressed woman and a scared little hobbit.

Everything the others do, the kings and princes and great heroes and all? They buy time.  They distract the bad guys. They keep the armies occupied. That is what kings and great leaders are for - they do the big picture stuff.

But it is ultimately the hobbits who bring down every villain. Every one. And I believe that that is 100% on purpose. Tolkien was a soldier in WWI. His son fought in WWII. (And a lot of The Lord Of The Rings was written in letters to him while he did it.)

And hey, look, The Lord Of The Rings is about ordinary people - farmers, scholars, and so on - who get pulled into a war not of their making but who have to fight not only because their own home is in danger but so is everyone’s. And they’re small and scared but they do the best they can for as long as they can and that is what actually saves the world. Not great heroes and pre-destined kings. Ordinary people, doing extraordinary things because they want the world to be safe for ordinary people, the ones they know and the ones they don’t.

Ordinary people matter. They can save the world without being great heroes or kings or whatever. And that is really important and I get so upset when people miss that because Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli and Gandalf and all the others are great characters and all but they are ultimately a hobbit delivery system.

It is ordinary people doing their best who really change the world, and continue doing so after the war is over because they have to go home and rebuild and they do.

If nothing else, I have to reblog this for the phrase “hobbit delivery system.” So accurate it hurts.

(via elenilote)

What I love too is how even the foretold king and the assorted great heroes themselves all come to recognize that their main (and by the end, only) role is to distract Sauron. To the point that by the end they’re all gathered up before the black gates of Mordor in order to keep his attention focused on them, with only the hope - not the certainty - that they can buy Frodo whatever remaining time he needs, if he’s even still alive.

One thing the movies left out but has always been such a key part of the books for me was how when the hobbits returned home, they found that home had been changed too. The war touched everywhere. Even with all they did in far-off lands to protect the Shire, the Shire had still been damaged, both property and lives destroyed, and it wasn’t an easy or simplistically happy homecoming. They had to fight yet another battle (granted a much smaller one) to save their neighbours, and then spent years in rebuilding.

(via msbarrows)

In LOTR the word ‘man’ is only used for human men so now I’m imagining like

Someone: are you a man or a woman?

Pippin: I’m a hobbit

Someone: but what’s in your trousers

Pippin: mostly snacks

#dont think he knows the gender binary is a myth pip

If you’re reading this: this is your sign that your WIP is worth writing, is worth the effort, and that you are doing great. Keep going, take breaks, reflect. But do not lose sight of how far you’ve come on this project! You can do it!

Storytime. Cooking in a different country makes you realize how many things you take for granted are just, Not A Thing Here. Like apple juice. Surely you can find apple juice at your local Athenian grocery store, right? Wrong. Greeks drink orange juice and peach juice and mixed fruit juice and sour cherry juice, but… plain old apple juice, nope, not so much. You’ll have a hard time finding vanilla extract in Greece too, since Greeks are used to vanilla powder in little plastic capsules and you have to go to specialty shops for the liquid stuff. Sour cream is virtually nonexistent here (but hey, it’s the land of yogurt, which is a good enough substitute). But surprisingly cornmeal (which is a specialty ingredient in the UK) is everywhere, since Greeks have their own versions of cornbread and corn pudding.

So basically: I knew it might be impossible find vegetable shortening (aka Crisco) for my Thanksgiving pie crust here in Athens. Crisco is pretty uniquely American, and Greeks are more likely to use phyllo than shortcrust anyway. That said, there are a handful of specialty shops in central Athens that sell things like Heinz baked beans and custard powder and Worcestershire sauce and other Weird Foreign Foods™ so us Sad Homesick Expats don’t have to go hungry (I’m always reminded of A Passage to India and their corned beef and tinned peas). So I went on Skroutz (the search engine for buying stuff in Greece) and typed in “vegetable shortening” to see if any stores carried it.

A notification came up asking me to confirm that I was over 18 years old?

???

I clicked “yes”??

Turns out there is, in fact, one shop in Athens that carries vegetable shortening. It’s a sex shop. The shortening is listed under “sex essentials”, as lube. For fisting. It’s literally called “βούτυρο για fisting” – “butter for fisting”.

I decided I didn’t need a flaky pie crust that badly.

One of the contractors at work drove past my shack on a forklift yesterday, stopped, backed up to my window and said, “hey, do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend?”

My knee jerk response when asked this, even if it’s by a companionable dude old enough to be my dad, is to go, “uh, nah-” and then ramble uncomfortably until someone stops me-

-which is what I started to do, only to be cut off by Contractor saying, in an embarrassed rush, “some of the guys were asking me because you and I talk sometimes, but I didn’t want them to hit on you at work, so I told them that you Worship the Devil and would Hex them if they tried. I’m sorry.”

Which leaves me wheezing helplessly, trying to get my shit together, because this is honestly one of the nicest, most hysterical things I’ve ever heard someone say to me.

Oblivious to this, Contractor then follows up with, “and they were like ‘forreal??’ so I was like, ‘yeah, she’s probably a sadist, too, you can tell by her jewelry. She’ll stab you or something.’”

And tbh I can’t even come up with anything witty to say in response, so all I manage to choke out is, “pleASE LET THEM CONTINUE TO THINK THAT, I’M BEGGING YOU.”

And Contractor just smiles and is like, “Okay! I just wanted to let you know!” before driving off with his forklift.

Like?? Thank god for Contractor tbh. He’s an angel among men, and I hope the rest of his life is filled with prosperity and happiness and like, that he finds $20 on the ground every week for the rest of his life.

Update: Every time Contractor sees me, he does a little Devil Horns gesture at me and its adorable.

Update the Second: I saw Contractor while doing my tour and he told me that the guy that asked if I was single was around, and that if I saw him, I should just make complicated hand gestures at him while I walk by to scare him off.

This guy’s a fuckin gem.

I will reblog this until you’re all sick of me

19/10/2018: Post-practice // Yamamoto